Ancient India as Described by Megasthenes and Arrian

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Fragm. XXVII.

Strab. XV. i. 53-56, -- pp. 709-10.

Of the Manners of the Indians.

The Indians all live frugally, especially when in camp. They dislike a great undisciplined multitude, and consequently they observe good order. Theft is of very rare occurrence. Megasthenes says that those who were in the camp of Sandrakottos, wherein lay 400,000 men, found that the thefts reported on any one day did not exceed the value of two hundred drachmae, and this among a people who have no written laws, but are ignorant of writing, and must therefore in all the business of life trust to memory. They live, nevertheless, happily enough, being simple in their manners and frugal. They never drink wine except at sacrifices.*

[*This wine was probably Soma juice.]

Their beverage is a liquor composed from rice instead of barley, and their food is principally a rice-pottage.*

[*Curry and rice, no doubt.]

The simplicity of their laws and their contracts is proved by the fact that they seldom go to law. They have no suits about pledges or deposits, nor do they require either seals or witnesses, but make their deposits and confide in each other. Their houses and property they generally leave unguarded. These things indicate that they possess good, sober sense; but other things they do which one cannot approve: for instance, that they eat always alone, and that they have no fixed hours when meals are to be taken by all in common, but each one eats when he fools inclined. The contrary custom would be better for the ends of social and civil life.

Their favourite mode of exercising the body is by friction, applied in various ways, but especially by passing smooth ebony rollers over the skin. Their tombs are plain, and the mounds raised over the dead lowly. In contrast to the general simplicity of their style, they love finery and ornament. Their robes are worked in gold, and ornamented with precious stones, and they wear also flowered garments made of the finest muslin. Attendants walking behind hold up umbrellas over them: for they have a high regard for beauty, and avail themselves of every device to improve their looks. Truth and virtue they hold alike in esteem. Hence they accord no special privileges to the old unless they possess superior wisdom. They marry many wives, whom they buy from their parents, giving in exchange a yoke of oxen. Some they marry hoping to find in them willing helpmates; and others for pleasure and to fill their houses with children. The wives prostitute themselves unless they are compelled to be chaste. No one wears a crown at a sacrifice or libation, and they do not stab the victim, but strangle it, so that nothing mutilated, but only what is entire, may be presented to the deity.

A person convicted of bearing false witness suffers mutilation of his extremities. He who maims any one not only suffers in return the loss of the same limb, but his hand also is cut off. If he causes an artizan to lose his hand or his eye, he is put to death. The same writer says that none of the Indians employ slaves; (but Onesikritos says that this was peculiar to that part of the country over which Musikanos ruled.*)

[*His kingdom lay in Sindhu, along the banks of the Indus, and his capital was probably near Bakkar.]

The care of the king's person is entrusted to women, who also are bought from their parents.*

[*This was not unknown in native courts of later times. Conf. Idrisi's account of the Balhara king.]

The guards and the rest of the soldiery attend outside the gates. A woman who kills the king when drunk becomes the wife of his successor. The sons succeed the father. The king may not sleep during the daytime, and by night he is obliged to change his couch from time to time, with a view to defeat plots against his life.*

[*"The present king of Ava, who evidently belongs to the Indo-Chinese type, although he claims a Kshatriya origin, leads a life of seclusion very similar to that of Sandrokottos. He changes his bedroom every night, as a safeguard against sudden treachery." (Wheeler's Hist. of India, vol. III, p. 182, note.)]

The king leaves his palace not only in time of war, but also for the purpose of judging causes. He then remains in court for the whole day, without allowing the business to be interrupted, even though the hour arrives when he must needs attend to his person, — that is, when he is to be rubbed with cylinders of wood. He continues hearing cases while the friction, which is performed by four attendants, is still proceeding. Another purpose for which he leaves his palace is to offer sacrifice; a third is to go to the chase, for which he departs in Bacchanalian fashion. Crowds of women surround him, and outside of this circle spearmen are ranged. The road is marked off with ropes, and it is death, for man and woman alike, to pass within the ropes. Men with drums and gongs lead the procession. The king hunts in the enclosures and shoots arrows from a platform. At his side stand two or three armed women. If he hunts in the open grounds he shoots from the back of an elephant. Of the women, some are in chariots, some on horses, and some even on elephants, and they are equipped with weapons of every kind, as if they were going on a campaign.*

[*In the drama of Sakuntala, Raja Dushyanta is represented as attended in the chase by Yavana women, with bows in their hands, and wearing garlands of wild flowers.]
 
(These customs are very strange when compared with our own, but the following are still more so;) for Megasthenes states that the tribes inhabiting the Kaukasos have intercourse with women in public, and eat the bodies of their relatives,* ...

[*Herodotus (bk. iii. 38, 99, 101) has noted the existence of both practices among certain Indian tribes.]

... and that there are monkeys which roll down stones, &c (Fragm. XV. follows, and then Fragm. XXIX.)

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Fragm. XXVII. B.

Aelian. V. L. iv. 1.

The Indians neither put out money at usury, nor know how to borrow. It is contrary to established usage for an Indian either to do or suffer a wrong, and therefore they neither make contracts nor require securities. Conf. Suid. V. [x].

139. 'A Debt being admitted by the defendant, he must pay five in the hundred, as a fine to the king; but, if it be denied and proven, twice as much: this law was enacted by Menu.

140. 'A lender of money may take, in addition to his capital, the interest allowed by Vasisht'ha, that is, an eightieth part of a hundred, or one and a charter by the month, if he have a pledge;

141. Or, if he have no pledge, he may take two in the hundred by the month, remembering the duty of good men: for, by thus taking two in the hundred, he becomes not a sinner for gain.

142. 'He may thus take, in proportion to the risk, and in the direct order of the classes, two in the hundred from a priest, three from a soldier, four from a merchant; and five from a mechanick or servile man, but never more, as interest by the month.

143. 'If he take a beneficial pledge, or a pledge to be used for his profit, he must have no other interest on the loan; nor, after a great length of time, or when the profits have amounted to the 4debt, can he give or sell such a pledge, though he may assign it in pledge to another.

144 'A pledge to be kept only must not be used by force, that is, against consent: the pawner so using it must give up his whole interest, or must satisfy the pawner, if it be spoiled or worn out, by paying him the original price of it; otherwise, he commits a theft of the pawn.

145. 'Neither a pledge without limit, nor a deposit, are lost to the owner by lapse of time: they are both recoverable, though they have long remained with the bailee.

146. 'A milch cow, a camel, a riding horse, a bull, or other beast which has been sent to be tamed for labour, and other things used with friendly assent, are not lost, by length of time, to the owner.

147. 'In general, whatever chattel the owner sees enjoyed by others for ten years, while, though present, he says nothing, that chattel he shall not recover:

148. 'If he be neither an idiot, nor an infant under the full age of fifteen years, and if the chattel be adversely possessed in a place where he may see it, his property in it is extinct by law, and the adverse possessor shall keep it.

149. 'A pledge, a boundary of land, the property of an infant, a deposit either open or in a chest sealed, female slaves, the wealth of a king, and of a learned Brahmen, are not lost in consequence of adverse enjoyment.

150. ‘The fool, who secretly uses a pledge without, though not against the assent of the owner, shall give up half of his interest, as a compensation for such use.

151. 'Interest on money received at once, not month by month, or day by day, as it ought, must never be more than enough to double the debt, that is, more than the amount of the principal paid at the same time: on grain, on fruit, on wool or hair, on beasts of burden, lent to be paid in the same kind of equal value, it must not be more than enough to make the debt quintuple.

152. 'Stipulated interest beyond the legal rate, and different from the preceding rule, is invalid; and the wise call it an usurous way of lending: the lender is entitled, at most, to five in the hundred.

153. 'Let no lender for a month, or for two or three months at a certain interest, receive such interest beyond the year; nor any interest, which is unapproved; nor interest upon interest by previous agreement; nor monthly interest exceeding in time the amount of the principal; nor interest exacted from a debtor, as the price of the risk, when there is no publick danger or distress; nor immoderate profits from a pledge to be used by way of interest.

154. 'He, who cannot pay the debt at the fixed time, and wishes to renew the contract, may renew it in writing, with the creditor's assent, if he pay all the interest then due;

155. ‘But if by some unavoidable accident, he cannot pay the whole interest, he may insert, as principal in the renewed contract, so much of the interest accrued as he ought to pay.

156. 'A lender at interest on the risk of safe carriage, who has agreed on the place and time, shall not receive such interest, if by accident the goods are not carried to the place, or within the time:

157. 'Whatever interest or price of the risk shall be settled between the parties, by men well acquainted with sea voyages or journeys by land, with times and with places, such interest shall have legal force.

158. 'The man who becomes surety for the appearance of a debtor in this world, and produces him not, shall pay the debt out of his own property;

159. 'But money due by a surety, or idly promised to musicians and actresses, or lost at play, or due for spirituous liquors, or what remains unpaid of a fine or toll, the son of the surety or debtor shall not in general be obliged to pay:

160. 'Such is the rule in cases of a surety for appearance or good behaviour; but if a surety for payment should die, the judge may compel even his heirs to discharge the debt.

161. 'On what account then is it, that after the death of a surety other than for payment, the creditor may in one case demand the debt of the heir, all the affairs of the deceased being known and proved?

162. 'If the surety had received money from the debtor, and had enough to pay the debt, the son of him who so received it, shall discharge the debt out of his inherited property: this is a sacred ordinance.

163. 'A contract made by a person intoxicated or insane, or grievously disordered, or wholly dependent, by an infant or a decrepit old man, or in the name of another, by a person without authority, is utterly null.

164. 'That plaint can have no effect though it may be supported by evidence, which contains a cause of action inconsistent with positive law or with settled usage.

165. 'When the judge discovers a fraudulent pledge or sale, a fraudulent gift and acceptance, or in what ever other case he detects fraud, let him annul the whole transaction.

166. 'If the debtor be dead, and if the money borrowed was expended for the use of his family, it must be paid by that family, divided or undivided, out of their own estate.

167. 'Should even a slave make a contract in the name of his absent master for the behoof of the family, that master, whether in his own country or abroad, shall not rescind it....

177. ‘Even by personal labour shall the debtor pay what is adjudged, if he be of the same class with the creditor, or of a lower; but a debtor of a higher class must pay it according to his income, by little and little...

-- Institutes of Hindu Law: Or, The Ordinances of Menu, According to the Gloss of Culluca. Comprising the Indian System of Duties, Religious and Civil, Verbally translated from the original Sanscrit, With a Preface, by Sir William Jones

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Fragm. XXVII. C.

Nicol. Damasc. 44; Stob. Serm. 42.

Among the Indians one who is unable to recover a loan or a deposit has no remedy at law. All the creditor can do is to blame himself for trusting a rogue.

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Fragm. XXVII. D).

Nicol. Damasc. 44; Stob. Serm. 42.

He who causes an artisan to lose his eye or his hand is put to death. If one is guilty of a very heinous offence the king orders his hair to be cropped, this being a punishment to the last degree infamous.

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Fragm. XXVIII.

Athen. iv. p. 153.

Of the Suppers of the Indians.

Megasthenes, in the second book of his Indika, says that when the Indians are at supper a table is placed before each person, this being like a tripod. There is placed upon it a golden bowl, into which they first put rice, boiled as one would boil barley, and then they add many dainties prepared according to Indian receipts.

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Fragm. XXIX.*

[*Cf. Strab. II. i. 9, -- p. 70:— Deimachos and Megasthenes are especially unworthy of credit. It is they who tell those stories about the men who sleep in their ears, the men without mouths, the men without nostrils, the men with one eye, the men with long legs, and the men with their toes turned backward. They renewed Homer's fable about the battle between the Cranes and the Pygmies, asserting that the latter were three spans in height. They told of the ants that dig for gold, of Pans with wedge-shaped heads, and of serpents swallowing down oxen and stags, horns and all, — the one author meanwhile accusing the other of falsehood, as Eratosthenes has remarked.]

Strab. XV. i. 57,— p.711.

Of fabulous tribes.

But deviating into fables he says there are men five spans and oven three spans in height, some of whom want the nose, having only two orifices above the mouth through which they breathe. 2 Against the men of three spans, war, as Homer has sung, is waged by the cranes, and also by partridges, which are as large as geese.*

[*Ktesias in his Indika mentions Pygmies as belonging to India. The Indians themselves considered them as belonging to the race of the Kiratae, a barbarous people who inhabited woods and mountains and lived by hunting, and who were so diminutive that their name became a synonym for dwarf. They were thought to fight with vultures and eagles. As they were of Mongolian origin, the Indians represented them with the distinctive features of that race, but with their repulsiveness exaggerated. Hence, Megasthenes spoke of the Amukteres, men without noses, who had merely breathing-holes above the mouth. The Kiratae are no doubt identical with the Seyrites (V. L. Syrictes) of Plinius and the Kirrhadai of the Periplus Maris Erythroei.]

These people collect and destroy the eggs of the cranes, for it is in their country the cranes lay their eggs, and thus the eggs and the young cranes are not to be found anywhere else. Frequently a crane escapes having the brazen point of a weapon in its body, from wounds received in that country. 3 Equally absurd is the account given of the Enotokoitai,*...

[*The Enotokoitai are called in Sanskrit Karnapravaramas, and are frequently referred to in the great epic poems -- e.g. Mahabh. II. 1170, 1875. The opinion was universally prevalent among the Indians that barbarous tribes had large ears: thus not only are the Karnapravaramas mentioned, but also Karnikas, Lambakarnas, Mahakarnas (i.e. long or large eared), Ushtrakarnas (i.e. camel-eared), Oshthakarnas (i.e. having the ears close to the lips), Panikarnas (i.e. having hands for ears). Schwanb. 66. "It is easy," says Wheeler (Hist. Ind. vol. III. p. 179), "for any one conversant with India to point out the origin of many of the so-called fables. The ants are not as big as foxes, but they are very extraordinary excavators. The stories of men pulling up trees, and using them as clubs, are common enough in the Mahabharata, especially in the legends of the exploits of Bhima. Men do not have ears hanging down to their feet, but both men and women will occasionally elongate their ears after a very extraordinary fashion by thrusting articles through the lobe. . . . . If there was one story more than another which excited the wrath of Strabo, it was that of a people whose ears hung down to their feet. Yet the story is still current in Hindustan. Babu Johari Das says: — 'An old woman once told me that her husband, a sepoy in the British army, had seen a people who slept on one ear, and covered themselves with the other.' (Domestic Manners and Customs of the Hindus, Banaras, 1860.)" The story may be referred to the Himalayas. Fitch, who travelled in India about 1585, says that a people in Bhutan had ears a span long."]

... of the wild men, and of other monsters.

In Mahakam Ulu, older generations usually have elongated earlobe with silver or iron earrings dangling up to their shoulders. © WWF-Indonesia/Ari Wibowo

-- The Last Long Earlobes, https://wwf.panda.org/

4 The wild men could not be brought to Sandrakottos, for they refused to take food and died. Their heels are in front, and the instep and toes are turned backwards.*

[*These wild men are mentioned both by Ketesias and Baeto. They were called Antipodes on account of the peculiar structure of their foot, and were reckoned among Aethiopian races, though they are often referred to in the Indian epics under the name Paschadangulajas, of which the [x] of Megasthenes is an exact translation. Vide Schwanb. 68.]

5 Some were brought to the court who had no mouths and were tame. They dwell near the sources of the Ganges, and subsist on the savour of roasted flesh and the perfumes of fruits and flowers, having instead of mouths orifices through which they breathe. They are distressed with things of evil smell, and 6 hence it is with difficulty they keep their hold on life, especially in a camp.

In Tibetan Buddhism, Hungry Ghosts (Tib. ཡི་དྭགས་, Wyl. yi dwags, Sanskrit: preta) have their own realm depicted on the Bhavacakra and are represented as teardrop or paisley-shaped with bloated stomachs and necks too thin to pass food such that attempting to eat is also incredibly painful. Some are described as having "mouths the size of a needle's eye and a stomach the size of a mountain".

-- Hungry Ghost, by Wikipedia

[D]espite an abundance of food, hungry ghosts are doomed to hunger because their own throats are too narrow for any food to pass. This is why they are known as “smell eaters” (dri za) -– because they can only consume smells.

-- Being a Buddhist Nun: The Struggle for Enlightenment in the Himalayas, by Kim Gutschow

Referring to the other monstrosities, the philosophers told him of the Okupedes, a people who in running could leave the horse behind;* ...

[*'Okupedes' is a transliteration into Greek, with a slight change, of the Sanskrit Ekapadas ('having one foot'), the name of a tribe of the Kiratae noted for swiftness of foot, the quality indicated by the Greek term. The Monepodes are mentioned by Ktesias, who confounded them with the Skiapodes, the men who covered themselves with the shadow of their foot.]

The Lung-Gom-Pa Runners of Old Tibet
by Trail Runner Magazine
April 26, 2017

Getting ready for a trail race? Try this for your training: Seclude yourself in a remote cave for three years; Spend most of your time practicing breathing exercises and chanting Buddhist mantra; Practice leaping upward from a cross-legged sitting position without using your hands. Repeat ad infinitum; Return to the world three years later, light as a feather, in a heightened state of consciousness; Run vast distances. Win races. (Known side effect: By this point in your training, the act of winning will have become meaningless to you).

Such was the training practice of the lung-gom-pa runners of pre-westernized Tibet. According to legend, lung-gom-pa runners could run for 48 hours without rest and cover 200 miles in a single day. To achieve this super-human level of endurance, lung-gom-pa runners underwent intensive spiritual training. Their goal, however, was not to win races, but to pursue spiritual enlightenment, similar to the Marathon Monks of Japan (see Issue 19, March 2003).

Lung (pronounced rlun) signifies air and vital energy, or prana as the yogis would call it. Gom means meditation or focused concentration. A lung-gom-pa, therefore, is someone who has mastered the art of harnessing their spiritual energy through focused meditation and conscious breathing, thus transcending the physical limits of the body.

By the time Westerners trickled into remote Tibet, in the early 20th century, lung-gom-pa training was only conducted in two monasteries: Nyang-to Kyi-phug (near Shigatse) and Samding. Lama Anagarika Govinda, a German-born Buddhist monk, visited the Nyang-to Kyi-phug monastery on his travels through Tibet in 1947. He described the training process of a lung-gom-pa in detail in his memoir The Way of the White Clouds.

Govinda writes that a would-be lung-gom-pa enters the monastery having forsaken all claims to his previous life, including his name. Absolute anonymity is a prerequisite for training. If the initiate is approved, he is sealed inside a simple meditation hermitage for three to nine years. During his time in seclusion, he is allowed no human contact. Food is passed to him through a small opening in the wall. He spends his days meditating, chanting and deep breathing. For physical exercise, he paces his chamber and practices the art of levitating, or “yogic flying” as it is known today. He sits in a cross-legged position, fills his lungs with a deep breath, and then leaps into the air without using his hands. He repeats this exercise over and over again. As time passes, he is able to deeply synthesize his breath and movement.

After the prescribed amount of years has passed, a lung-gom-pa is released from his seclusion. Govinda writes that by this point, the lung-gom-pa “has become so light and subtle … that he can move with the speed of a galloping horse, while hardly touching the ground.” He is now qualified to serve as a “Maheketang.” According to an ancient Tibetan legend, a runner must be sent every year to the far corners of the country to collect spiritual demons that haunt the land. Such a runner is called a Maheketang and is selected from the lung-gom-pa runners at Samding or Nyang-to Kyi-phug monasteries. Every year, the Maheketang sets out in November, crossing the central part of Tibet in six weeks. The Maheketang invites the demons to return with him to the monastery where they are subdued with a religious rite.

Unfortunately, Govinda never saw a lung-gom-pa runner in action. One Westerner, however, did manage to stumble across a working lung-gom-pa while crossing a remote Tibetan plateau in 1924. Alexandra David-Neel, an early 20th-century French explorer, was the first European woman to reach Lhasa, Tibet’s remote and forbidden capital. She was also the first, and perhaps only, Westerner to observe a running lung-gom-pa. David-Neel’s surreal encounter is recounted in her memoir Magic and Mystery in Tibet. It remains one of the few eyewitness descriptions of a lung-gom-pa runner on record.

According to Jeanne Denys’ Alexandra David-Néel au Tibet. Une supercherie dévoilée, Paris: La Pensée universelle, 1972, the editor explicitly asked David-Néel to stuff her adventure narratives and novels with such anecdotes; Denys, who was her former librarian in Digne, accused her of fraud and claimed that her accounts amounted to falsification and pure deception.... I argue here that David-Néel certainly played with the readers’ expectancies.... she sets new literary standards for the question of reality/fiction that she was trying out.

-- From the Guimet Museum to De-Chen Ashram: Alexandra David-Neel, Buddhism and Fiction, by Samuel Thévoz

“I noticed, far away in front of us, a moving black spot which my field-glasses showed to be a man. I felt astonished. Meetings are not frequent in that region [Chang Thang in northern Tibet] … But as I continued to observe him through the glasses, I noticed that the man proceeded at an unusual gait and, especially, with an extraordinary swiftness … The man did not run. He seemed to lift himself from the ground, proceeding by leaps. It looked as if he had been endowed with the elasticity of a ball and rebounded each time his feet touched the ground.”

In 1950, shortly after Govinda’s visit to Tibet, lung-gom-pa training retreated underground when the Chinese invaded and destroyed the majority of Tibetan monasteries. Both Nyang-to Kyi-phug and Samding were victims of the destruction and with them went the concentrated training of lung-gom-pa runners. The training, if still conducted today, takes place largely in secret. Tibetan monks are reluctant to speak about lung-gom-pa with outsiders for fear of detracting from the real goal of the practice: spiritual enlightenment. Notably, Westerners wrote the only accounts of lung-gom-pa training on record. Like so much about Tibet, lung-gom-pa running remains something of an enigma.

... 7 of the Enotokoitai, who had cars reaching down to their feet, so that they could sleep in them, and were so strong that they could pull up trees and break a bowstring. 8 Of others the Monommatoi, who have the ears of a dog, their one eye set in the middle of their forehead, the hair standing erect, and their breasts shaggy;*...

[*What Megasthenes here mentions as the characteristics of a single tribe are by the Indians attributed to several. The one-eyed men they are wont to call ekakshas or ekavilo-chanas -- the men with hair standing erect, urdhvakesa. Indian Cyclopes even are mentioned under the name of Lalatakshas, i.e. having one eye in the forehead: vide Schwanb. 70.]

... of the Amukteres also, a people without nostrils, who devour everything, eat raw meat, and are short-lived, and die before old ago supervenes.*

[*"That the Astomi are mentioned in the Indian books we cannot show so well as in the case of the Amukteres, whom Megasthenes describes as [x], [x], [x]. Nevertheless the very words of the description are a proof that he followed the narratives of the Indians, for the words [x], &c. by which he has described the Amukteres, are very rarely used in Greek, and are translations of Indian words." Schwanb. 69.]

The upper part of the mouth protrudes far over the lower lip. 9 With regard to the Hyperboreans, who live a thousand years, they give the same account as Simonides, Pindaros, and other mythological writers.*

[*Pindar, who locates the Hyperboreans somewhere about the months of the Ister, thus sings of them: —

"But who with venturous course through wave or waste
To Hyperborean haunts and wilds untraced
E'er found his wondrous way?
There Perseus pressed amain,
And 'midst the feast entered their strange abode,
Where hecatombs of asses slain
To soothe the radiant god
Astounded he beheld. Their rude solemnities,
Their barbarous shouts, Apollo's heart delight:
Laughing the rampant brute he sees
Insult the solemn rite.
Still their sights, their customs strange,
Scare not the 'Muse,' while all around
The dancing virgins range,
And melting lyres and piercing pipes resound.
With braids of golden bays entwined
Their soft resplendent locks they bind,
And feast in bliss the genial hour:
Nor foul disease, nor wasting age,
Visit the sacred race; nor wars they wage,
Nor toil for wealth or power."

(10th Pythian ode, II. 46 to 69, A. Moore's metrical version.)

Megasthenes had the penetration to perceive that the Greek fable of the Hyperboreans had an Indian source in the fables regarding the Uttarakurus. This word means literally the 'Kuru of the North.' "The historic origin," says P. V. de Saint-Martin, "of the Sanskrit apellation Uttarakuru is unknown, but its acceptation never varies. In all the documents of Upavedic literature, in the great poems, in the Puranas, — wherever, in short, the word is found, —it pertains to the domain of poetics and mythological geography. Uttarakura is situated in the uttermost regions of the north at the foot of the mountains which surround Mount Meru, far beyond the habitable world. It is the abode of demigods and holy Rishis whose lives extend to several thousands of years. All access to it is forbidden to mortals. Like the Hyperborean region of Western mythologists, this too enjoys the happy privilege of an eternal spring, equally exempt from excess of cold, and excess of heat, and there the sorrows of the soul and the pains of the body are alike unknown .... it is clear enough that this land of the blest is not of our world."

"In their intercourse with the Indians after the expedition of Alexander, the Greeks became acquainted with these fictions of Brahmanic poetry, as well as with a good many other stories which made them look upon India as a land of prodigies. Megasthenes, like Ktesias before him, had collected a great number of such stories, and either from his memoirs or from contemporary narratives, such as that of Deimachos, the fable of the Utturakurus had spread to the West, since, from what Pliny tells us (vi. 17, p. 316) one Amometus had composed a treatise regarding them analogous to that of Hecataeus regarding the Hyperboreans. It is certainly from this treatise of Amometus that Pliny borrows the two lines which he devotes to his Attacorae, 'that a girdle of mountains warmed with the sun sheltered them from the blasts of noxious winds, and that they enjoyed, like the Hyperboreans, an eternal spring.' 'Gens hominum Attacorum, apricis ab omni noxio afflatu seclusa collibus, eadem, qua Hyperborei degunt, temperie.' (Plin. loc. cit. Ammianus Marcellinus, xxiii. 6, 64.) Wagner transfers this description to the Seres in general, (of whom the Attacorae of Pliny form part.), and some modern critics (Mannert, vol. IV. p. 250, 1875; Forbiger Handb. der alten Geogr. vol. II, p. 472, 1844) have believed they could see in it a reference to the great wall of China.) We see from a host of examples besides this, that the poetic fables and popular legends of India had taken, in passing into the Greek narratives, an appearance of reality, and a sort of historical consistency." (E'tude sur la Geographie Grecque et Latine de l'Inde, pp. 413-414.) The same author (p. 412) says, "Among the peoples of Serica, Ptolemy reckons the Ottorocorrhae, a name which in Pliny is written Attacorae, and which Ammianus Marcellinus, who copies Ptolemy, distorts into Opurocarra. There is no difficulty in recognizing under this name the Uttarakuru of Sanskrit books."

Schwanbeck (p. 70) quotes Lassen, who writes somewhat to the same effect: — "Uttarakuru is a part of Serica, and as the first accounts of India came to the West, from the Seres, perhaps a part of the description of the peaceful happy life of the Seres is to be explained from the Indian stories of the Uttarakuru. The story of the long life of the Seres may be similarly explained, especially when Megasthenes reckons the life attained by the Hyperboreans at 1000 years. The Mahabharata (VI. 264) says that the Uttarakurus live 1000 or 10,000 years. We conclude from this that Megasthenes also wrote of the Uttarakurus, and that he not improperly rendered their name by that of the Hyperboreans." — Zeitschr. II. 67.]

10 The story told by Timagenes, that showers fall of drops of copper, which are swept together, is a fable. 11 Megasthenes states -- what is more open to belief, since the same is the case in Iberia* ...

[*Not Spain, but the country between the Black Sea and the Caspian, now called Georgia.]

— that the rivers carry down gold dust, and that a part of this is paid by way of tribute to the king.

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Fragm. XXX.

Plin. Hist. Nat. VII. ii. 14-22.

Of fabulous races.

According to Megasthenes, on a mountain called Nulo* ...

[*V. L. Nullo.]

... there live men whose feet are turned backward, and who have eight toes on each foot; 2 while on many of the mountains there lives a race of men having heads like those of dogs, who are clothed with the skins of wild beasts, whose speech is barking, and who, being armed with claws, live by hunting and fowling.*

[*Called by Ktesias [x], and in Sanskrit Sunamuchas or Svamuchas.]

(2b asserts on his own authority that the number of those men was upwards of 120,000, and that there is a race in India whoso females bear offspring but once in the course of their life, and that their children become at once grey-haired.)

3 Megasthenes speaks of a race of men among the Nomadic Indians who instead of nostrils have merely orifices, whose legs are contorted like snakes, and who are called Scyritae. He speaks also of a race living on the very confines of India on the east, near the source of the Ganges, the Astomi, who have no mouth; who cover their body, which is all over hairy, with the soft down found upon the leaves of trees; and who live merely by breathing, and the perfume inhaled by the nostrils. They eat nothing, and they drink nothing. They require merely a variety of odours of roots and of flowers and of wild apples. The apples they carry with them when they go on a distant journey, that they may always have something to smell. Too strong an odour would readily kill them.

4 Beyond the Astomi, in the remotest part of the mountains, the Trispithami and the Pygmies are said to have their abode. They are each three spans in height — that is, not more than seven-and-twenty inches. Their climate is salubrious and they enjoy a perpetual spring, under shelter of a barrier of mountains which rise on the north. They are the same whom Homer mentions as being harassed by the attacks of the cranes. 5 The story about them is— that mounted on the backs of rams and goats, and equipped with arrows, they march down in spring-time all in a body to the sea, and destroy the eggs and the young of these birds. It takes them always three months to finish this yearly campaign, and were it not undertaken they could not defend themselves against the vast flocks of subsequent years. Their huts are made of clay and feathers and egg-shells. (Aristotle says that they live in caves, but otherwise he gives the same account of them as others.). . . .

(5b From Ktesias we learn that there is a people belonging to this race, which is called Pandore and settled in the valleys, who live two hundred years, having in youth hoary hair, which in old age turns black. On the other hand, others do not live beyond the age of forty, — nearly related to the Macrobii, whose women bear offspring but once. Agatharchides says the same of them, adding that they subsist on locusts, and are swift of foot.) 6 Clitarchus and Megasthenes call them Mandi,* ...

[*Possibly we should read Pandai, unless perhaps Megasthenes referred to the inhabitants of Mount Mandara.]

... and reckon the number of their villages at three hundred. The females bear children at the age of seven, and are old women at forty.*

[*Conf. Fragm. L. 1, LI.]

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Fragm. XXX. B.

Solin. 52. 20-30.

Near a mountain which is called Nulo there live men whose feet are turned backwards and have eight toes on each foot. Megasthenes writes that on different mountains in India, there are tribes of men with dog-shaped heads, armed with claws, clothed with skins, who speak not in the accents of human language, but only bark, and have fierce grinning jaws. (In Ktesias we read that in some parts the females bear offspring but once, and that the children are white-haired from their birth, &c.)

Those who live near the source of the Ganges, requiring nothing in the shape of food, subsist on the odour of wild apples, and when they go on a long journey they carry these with them for safety of their life, which they can support by inhaling their perfume. Should they inhale very foul air, death is inevitable.

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Fragm. XXXI.

Plutarch, de facie in orbe lunae. (Opp. ed. Reisk, tom. ix. p. 701.)

Of the race of men without mouths.*

[*Conf. Fragm. XXIX. 5, XXX. 3.]

For how could one find growing there that Indian root which Megasthenes says a race of men who neither eat nor drink, and in fact have not even months, set on fire and burn like incense, in order to sustain their existence with its odorous fumes, unless it received moisture from the moon?  

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BOOK III.

Fragm. XXXII.

Arr. Ind. XI. 1.-XII.-9. Cf. Epit. 40-53, and Plin. Hist. Nat. VI. xxii. 2, 3.

(See the translation of Arrian's Indika.)