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134
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[MAY, 1877
orifices through which they breathe. They are people without nostrils, who devour everything, distressed with things of evil smell, and hence eat raw meat, and are short-lived, and die before it is with difficulty they keep their hold on life, old age supervenes.* The upper part of the especially in a camp. Referring to the other mouth protrudes far over the lower lip. With monstrosities, the philosophers told him of the regard to the Hyperboreans, who live a Okupedes, a people whoin running could leave thousand years, they give the same account as the horse behind :ll of the Enotokoitai, Simonides, Pindaros, and other mythological who had ear's reaching down to their feet, so that writers.t 10 The story told by Timagenês, that they could sleep in them, and were so strong that showers fall of drops of copper, which are swept they could pull up trees and break a bowstring together, is a fable. 11 Megasthenes states* Of others the Monommatoi, who have the what is more open to belief, since the same is ears of a dog, their one eye set in the middle of the case in Iberiat--that the rivers carry down their forehead, the hair standing erect, and their gold dust, and that a part of this is paid by breasts shaggy; 1 of the Amuktéres, also a way of tribute to the king.
What Mogastberts by the Indians atttekäkshas or .
out to call thated to several.
Indian Cusuthe men with
Okupedes' is a transliteration into Greek, with a slight change, of the Sanskrit kapadas, ('having one foot'), the pamg of a tribe of the Kirâta noted for swiftness of foot, the quality iadicated by the Greek term. The Monopodes are mentioned by Ktésias, who confounded them with the Skiapodes, the men who covered themselves with the shadow of their foot.
9 What Mogastbends here mentions as the characteristaca of a single tribe are by the Indians attributed to several The one eyed men they are wont to call ekakshds or eka
ilo-chanás--the men with hairstanding erect, urdhuikea. Indiau Cwclpes even are mentioned uuder the name of Lalatakshas, i.e. having one eye in the for head : vide Schwamb. 70.
"That the Astomi are mentioned in the Iudian books we cannot show so well as in the case of the Amuktéres, wharm Megasthenes describes as παμφάγους, ωμοφάγους,
Ayoxpovibus. Nevertheless the very words of the description are a proof that he followed the narratives of the Indians, for the words Ilaubúyos, &c. by which he has described the Amuktêres, are very rarely used in Greek, and are translations of Indian words." Schwanb. 69.
+ Pindar, who locates the Hyperboreans somewhere about the mouths of the Ister, thus sings of them :
But who with venturous course through wave or Wiate; 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 anses slain
To soothe the radiant god Astounded he bebeld. Their rude solennities,
Their barbarous shouts, Apollo's heart delight: Laughing the rampant brute he sees
Insult the solemn rite. Still their sights, their custoins strange,
Scare not the Muse,' while all around The dancing virgins range,
And melting lyres aud piercing pipes resound. With braids of golden bays entwined l'heir soft resplendent locks they biud,
And feast iu bliss the genial hour: Nor foul disease, nor wastiug age, Visit the sacred race; nor wars they wago,
Nor toil for wealth or power." 110th. Pythian ode, 11. 46 to 69, A. Moore's metrical verBou.)
Megasthenes had the penetration to perecive that the Greek fable of the Hyperboreanis had an Indian source in the fables regarding the Uttarakes. This word means literaily the Kuru of the North.' "The historic origin," says P. V. de Saint-Martin," of the Sanskrit appellation UttaTakeru is unknown, but its acceptation never varies. In all the documenta of Upavedie literature, in tae great poems, in the Pitrinas, -wherever, in short, the word is found.it pertains to the domain of pretio and mythological geogra. phy, Uttarakuru 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 Rishia whose lives extend to several thousands of years. All access to it is forbidden to mortals. Like the Hyperborean region of Western my. thologists, 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 slike unknown..... It is clear enough that this land of the bleat is not of our world.
"In their intercourse with the Indians after the expedi. tion of Alexander, the Greeks became acquainted with those 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 Uttarakurus had spread to the West, since, from what Pliny tells us (vi. 17. p. 316) one Aməmétas had composed a treatise regarding them analogous to that of Hecatæus regarding the Hyperboreans. It is certainly from this treatise of Amo. mctus that Pliny borrows the two lines which he devotes to bis Attacore, 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 secluse colibus, eadem, qua Hyperborei degunt, temperie.' (Plin. loc. cit. Ammianus Marcellinus, Ixii. 6, 64.) Wagner transfera this description to the Sêrea in general, (of whom the Attacora of Pliny form part), and some modern critics (Mannert, vol. IV. p. 250, 1875; Morbiger Handb. der alten Geogr. vol. II. p. 472, 1844) have be. lieved they could see in it a reference to the great wall of China.) We see froin 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'tule eur lr Géographie Grecque et Latine de l'Inde, pr. 413-414.) The same author (p. 419) ways, "Among the peoples of Sérica, Ptolemy reckons the Ottorocorrhoe, a name which in Pliny is written Attacore, and which Ammianus Mar. cellinus, who copies Ptolemy, distorts inta Opurocarri. There is no difficulty in recognizing under this name the Uttarakuru of Sanskrit books."
Schwanbeck (p. 70) quotee Lassen, who writes somewbat to the same effoet : Uttarakuru is a part of Sirica, and as the first accounts of India came to the West from the Séres, perhaps a part of the description of the peaceful happy life of the Sêree is to be explained from the Indian stories of the Uttarakur. Tbe story of the long life of the Sères may be sirnilarly explained, especially when Megas thenes reckons the life attained by the Hyperboreans at 1000 years. The Mahabharata (VI. 26 ) says that the Uttarakurns live 1000 or 10,000 years. We conclude from this that Megasthens also wrote of the Uttarakurus, and that he not improperly rendered their name by that of the Hyperboreans."-Zeitschr. II. 67.
I Not Spain, but the country betwoen tue Black See and the Caspian, now called Georgia.
of Sanskrit bookenizing ander th: purocarra
