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OCTOBER, 1881.]
THE INDIKA OF KTESIAS.
claws. Fresh stings grow up to replace those shot away in fighting. These animals are numerous in India, and are killed by the natives who hunt them with elephants, from the backs of which they attack them with darts.
8. He describes the Indians as extremely just, and gives an account of their manners and customs. He mentions the sacred spot in the midst of an uninhabited region which they venerate in the name of the Sun and the Moon." It takes one a fifteen days' journey to reach this place from Mount Sardous. Here for the space of five and thirty days the Sun every year cools down to allow his worshippers to celebrate his rites, and return home unscorched by his burning rays." He observes that in India there is neither thunder nor lightning nor rain, but that storms of wind and violent hurricanes which sweep everything before them, are of frequent occurrence. The morning sun produces coolness for one half of the day, but an excessive heat during the other half, and this holds good for most parts of India."
9. It is not, however, by exposure to the sun that the people are swarthy, but by nature, for among the Indians there are both men and women who are as fair as any in the world, though such are no doubt in a minority. He adds that he had himself seen two Indian women and five men of such a fair complexion.30
10. Wishing to assure us of the truth of his statement that the sun makes the temperature
26 Weltheim, rejecting the opinion of some that this uninhabited region was the desert of Cobi, takes it to be rather the great desert east of the Indus where the worship of the sun flourished in early times. This desert also was in reality about a ifteen days' journey distant from the mountains which produced the onyx and sardine stones. Lassen has however assigned the locality to the Vindhyas.
27 ἵνα μὴ ἄφλεκτοι αὐτὴν τελέσωσι, lit. that they may
not celebrate his rites unscorched. As the writer must have meant the opposite of this, pλexrol must be read instead of ἄφλεκτοι.
Conf. Herodot. III, 104.
39 Conf. Herodot. III, 101; Arrian. Exp. Alex. V, 4, 8; but on the contrary, Aristot. Hist. Anim. III, 22; Gener. Anim. II, 2; Strabo, XV, i, 13, 24.
30 Possibly from Kémir.-J. B.
31 Conf. Pausan. X, 28, 2: Strabo, VI, 2; Valer. Max. V, 4.
3 The reference is to the field of the pious, evoeßav xépa, near Catana, the scene of the story regarding the two brothers Amphinomos and Anapos, who saved their parents during an eruption by carrying them off on their shoulders. Vid. Pausan. X. xxviii, 2; Strabo, VI, 2; and Valer. Max. V, 4.
33 Herodotus (IV. 195) states that he had himself seen this bituminous fountain. It is mentioned by Antigonos; Hist. Mirabil. 169; by Dioskor. I, 99; by Vitruv. VIII, 8; and Pliny, XXXV, 15. Their accounts have been verified by modern travellers.
3 This fountain is mentioned by Stephan. Byz. 8. v. Naxos,' and a similar one by Pliny. (Hist. Nat. II, ciii,
299
cool for five and thirty days, he mentions several facts that are equally strange-that the streams of fire which issue from Etna leave unscathed amidst the surrounding havoc those lands which belong to just men"-that in Zakynthos there are fountains with fish whence pitch is taken out-that in Naxos is a fountain which at times discharges a wine of great sweetness," and that the water of the river Phasis likewise, if kept in a vessel for a night and a day, changes into a wine which is also of great sweetness-that near Phaselis in Lykia there is a perpetual volcano," always flaming on the summit of the rock both by night and by day, and this is not quenched by water, which rather augments the blaze, but by casting rubbish into it"-and in like manner, the volcanoes of Etna and of Prusa keep always burning."
11. He writes that in the middle of India are found the swarthy men called Pygmies,"" who speak the same language as the other Indians. They are very diminutive, the tallest of them being but two cubits in height, while the majority are only one and a half. They let their hair grow very long-down to their knees, and even lower. They have the largest beards anywhere to be seen, and when these have grown sufficiently long and copious, they no longer wear clothing, but, instead, let the hair of the head fall down their backs far below the knee, while in front are their beards trailing down to their very feet. When their hair has 106) in the island of Andros; Cf. idem. XXXI, ii; and also Philostrat. Icon. I, 25.
35 The waters of the Phasis, according to modern accounts, are lead-coloured, possessed of a healing virtue and held as sacred, perhaps because they were thought by the ancients to have sprung from the gates of the morning sun, and therefore to have formed the dividing line between day and night. Arrian in the Peripl. Pont. Eur., no doubt with an eye to this passage of Ktêsias, says that the water of the Phasis if kept in certain vessels acquired a pleasant vinons taste. V. Ritter, Erdk. II. pp. 817 and 915. Conf. Pliny (H. N. II. ciii, 106) who says that the water of the Lyncestis in Epirus is somewhat acid, and intoxicates like wine those who drink it.
30 See Frag. xii, below.
57 Conf. Frag. xii, A. and B. Beaufort, an English traveller, confirms this statement. He reports that while travelling in the regions nearest the country of the Phaselitae he came upon a place where there was to be seen an ever-burning flame which like the fire of a volcano was inextinguishable. V. Beaufort's Caramania, p. 44.
38 There is a Prusa in Bithynia and another in Mysia, each near a mountain. Strabo, (XII, p. 844 seqq.) mentions both; but as he says nothing of a volcanic mountain in connexion with either, Baehr inclines to think that the reference is to Prusa in the vicinity of Mount Olympus, formerly called Cios, famous for miraculous fountains and things of that sort.
Conf. Homer, I. III, 6; Aristot. Hist. An. VIII, 12 and 14; Philostrat. Pit. Apollon. III, 47; Plin. Hist. Nat. VII, 2; Strabo, Geog. XV, i, 57; Aulus Gellius, Noct. Att. IX, 4.
