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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
wonderful animals of Persepolis, or to attribute to them a Baktro-Indian origin. In opposing this view, I have shown that the similarity of the sculptured animals to those described by Ktêsias is only general-that in both cases the animals have been composed from parts of such as were real, and farther that an ethico-religious symbolism through miraculous animals was unknown to the Indians. The conjecture there thrown out that the old Persian miraculous animals are of BabylonicAssyrian origin, have been confirmed by the recent discoveries at Nineveh.
About the bird, Dikairos, which was not larger than the egg of a partridge, the dung, of which was dug up, and first produced sleep and afterwards death, I can say nothing more satisfactory than others. That it is not fictitious appears from the fact that the King of India had sent some of it to the King of Persia, who preserved it as something very precious, because it was a remedy against incurable diseases. That opium, as has been suggested, cannot be meant by it, is certain, since the cultivation of that drug was introduced much later into India. It would be futile to try to explain the name because it is explained by the word just, and has been altered to assimilate its sound to that of a Greek word.
If the griffins have been indicated as Indian animals, there is no confirmation of this discoverable in the Indian writings-and so the griffins must be classed along with the Issedonians," the Arimaspians, and other fictions of the more northern peoples, which had found admission also among the Persians, where they survived till later. Just as foreign to the Indians is the Martikhoras, whose name is correctly explained as the man-eater, but in old Iranian, because Martijaqára has this meaning, but the second part is foreign to the Indian language. If Ktêsias has reported that he had seen such an animal with the Persian King to whom it had been presented by the Indian king, he cannot in this instance be acquitted of mendacity.
Since he has specified a pretty large number of Indian animals without exhausting the list, and has also described some of them minutely, if we may judge from the details which have been preserved, we may conclude that he had also treated at large of the manners and customs of the Indians. From this portion of the work which, had it been preserved, would have interested us most of all, we cannot expect to have learned any thing about those subjects which we do not already know, but light would have been thrown upon
[NOVEMBER, 1881.
the communications which had at that time reached the Persians from India, and upon the nature of the ideas they had conceived regarding the inhabitants of India. But unfortunately we possess only very scanty extracts on such topics, while, on the other hand, there are tolerably complete repetitions of his reports of fabulous peoples.
Of the Indians he correctly asserted that they had their black colour not from the sun, but from nature. As a proof he adduced the fact that he had with his own eyes seen white Indians, viz. two women and five men. He mentioned their great justice, their laws and customs, their love for their sovereigas, and their scorn of death. Nothing shows so plainly how little the way in which the extracts have been made is to be relied on, as the omission of these very subjects, with the exception of four of the less important usages. The first is that the Indians went on pilgrimage to a holy place distant fifteen days from the Sard mountains, situated in an uninhabited region where they worshipped the sun and the moon. During the festival the sun is said to have afforded them coolness for thirty-five days, so that they might be able to perform all the rites and return to their homes unscorched by his heat. There can be no doubt as to where this place lay. It was among the Vindhyas, one of whose off-shoots are the Sardian mountains. It is self-evident that this can only have been an isolated worship of the two luminaries, probably by a barbarous tribe, to which also the legend of the cooling down of the temperature may have belonged.
The second custom mentioned is connected with the idea formed by Ktêsias of the bodily constitution of the Indians. They attained an age of 130 or 140 years, and the oldest of 200. None of them suffered from headache, eye diseases, toothache, sore mouths, or putrid ulcers. In India there was a quadrangular well, enclosed by rocks, wherein the Indians of high rank bathed along with their wives and children. It had the property of throwing out again upon the bank not only the bathers, but everything else, except gold, silver, iron and copper. It is called in India ballade, which meant useful. This word is really Indian, for in Sanskrit balada means strengthgiving. From this report we learn the unimportant fact that the Indians had discovered the healing power of mineral wells.
35 Frag. i, 17, and xviii; the name is also written Dikeros. 30 Frag. i, 12, and xiv.
3 Lassen, Ind. Alt., vol. II, p. 609.
Another well had the peculiarity that the water drawn from it congealed to the thickness of cheese. If three obols weight of this was triturated to a powder and being put in water was given
35 Frag. i, 7, and viii-xi; Herodot. III, 116; IV, 13, 27. 30 Frag. i, 9. Frag. i. 8.
41 Frag. i, 14.
