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as a dose to an inculpated person, he confessed all his transgressions. The king used this as a means to bring the accused to a confession. Those found guilty under the ordeal were condemned to die of starvation, and the innocent were dismissed. This particular is remarkable, because the Chinese pilgrim, Fah-hian, relates something similar regarding Udy & na, a country west of the Indus and to the north of Peshawar. He says it was the custom there, if a doubt existed about the guilt of an accused person, to remove the doubt by administering to him a medicinal drink; those guilty of a capital offence were banished. Pliny had much earlier reported something similar of an Indian plant." Guilty persons who had swallowed pills prepared from its roots and administered in wine, were during the night tormented by visions, and confessed all their transgressions. Although the origin of the drink mentioned by Ktêsias may be incorrect, there can be no doubt but that it was used for judicial purposes, as it is confirmed by the other two witnesses. Of such ordeals, called divya and pariksha, several are adduced in the codes of law. Among these, poison also occurs. If the accused, after swallowing the dose, felt no hurtful effects ensuing, he was declared innocent, so that the report of Ktêsias is justified by the Indians themselves."
LASSEN ON THE INDIKA OF KTESIAS.
This, however, cannot be said of the fourth custom mentioned in the fragments of the work; that in hunting hares and foxes, the Indians did not use dogs, but eagles, crows, and vultures, which they trained for that purpose. For this practice the Indian writings afford no confirmation, though it by no means follows that the report is untrue. It is only doubtful whether eagles can be so tamed. It would be important to know whether from an oversight on the part of Aelian, who alone has preserved this report, vultures have not been substituted for falcons; in that case this custom would be one which the Indians had in common with the Thrakians and the ancient Germans.
43 Hist. Nat. xxiv, 102.
43 Manu, Dharmas. VII, 114-116; Yajn. Dharmas. II, 95ff. See Stenzler, Zeitschrift d. D. Morg. Ges. vol. IX, p.
661.
5 Frag. xiii.
Frag. i, 14, 28, 31, &c.
47 The EvoTÍKTOvres-the once-bearing-seeTzetzes, Chil. vii. 636, Frag. i. and xxx, are called in Sanskrit Ekagarbha, and inhabit the eight varshas or divisions of the terrestrial heavens: Bhag. Purana v, 17, 12. According to an earlier opinion the varshas were parts of the world. Whether Ktêsias also mentioned the one-eyed Ekalochana, who appear in the great epic is doubtful. Conf. Tzetzes, Chil. ibid. and Mahab. III, 297, v. 16137. But both do mention. the Indian Karnapravarana, or those who used their ears as a covering, and who dwelt in the southern region. By Skylax they are called róλLKvot, i.e. having shovel-sized ears, Tzetzes, Chil. vii, 631, 638. Ktésias (frag. i, 31) does not seem to have known their name, but he says they had eight fingers on each hand, and eight toes on each foot, a feature wanting in the Indian accounts, but which is cer tainly an Indian idea. Megasthenes had translated the Indian name by 'EvarоKoirat, i.e. such as slept in their
319
With regard to the Aryan Indians we learn nothing from the extracts from the work of Ktêsias, but the fact already noticed, that they were white. He invariably speaks of but one king of India; but from this we must not conclude that at that time Western India formed a single state. It would rather appear that Ktêsias did not care to treat of the separate kingdoms.
The fabulous peoples are divided into two classes, one purely fictitious, and the other embracing the aboriginal tribes that have obtained their name from some one peculiarity, and in one particular instance this name is Greek. Of the first class Skylax had already mentioned several. There is but this one fact with reference to these tribes which is significant, that since the fictions regarding them had been propagated to foreign nations so early as the time of Skylax, they must have been still earlier widely current among the Indians. It will therefore be sufficient, if, without treating of them specially, I content myself with merely establishing their claim to be of Indian origin." When Ktêsias, following no doubt the precedent of the Persians, reported of one of these tribes that it was a very brave nation, and that five thousand men of them followed the king of the Indians as archers and lancers, so far from seeing in this circumstance a reason to consider them a real nation, as in the great epic the one-footed men brought gifts to a king, we shall only find a new proof of the wide dissemination of such fictions at that early period.
It will be suitable here to mention that Ktêsias was the first Greek who had received intelligence of the holy country of the Uttara Kuru, although considering the incomplete state in which his work lies before us, this can only be shown by the help of the native writings. He had, to wit, stated that there existed a fountain called Silas, in whose waters even the lightest substances that were thrown in sank to the bottom. Now,
ears: (see Ind. Ant. vol. VI, pp. 133-4). The Extánodes are mentioned by Skylax, Hekataios, and Ktesias,-by the second as in Ethiopia, with the frequent attribution of Indian fictions to Ethiopia: Tzetzes, Chil. vii, 629 f.; Philostrat. Vit. Appolon. vii, 14; Ktês. frag. xxvii, or Müller, Ctes. Frag. 89, p. 106. They have not yet been identified in Indian writings: their name must have been Chhayapada. Possibly they were considered to have feet large enough to overshadow them. The predecessors of Ktesias had not mentioned the one-footed race called Ekapida, who were able nevertheless to run fast-frag. xxx. The passage relating to them in the Mahabharata, according to which they lived in the north, is cited by Lassen, Ind. Alt. vol. I, p. 1026n., and that from the Ramayana in the Zeitschrift f. d. k. d. Morg. vol. II. p. 40. Pliny (Hist. Nat. VII, 2.) incorrectly considers them to have been the same as the Sciapodes.
Frag. xxviii. Megasthenês also mentions a river Silas flowing from a source of the same name through the country of the Sileoi, and so light that everything sank in it. The Sils is mentioned also in the Mahabh. VI, 6, v. 219, but north of Meru.
