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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[NOVEMBER, 1881.
this is the river ild or Sailod & which one must cross before he can reach that country. It was believed that nothing would float or swim in its waters because by contact with them everything was transmuted into stone. It was only possible to effect a passage by means of the Kichak a-reed which grew there. The Greek representation offers itself as an inversion of the Indian fiction; if anything that came into contact with the water was changed into stone, it must have become as heavy as stone and sunk to the bottom. The Greeks accordingly supposed that the lightness of the water was the cause of its being innavigable.
In the extant excerpts there is no mention of the Hyperboreans, who, as we shall afterwards show, answer to the Indian Uttara kuru. According to Megasthenes, they lived one thousand years, but according to the Indian view one thousand and even ten thousand years. Accordingly it is not at all impossible but that Ktësias has mentioned them under the name of Makrobioi, who lived four hundred years. These are attributed also to Ethiopia by Herodotos and other writers of later date, but are probably of Indian origin.
The accounts given of the real tribes deserve more consideration, because from them several particulars appear which shed over the aborigines and their contact with the Arian Indians a light all the more unexpected, as it has been the common practice to deny all value to the statements advanced by Ktêsias in this connection.
Among the real tribes was one that was black, and dwelt above the river Ayparkhos, probably the Ganges. They spent their days in idleness, ate no corn, but lived only on the milk of kine, goats and sheep which they maintained in great numbers. This notice is interesting, in so far as it shows that on the upper Ganges, or more correctly in the Himalaya, there still existed in those days black aborigines, as the great Epos also knows them there. It must be considered as an exag. geration that they drank no water, and that though not agriculturists, they subsisted also vpon fruits. The fullest reports are those relating to the Kynamolgoi or Kynokephaloi, the dog-headed," who must on accourit of this pecu. liarity being attributed to them have particularly attracted the attention of the classical authors. They were widely propagated, because they dwelt near the sources of the Hyparkhos, as well is in Southern India; their number is stated to have amounted to one hundred and twenty thousand.
They were black, and the teeth, tails and voices of dogs, as well as their heads, are attributed to them. They understood, however, the language of the Indians. The reason for their name and their fictitious properties is evident from the circamstance that they kept big dogs for hunting wild oxen and other wild animals. If the use of dogmilk is attributed to them, this may have also been merely an invention, because it is said elsewhere that they used also the milk of goats and of sheep. The other things related of them show that they were a real nation, a tribe of the black aborigines.
They were acquainted with but few of the technical arts, had no houses or beds, but dwelt in caves and slept on couches of straw, leaves, or grass. They knew how to tan hides, and the men as well as the women wore very fine garments manufactured from them. The richest only posBessed linen. They kept a multitude of asses, goats and sheep, and the greatest number of the latter constituted their wealth. Besides milk they used also as food the fruit of the Siptakhora tree, which they dried and packed up in plaited baskets and exported to the other Indians. They were very fast runners, good hunters, archers, and hurlers of the javelin. They lived especially on the produce of the chase. The flesh of the animals which they killed, they roasted in the gun. Protected by their inaccessible mountains, they were not attacked in war by their neighbours; they are represented as just men and harmless. They are said to have reached the age of one hundred and seventy years, and some even of two hundred. They carried on trade with the civilized Indians in their neighbourhood, and stood in a free relationship with the Indian king. To him they brought annually two hundred and sixty talents of dried fruits of the Siptakhora tree on rafts, and as many talents of a red dye-stuff and one thousand of elektron or the gum exuding from the Siptakhora tree. To the Indians they sold these wares, and obtained from them in exchange bread, oatmeal, cotton-clothes, bows, and lances, which they required in hunting and killing wild animals. Every fifth year the king presented them with three hundred bows, three thousand lances, one hundred and twenty thousand small shields, and fifty thousand swords.
This description throws a clear light upon the position held by the Indian aborigines towards the kings of the Aryan Indians, on their mutual relations, on the intercourse of the civilized Indians with their barbarous countrymen, and the
* Frag. XIX; Pliny, H. N. VII, 2, has confounded the Pandore with the Mandi of Kleitarkhoe and Ktesias. See Schwanbeck's Megasth. Ind. p. 71; Ind. Alter, vol. I, p. 797.
50 Herodot. III, 17. 51 Fragi, 24. * Frag. 1, 20, 22, 23, and xxi, xü, xxiii.
