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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[NOVEMBER, 1885.
It is soft as the worm called skoler, and is found treated. The fruits of the mahuwa include on the trees which produce amber, eating the stones, and grow in clusters. fruits of those trees, as in Greece the woodlouse | These identifications, taken together with ravages the vine-trees. The Indians grind the statement of Pliny, that the Hyparkhos, these insects to a powder, and therewith dye or Hypobaros river flows into the Eastern Sea such robes, tunics, and other vestments as enable us, I think, so far to localise it as they want to be of a purple hue." Speaking to say, that it was one of those which rise in of the race Kynokephaloi, they are said to eat Western Bengal (or Orissa), and among them the fruit of the siptakchoras, the tree which it may have been either the Damûda, the produces amber, for it is sweet. They also dry Dalkissar, Kossai, Brahmini, or Mahanadi. this fruit, and pack it in hampers, as the possibly the old native names of these, which Greeks do raisins. The same people constract I cannot at the moment refer to, may help to rafts, freight them with the hampers as well as elucidate the identification. with the flowers of the purple plant, after As for the people called Kynokephaloi, they cleansing it, and with 260 talents weight of the are subjects fit for separate examination, it dried fruits, and a like weight of the pigment being here sufficient to suggest that they which dyes purple, and 1,000 talents of amber. belonged to a Kolarian race. All this cargo, which is the season's produce,
33. THE DIKAIRON (Aikaipov). they convey annually as tribute to the king
Scarabæus sacer, Linn.-The Dung Beetle. of the Indians." In spite of exaggeration, in the account
Under the name Dikairon, Ktesias described, above given of the red insects, I think they
according to Photios" and Ælian,* a bird ! of may be safely identified with the so-called lac the size of a partridge'segg, which burieditedung insects, Cocous lacca. They cannot have been in the earth. To this dang, which was said to be cochineal insects, as has been suggested, since an object of search, the properties of an opiate they do not occur in India. The elektron was and poison were attributed. It was so precertainly shell-lac, as above stated. The Peri. cious that it was included among the costly plus mentions Λάκκος χρωμάτινος, coloured lac, presents sent by the king of the Indians to the as an export to Adouki from Ariake, which, Persian monarch, and no one in Persia possessed whether it means the dye itself, or garments any of it except the king and his mother. coloured by it, as has been suggested, sufficiently By the Greeks it was called Blkalov (i.e. just) proves that the substance was known at that that being probably the nearest approximation early time. The siptakhoras tree presents some of a known word to the Indian or Persian difficulty, owing to its combining attributes name. An Arabic word zikairon [?] meaning belonging to two distinct trees, which, however, concealer may perhaps, it has been suggested grow in the same region. The tree which to me, be the original form of this name. This most abundantly yields lac is the khusum- 80-called bird was, I believe, one of the Schleichera trijuga. It is found on others Coprophagi of Latreille, namely, the common too, as Ziayphus jujuba, Ficus Indica and Ficus dung beetle called gobarandá in Hindustani, religiosa; but not, so far as my experience which buries pellets of cattle droppings as a goes, on the malwwd (Bassia latifolia), the dried receptacle for its eggs and food for the larve flowers of which are brought down from the when hatched. mountainous regions in baskets for sale in the I do not know whether these pellets are plains. The flowers are used both as food and used medicinally, though it is not improbable in the manufacture of a spirit, the well-known that they are, but I strongly suspect that the mahwwú spirit. It is possible that some of the substance, described by Ktësias, to which he confusion may have arisen from the fact that has attributed this origin was charas, a resinous the mahwwa, like other trees belonging to the product of Indian hemp (Cannabis sativa). It same natural order, does exude a gum. The cannot have been opinm, as it was not introfruit of the khusum, though edible, is not so duced into India till a later period.
"Cf. Jungle Life in India (passin). 19 Ecloga in Photii, Bibl. lxxii, 17.
** De Nat. An. iv. 41.
