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144
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[JULY, 1914.
Before citing the older authorities it may be well to recall a legend regarding a woman named Khasà of which the most accessible version will be found in the Vishnu Purana, but which also occurs in many other similar works. The famous Kasyapa, to whom elsewhere is attributed the origin of the country of Kashmir, had numerous wives. Of these Krôdhavas was the ancestress of the cannibal Pisitâsis or Pisâchas and Khasâ of the Yakshas and Rakshasas. These Yakshas were also cannibals, and so were the Râkshasas.
In Buddhist literature the Yakshas correspond to the Pisâchas of Hindâ legend." Another legend makes the Piśâchas the children of Kapisâ, and there was an ancient town called Kâpisa at the southern foot of the Hindû Kush.8 That the Pisâchas were also said to be cannibals is well known, and the traditions about ancient cannibalism in the neighbourhood of the Hindu Kush have been described elsewhere by the present writer. Here we have a series of legends connecting the name Khasi with cannibalism practised in the mountains in the extreme north-west of India, and to this we may add Pliny's remark10 about the same locality,-next the Attacori (Uttarakurus) are the nations of the Thuni and the Forcari; then come the Casiri (Khasîras), an Indian people who look towards the Scythians and feed on human flesh.'
Numerous passages in Sanskrit literature give further indications as to the locality of the Khasas. The Mahabharata11 gives a long account of the various rarities presented to Yudhishthira by the kings of the earth. Amongst them are those that rule over the nations that dwell near the river Sailôdâ where it flows between the mountains of Mêru and Mandara, i.e. in Western Tibet.12 These are the Khasas .. . . the Pâradas (? the people beyond the Indus), the Kulindas13 and the Tanganas.14 Especially interesting is it to note that the tribute these people brought was Tibetan gold-dust, the famous pipilika, or ant-gold, recorded by Herodotus15 and many other classical writers, as being dug out of the earth by ants.
In another passage10 the Khasas are mentioned together with the Kâśmiras (Kâshmîris), the inhabitants of Urasa (the modern Panjab district of Hazara), the Piśâchas, Kâmbôjas17
5 Wilson, II, 74 ff.
6 Bhagavata Purana, III, xix, 21. They wanted to eat Brahma himself!
So Kalhana, Rájatarangini, i. 184, equates Yaksha and Pisacha. See note on the passage in Stein's translation.
8 Thomas in J. R.A. S., 1906, p. 461.
9 J. R. A. S., 1905, pp. 285 ff.
10 XVI, 17; McCrindle,-Ancient India as described in Classical Literature, p. 113. Is it possible that Thuni and Forcari' represent Hûpa and Tukhara'?
11 II, 1822 ff.
12 II, 1858. Cf. Pargiter. Markandeya Purana, p. 351.
13 Vide post.
14 The Tayyavor of Ptolemy. The most northern of all the tribes on the Ganges. They lived near Badrinath. Here was the district of Taniganapura, mentioned in copper-plate grants preserved at the temple of Papdukêsvara near Badrinath (Atkinson, op. cit. p. 357).
15 III, 104.
16 VII, 399.
17 According to Yáska's Nirukta (II, i, 4), the Kambojas did not speak pure Sanskrit, but a dialectic form of that language. As an example, he quotes the Kamboja tavati, he goes, a verb which is not used in Sanskrit. Now this verb favati, although not Sanskrit, happens to be good Eranian, and occurs in the Avesta, with this meaning of 'to go. We therefore from this one example learn that the Kambojas of the
