new proof of the wide dissemination of such notions at that early period.
It will be suitable here to mention that Ktesias 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.18 Now, this is the river Sila or Sailoda 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 K i c h a k 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
*8 Frag, xxviii. Megasthenes 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 Sila is mentioned also in the Mah&bh. VI, 6, v. 219, bat north of Meru.
and even ten thousand years.40 Accordingly it is not at all impossible but that Ktesias has mentioned them under the name of M a k r o b i o i, who lived four hundred years. These are attributed also to Ethiopia by Herodotus50 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 Ktesias in this connection.
Among the real tribes was one that was black, and dwelt above the river Hyparkhos, probably the Ganges.51 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 exaggeration that they drank no water, and that though not agriculturists, they subsisted also upon fruits. The fullest reports are those relating to the Kynamolgoi or Kynokephaloi, the dog-headed,5' who must on account of this peculiarity being attributed to them have particularly
49 Frag, xxx ; Pliny, B. N. VII, 2, has confounded the Pandore with the Mandi of Kleitarkhos and Ktfsias. See Sehwanbeek's Megasth. Ind. p. 71; Ind. Alter, vol. I, P- 797.
50 Herodot. III, 17- 51 Frag, I, 24.
•* Frag, i, 20, 22, 23, and xxi, xxii, Xxhi.
attracted the attention of the classical authors. They were widely propagated, because they dwelt near the sources of the Hyparkhos, as well as 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 circumstance 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 possessed 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 sun. 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 Bhields, 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 civilizing influence which they exerciseduponthem. Secured from subjugation in their inaccessible mountains, the latter must nevertheless have been glad to live in peace with the neighbouring kings, and to propitiate them by presents, and the former to make them feel the superiority of their power. On account of the need for the means of subsistence, and for the means for pursuing their occupations, which they procured from their civilized neighbours, the aborigines were obliged to accustom
themselves to have intercourse with them, and to afford them also an opportunity, and to open a door for the admission of their doctrines and laws among them.
The Indian name of this people Sunamukha, dog-faced, has been discovered in a HS. which has not yet been published.58 This tribe, according to it,5*dwelt on the Indus. The KaXCarptoi considered by Ktesias to be synonymous with it cannot be satisfactorily explained from the Sanskrit; but it may have reached us in a corrupted form. To deny that the Aryan Indians may have given to a nation which they despised a name taken from the dog would be unreasonable, because the dog was a despised animal, and the name Svapaka or Svapaka, i. e., feeder of dogs, designates one of the lowest castes. Nor is there anything to object to the view that one of the aboriginal tribes was specially addicted to the rearing of dogs, which were needed for hunting, seeing that the wild dog is widely propagated throughout India and occurs in the Deccan, and probably also in Nepaul as well as in the south and in the north, where the Kynamolgoi dwelt. This tribe also has been transferred to Ethiopia and Libya.85
The third of these tribes are the Pygmies, whose name is Greek, and means 'a fist long.' They are mentioned by Homer, and as fighting
53 Wilford, As. Res. vol. VIII, p. 331, from the Prabhisakhanda.
s' Vans Kennedy explained this by K&lavastra, clothed in black, but the meaning does not suit.
"Herodot. IV, 191, and Agatharkhides, p. 44, ed. Hudson, who has drawn his account from Ktesias.
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