The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c26.226

v1.c26.226

The name 'Indians' was extended in its largest acceptance to cover the barbarous tribes of mountain or jungle on the confines of Brāhman civilisation. In noting down what seemed to them odd points in the physical characteristics or customs of these tribes the Greeks were moved by an interest which is the germ of the modern science of anthropology. Megasthenes noted that in the Hindu Kush the bodies of the dead were eaten by their relations³, as Herodotus had already stated of some aboriginal people.