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Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c8.s2: Appendix II. The Fabulous Races of India

Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c8.s2

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Appendix II. The Fabulous Races of India

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1. *The Pygmies.* Called Pygmies by Ktesias, Τρισπάθιμοι by Megasthenes. The legend arose from the small, dwarf-like Mongolians of Nepal and Bhotan, called Kirrhadii by the Periplus and Ptolemy and Kirāta in Sanskrit. The Pygmies of Homer are Ethiopian, but Ethiopia and India were supposed to be connected. Referring to the fights between Cranes and Pygmies, Lassen recalls the term Kirātāśin (devourer of Kirāta) applied to Garuḍa, the vulture of Viṣṇu.

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2. *’Αμύκτηρες.* The noseless men, described by Megasthenes as eating carrion and dying young. Again we have the snub-nosed Mongolian. Παμφάγος is Skt. sarva-bhaksha.

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3. *’Ενωτοκοῖται.* Men who sleep on their ears¹. A literal translation of the Skt. karṇaprāvaraṇa. The Indians had many such names for the aborigines, who hung weights to their ears and enlarged them to a great size by this and other means.

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¹ The legend is as old as Skylax, who also told the story of the one-eyed men, and many of the other legends here enumerated. Skylax called them ’Ωτόκλινοι. For the whole

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4. ’Αντίποδες or ’Οπισθοδάκτυλοι. The men whose feet turned backwards. Mentioned by Megasthenes and Ktesias. Skt. Paśchādaṅgulaja.

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5. ’Ωκύποδες. A curious mistranslation of Skt. Ekapāda. The Μονόσκελοι, Μονόκωλοι and Σκιάποδες of Ktesias¹, though the latter lived in Libya.

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¹ Apud Pliny, N.H. VII. 2. The story of the Σκιάποδες is as old as Hekataeus.

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6. The Hyperboreans. This legend, like that of the Pygmies, is very old. It may belong to the primitive Indo-Aryan stock. They are the Uttara-kuru of the Indian epic, transliterated as Attakorae by later writers. Hekataeus wrote a pamphlet about them. Pindar places them north of the Danube².

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² The Πανδορή and Μακρόβιοι of Ktesias, and the Μάνδοι (? Πάνδοι) of Megasthenes belong to the same class.

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7. Μονόμματοι. The Skt. Ekāksha. Mentioned by Megasthenes. Here again we have a legend which may be Indo-Aryan, as we find the Cyclops as early as the Odyssey.

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8. Κυνοκέφαλοι and Κυνάμολγοι. The former are the Skt. Śvamukha. The latter may be aboriginal tribes who, like their successors to-day, may have kept packs of hunting dogs. The yellow Tibetan mastiffs of the Dards led to the legend of the gold-ants. These people occur in Ktesias and Megasthenes.

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9. ’Αστομοι. Mouthless men who live on smell. The Indian equivalent has not been traced.

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(Pliny’s “Satyrs,” N.H. VII. 2, are apes. His Στρουθόποδες, women—not men—with ‘sparrow feet,’ must be the Chinese. The early age of marriage and child-bearing in India gave rise to stories of women who conceive at five years old. The jungle-folk called Choromandae, who have no language, etc., are merely aboriginal tribes.)

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subject, see Strabo, Geog. xv. I. 57, and McCrindle’s learned note, Ancient India, p. 57.

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