# Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian/Frag. LIX.

Fragm. LIX.
Of the Beasts of India.
Ælian, Hist. Anim. XVI. 2-22.
(2) In India I learn that there are to be found the birds called parrots; and though I have, no doubt, already mentioned them, yet what I omitted to state previously regarding them may now with great propriety be here set down. There are, I am informed, three species of them, and all these, if taught to speak, as children are taught, become as talkative as children, and speak with a human voice; but in the woods they utter a bird-like scream, and neither send out any distinct and musical notes, nor being wild and untaught are able to talk. There are also peacocks in India, the largest anywhere met with, ​and pale-green ringdoves. One who is not well-versed in bird-lore, seeing these for the first time, would take them to be parrots, and not pigeons. In the colour of the bill and legs they resemble Greek partridges. There are also cocks, which are of extraordinary size, and have their crests not red as elsewhere, or at least in our country, but have the flower-like coronals of which the crest is formed variously coloured. Their rump feathers, again, are neither curved nor wreathed, but are of great breadth, and they trail them in the way peacocks trail their tails, when they neither straighten nor erect them: the feathers of these Indian cocks are in colour golden, and also dark-blue like the smaragdus.
(3) There is found in India also another remarkable bird. This is of the size of a starling and is parti-coloured, and is trained to utter the sounds of human speech. It is even more talkative than the parrot, and of greater natural cleverness. So far is it from submitting with pleasure to be fed by man, that it rather has such a pining for freedom, and such a longing to warble at will in the society of its mates, that it prefers starvation to slavery with sumptuous fare. It is called by the Makedonians who settled among the Indians in the city of Boukephala and its neighbourhood, and in the city called Kuropolis, and others which Alexander the son of Philip built, the Kerkiôn. This name had, I believe, its ori​gia in the fact that the bird wags its tail in the same way as the water-ousels (οἱ κίγκλοι).
(4) I learn further that in India there is a bird called the Kêlas, which is thrice the size of the bustard, and has a bill of prodigious size and long legs. It is furnished also with an immense crop resembling a leather pouch. The cry which it utters is peculiarly discordant. The plumage is ash-coloured, except that the feathers at their tips are tinted with a pale yellow.
(5) I hear also that the Indian hoopoe (ἔποπα) is double the size of ours, and more beautiful in appearance, and Homer says that while the bridle and trappings of a horse are the delight of a Hellenic king, this hoopoe is the fayourite plaything of the king of the Indians, who carries it on his hand, and toys with it, and never tires gazing in ecstasy on its splendour, and the beauty with which Nature has adorned it. The Brachmanes, therefore, even make this particular bird the subject of a mythic story, and the tale told of it runs thus:—To the king of the Indians there was born a son. The child had elder brothers, who when they came to man's estate turned out to be very unjust and the greatest of reprobates. They despised their brother because he was the youngest; and they scoffed also at their father and their mother, whom they despised because they were very old and grey-haired. The boy, accordingly, and his aged parents could at last no longer live with these wicked men, and away they fled from home, all ​three together. In the course of the protracted journey which they had then to undergo, the old people succumhed to fatigue and died, and the boy showed them no light regard, but huried them in himself, having cut off his head with a sword. Then, as the Brachmanes tell us, the all-seeing sun, in admiration of this surpassing act of piety, transformed the boy into a bird which is most beautiful to behold, and which lives to a very advanced age. So on his head there grew up a crest which was, as it were, a memorial of what he had done at the time of his flight. The Athenians have also related, in a fable, marvels somewhat similar of the crested lark; and this fable Aristophanes, the comic poet, appears to me to have followed when he says in the Birds, "For thou wert ignorant, and not always bustling, nor always thumbing Æsop, who spake of the crested lark, calling it the first of all birds, born before ever the earth was; and telling how afterwards her father became sick and died, and how that, as the earth did not then exist, he lay unburied till the fifth day, when his daughter, unable to find a grave elsewhere, dug one for him in her own head."
​It seems, accordingly, probable that the fable, though with a different bird for its subject, emanated from the Indians, and spread onward even to the Greeks. For the Brachmanes say that a prodigious time has elapsed since the Indian hoopoe, then in human form and young in years, performed that act of piety to its parents.
(6.) In India there is an animal closely resembling in appearance the land crocodile, and somewhere about the size of a little Maltese dog. It is covered all over with a scaly skin so rough altogether and compact that when flayed off it is used by the Indians as a file. It cuts through brass and eats iron. They call it the phattages (pangolin or scaly ant-eater) . . . . . . .
(8.) The Indian sea breeds sea-snakes which have broad tails, and the lakes breed hydras of immense size, but these sea-snakes appear to inflict a bite more sharp than poisonous.
(9.) In India there are herds of wild horses, and also of wild asses. They say that the mares submit to be covered by the asses, and enjoy such coition, and breed mules, which are of a reddish colour and very fleet, but impatient of the yoke and otherwise skittish. They say that they catch these mules with foot-traps, and then take them to the king of the Prasians, and that if they are caught when two years old they do not refuse to be broken in, but if caught when beyond that age they differ in no respect from sharp-toothed and carnivorous animals.
(Fragm. XII. B follows here.)
(11.) There is found in India a graminivorous animal which is double the size of a horse, and which has a very hushy tail purely black in colour. The hair of this tail is finer than human hair, and its possession is a point on which Indian women set great store, for therewith they make a charming coiffure, by binding and braiding it with the locks of their own natural hair. The length of a hair is two cubits, and from a single root there sprout out, in the form of a fringe, somewhere about thirty hairs. The animal itself is the most timid that is known, for should it perceive that any one is looking at it, it starts off at its utmost speed, and runs right forward,—but its eagerness to escape is greater than the rapidity of its pace. It is hunted with horses and hounds good to run. When it sees that it is on the point of being caught, it hides its tail in some near thicket, while it stands at bay facing its pursuers, whom it watches narrowly. It even plucks up courage in a way, and thinks that since its tail is hid from yiew the hunters will not care to capture it, for it knows that its tail is the great object of attraction. But it finds this to be, of course, a vain delusion, for some one hits it with a poisoned dart, who then flays off the entire skin (for this is of value) and throws away the carcase, as the Indians make no use of any part of its flesh.
(12.) But further: whales are to be found ​in the Indian Sea, and these five times larger than the largest elephant. A rib of this monstrous fish measures as much as twenty cubits, and its lip fifteen cubits. The fins near the gills are each of them so much as seven cubits in breadth. The shell-fish called Kêrukes are also met with, and the purple-fish of a size that would admit it easily into a gallon measure, while on the other hand the shell of the sea-urchin is large enough to cover completely a measure of that size. But fish in India attain enormous dimensions, especially the sea-wolves, the thunnies, and the golden-eyebrows. I hear also that at the season when the rivers are swollen, and with their fall and boisterous flood deluge all the land, the fish are carried into the fields, where they swim and wander to and fro, even in shallow water, and that when the rains which flood the rivers cease, and the waters retiring from the land resume their natural channels, then in the low-lying tracts and in flat and marshy grounds, where we may be sure the so-called Nine are wont to have some watery recesses (κόλπους), fish even of eight cubits' length are found, which the husbandmen themselves catch as they swim about languidly on the surface of the water, which is no longer of a depth they can freely move in, but in fact so very shallow that it is with the utmost difficulty they can live in it at all.
(13.) The following fish are also indigenous ​to India:—prickly roaches, which are never in any respect smaller than the asps of Argolis; and shrimps, which in India are even larger than crahs. These, I must mention, finding their way from the sea up the Ganges, have claws which are very large, and which feel rough to the touch. I have ascertained that those shrimps which pass from the Persian Gulf into the river' Indus have their prickles smooth, and the feelers with which they are furnished elongated and curling, but this species has no claws.
(14.) The tortoise is found in India, where it lives in the rivers. It is of immense size, and it has a shell not smaller than a full-sized skiff (σκάφη), and which is capable of holding ten medimni (120 gallons) of pulse. There are, however, also land-tortoises which may be about as big as the largest clods turned up in a rich soil where the glebe is very yielding, and the plough sinks deep, and, cleaving the furrows with ease, piles the clods up high. These are said to cast their shell. Husbandmen, and all the hands engaged in field labour, turn them up with their mattocks, and take them out just in the way one extracts wood-worms from the plants they have eaten into. They are fat things and their flesh is sweet, having nothing of the sharp flavour of the sea-tortoise.
(15.) Intelligent animals are to be met with among ourselves, but they are few, and not at all so common as they are in India. For there we find ​the elephant, which answers to this character, and the parrot and apes of the sphinx kind, and the creatures called satyrs. Nor must we forget the Indian ant, which is so noted for its wisdom. The ants of our own country do, no doubt, dig for themselves subterranean holes and burrows, and by boring provide themselves with lurking-places, and wear out all their strength in what may be called mining operations, which are indescribably toilsome and conducted with secrecy; but the Indian ants construct for themselves a cluster of tiny dwelling-houses, seated not on sloping or level grounds where they could easily be inundated, but on steep and lofty eminences. And in these, by boring out with untold skill certain circuitous passages which remind one of the Egyptian burial-vaults or Cretan labyrinths, they so contrive the structure of their houses that none of the lines run straight, and it is difficult for anything to enter them or flow into them, the windings and perforations being so tortuous. On the outside they leave only a single aperture to admit themselves and the grain which they collect and carry to their store-chambers. Their object in selecting lofty sites for their mansions is, of course, to escape the high floods and inimdations of the rivers; and they derive this advantage from their foresight, that they live as it were in so many watch-towers or islands when the parts around the heights become all a lake. More​over, the mounds they live in, though placed in contiguity, so far from being loosened and torn asunder hy the deluge, are rather strengthened, especially by the morning dew: for they put on, so to speak, a coat of ice formed from this dew—thin, no doubt, but still of strength; while at the same time they are made more compact at their base by weeds and bark of trees adhering, which the silt of the river has carried down. Let so much about Indian ants be said by me now, as it was said by lobas long ago.
(16) In the country of the Indian Areianoi there is a subterranean chasm down in which there are mysterious vaults, concealed ways, and thoroughfares invisible to men. These are deep withal, and stretch to a very great distance. How they came to exist, and how they were excavated, the Indians do not say, nor do I concern myself to inquire. Hither the Indians bring more than thrice ten thousand head of cattle of different kinds, sheep and goats, and oxen and horses; and every person who has been terrified by an ominous dream, or a warning sound or prophetic voice, or who has seen a bird of evil augury, as a substitute for his life casts into the chasm such a victim as his private means can afford, giving the animal as a ransom to save his soul alive. The victims conducted thither are not led in chains nor otherwise coerced, but they go along this road willingly, as if urged forward by some mysterious spell; and as soon as they find themselves on the verge ​of the chasm they voluntarily leap in, and disappear for ever from human sight so soon as they fall into this mysterious and viewless cavern of the earth. But above there are heard the bellowings of oxen, the bleating of sheep, the neighing of horses, and the plaintive cries of goats, and if any one goes near enough to the edge and closely applies his ear he will hear afar off the sounds just mentioned. This commingled sound is one that never ceases, for every day that passes men bring new victims to be their substitutes. Whether the cries of the animals last brought only are heard, or the cries also of those brought before, I know not,—all I know is that the cries are heard.
(17) In the sea which has been mentioned they say there is a very large island, of which, as I hear, the name is Taprobanê. From what I can learn, it appears to be a very long and mountainous island, having a length of 7000 stadia and a breadth of 5000. It has not, however, any cities, but only villages, of which the number amounts to 750. The houses in which the inhabitants lodge themselves are made of wood, and sometimes also of reeds.
(18.) In the sea which surrounds the islands, tortoises are bred of so vast a size that their shells are employed to make roofs for the houses: for a shell, being fifteen cubits in length, can hold a ​good many people under it, screening them from the scorching heat of the sun, besides affording them a welcome shade. But, more than this, it is a protection against the violence of storms of rain far more effective than tiles, for it at once shakes off the rain that dashes against it, while those under its shelter hear the rain rattling as on the roof of a house. At all events they do not require to shift their abode, like those whose tiling is shattered, for the shell is hard and like a hollowed rock and the vaulted roof of a natural cavern.
The island, then, in the great sea, which they call Taprobanê, has palm-groves, where the trees are planted with wonderful regularity all in a row, in the way we see the keepers of pleasure-parks plant out shady trees in the choicest spots. It has also herds of elephants, which are there very numerous and of the largest size. These island elephants are more powerful than those of the mainland, and in appearance larger, and may be pronounced to be in every possible way more intelligent. The islanders export them to the mainland opposite in boats, which they construct expressly for this traffic from wood supplied by the thickets of the island, and they dispose of their cargoes to the king of the Kalingai. On account of the great size of the island, the inhabitants of the interior have never seen the sea, but pass their lives as if resident on a continent, though no doubt they learn from others ​that they are all around enclosed by the sea. The inhabitants, again, of the coast have no practical acquaintance with elephant-catching, and know of it only by report. All their energy is devoted to catching fish and the monsters of the deep; for the sea encircling the island is reported to breed an incredible number of fish, both of the smaller fry and of the monstrous sort, among the latter being some which have the heads of lions and of panthers and of other wild beasts, and also of rams; and, what is still a greater marvel, there are monsters which in all points of their shape resemble satyrs. Others are in appearance like women, but, instead of having locks of hair, are furnished with prickles. It is even solemnly alleged that this sea contains certain strangely formed creatures, to represent which in a picture would baffle all the skill of the artists of the country, even though, with a view to make a profound sensation, they are wont to paint monsters which consist of different parts of different animals pieced together. These have their tails and the parts which are wreathed of great length, and have for feet either claws or fins. I learn further that they are amphibious, and by night graze on the pasture-fields, for they eat grass like cattle and birds that pick up seeds. They have also a great liking for the date when ripe enough to drop from the palms, and accordingly they twist their coils, which are supple, and large enough for the purpose, around ​these trees, and shake them so violently that the dates come tumbling down, and afford them a welcome repast. Thereafter when the night begins gradually to wane, but before there is yet clear daylight, they disappear by plunging into the sea just as the first flush of morning faintly illumines its surface. They say whales also frequent this sea, though it is not true that they come near the shore lying in wait for thunnies. The dolphins are reported to be of two sorts—one fierce and armed with sharp-pointed teeth, which gives endless trouble to the fisherman, and is of a remorselessly cruel disposition, while the other kind is naturally mild and tame, swims about in the friskiest way, and is quite like a fawning dog. It does not run away when any one tries to stroke it, and it takes with pleasure any food it is offered.
(19.) The sea-hare, by which I now mean the kind found in the great sea (for of the kind found in the other sea I have already spoken), resembles in every particular the land hare except only the fur, which in the case of the land animal is soft and lies smoothly down, and does not resist the touch, whereas its brother of the sea has bristling hair which is prickly, and inflicts a wound on any one who touches it. It is said to swim atop of the sea-ripple without ever diving below, and to be very rapid in its movements. To catch it alive is no easy matter, as it never falls into the net, nor goes near the line and ​bait of the fishing-rod. When it suffers, however, from disease, and, being in consequence hardly able to swim, is cast out on shore, then if any one touches it with his hand death ensues if he is not attended to,—nay, should one, were it only with a staff, touch this dead hare, he is affected in the same way as those who have touched a basilisk. But a root, it is said, grows along the coast of the island, well known to every one, which is a remedy for the swooning which ensues. It is brought close to the nostrils of the person who has fainted, who thereupon recovers consciousness. But should the remedy not be applied the injury proves fatal to life, so noxious is the vigour which this hare has at its command.
Frag. XV. B. follows here.
(22.) There is also a race called the Skiratai, whose country is beyond India. They are ​snub-nosed, either because in the tender years of infancy their nostrils are pressed down, and continue to be so throughout their after-life, or because such is the natural shape of the organ. Serpents of enormous size are bred in their country, of which some kinds seize the cattle when at pasture and devour them, while other kinds only suck the blood, as do the Aigithelai in Greece, of which I have already spoken in the proper place.
* ↑ “In this extract not a few passages occur which appear to have been borrowed from Megasthenês. This conjecture, though it cannot by any means be placed beyond doubt by conclusive proofs, seems nevertheless, for various reasons, to attain a certain degree of probability. For in the first place the author knows with unusual accuracy the interior parts of India. Then again he makes very frequent mention of the Prasii and the Brâhmans. And lastly one can hardly doubt that some chapters occurring in the middle of this part have been extracted from Megasthenês. I have, therefore, in this uncertainty taken care that the whole of this part should be printed at the end of the fragments of Megasthenês.”—Schwanbeck.
* ↑ Lines 470-75:— "You're such a dull incurious lot, unread in Æsop's lore, Whose story says the lark was born first of the feathered quire, Before the earth; then came a cold and carried off his sire: Earth was not: five days lay the old bird untombed: at last the son Buried the father in his head, since other grave was none." Dr. Kennedy's translation.
* ↑ In the classical writers the size of this island is always greatly exaggerated. Its actual length from north to south is 271½ miles, and its breadth from east to west 137½, and its circuit about 660 miles.
* ↑ This is the fragment in which Ælian describes the one-horned animal which he calls the Kartazôn. Rosenmüller, who has treated at large of the unicorn, which he identifies with the Indian rhinoceros, thinks that Ælian probably borrowed his account of it from Ktêsias, who when in Persia may have heard exaggerated accounts of it, or may have seen it represented in sculpture with variations from its actual appearance. Tychsen derives its name from Kerd, an old name, he says, of the rhinoceros itself, and tazan, i.e., currens velox, irruens. Three animals were spoken of by the ancients as having a single horn—the African Oryx, the Indian Ass, and what is specially called the Unicorn. Vide ante, p. 59.
* ↑ Vide ante, Fragm. xxx. 3, p. 80, and p. 74, note †, where they are identified with the Kirâtas. In the Râmâyana there is a passage quoted by Lassen (Zeitschr. f. Kunde d. Morgenl. II. 40) where are mentioned "the Kirâtas, some of whom dwell in Mount Mandara, others use their ears as a covering; they are horrible, black-faced, with but one foot but very fleet, who cannot be exterminated, are brave men, and cannibals." (Schwanbeck, p. 66.) [Lassen places one branch of them on the south bank of the Kausî in Nipâl, and another in Tiperâ.—Ed. Ind. Ant.]