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

Fragm. XXIX.
Strab. XV. i. 57— p. 711.
Of fabulous tribes.
But deviating into fables he says there are men five spans and even three spans in height, some of whom want the nose, having only two orifices above the mouth through which they breathe. $^2$Against the men of three spans, war, as Homer has sung, is waged by the cranes, and also by partridges, which are as large as geese. ​These people collect and destroy the eggs of the cranes, for it is in their country the cranes lay their eggs, and thus the eggs and the young cranes are not to be found anywhere else. Frequently a crane escapes having the brazen point of a weapon in its body, from wounds received in that country. $^3$ Equally absurd is the account given of the Enôtokoitai, ​of the wild men, and of other monsters. $^4$ The wild men could not be brought to Sandrakottos, for they refused to take food and died. Their heels are in front, and the instep and toes are turned backwards. $^5$ Some were brought to the court who had no mouths and were tame. They dwell near the sources of the Ganges, and subsist on the savour of roasted flesh and the perfumes of fruits and flowers, haying instead of mouths orifices through which they breathe. They are distressed with things of evil smelly and $^6$ hence it is with difficulty they keep their hold on life especially in a camp. Referring to the other monstrosities, the philosophers told him of the Okupedes, a people who in running could leave the horse behind; $^7$ of the Enoiokoitai, who had ears reaching down to their feet, so that they could sleep in them, and were so strong that they could pull up trees and break a bowstring. $^8$ Of others the Monommatoi, who have the ​ears of a dog, their one eye set in the middle of their forehead, the hair standing erect, and their breasts shaggy; of the Amuktêres also, a people without nostrils, who devour everything, eat raw meat, and are short-lived, and die before old age supervenes. The upper part of the mouth protrudes far over the lower lip. $^9$ With regard to the Hyperboreans, who live a thousand years, they give the same account as Simonidês, Pindaros, and other mythological writers. $^{10}$ The story told by Timagenês, that ​ showers fall of drops of copper, which are swept together, is a fable. $^{11}$ Megasthenês states—what is more open to belief, since the same is ​ the case in Iberia—that the rivers carry down gold dust, and that a part of this is paid by way of tribute to the king.
* ↑ Cf. Strab. II. i. 9,— p. 70:—Dêimachos and Megasthenês are especially unworthy of credit. It is they who tell those stories about the men who sleep in their ears, the men without mouths, the men without nostrils, the men with one eye, the men with long legs, and the men with their toes turned backward. They renewed Homer's fable about the battle between the Cranes and the Pygmies, asserting that the latter were three spans in height. They told of the ants that dig for gold, of Pans with wedge-shaped heads, and of serpents swallowing down oxen and stags, horns and all,—the one author meanwhile accusing the other of falsehood, as Eratosthenês has remarked.
* ↑ Ktêsias in his Indika mentions Pygmies as belonging to India. The Indians themselves considered them as belonging to the race of the Kirâtæ, a barbarous people who inhabited woods and mountains and lived by hunting, and who were so diminutive that their name became a synonym for dwarf. They were thougt to fight with vultures and eagles. As they were of Mongolian origin, the Indians represented them with the distinctive features of that race, but with their repulsiveness exaggerated. Hence Megasthenês spoke of the Amuktêres, men without noses, who had merely breathing-holes above the month. The Kirâtæ are no doubt identical with the Scyrites (V. L. Syrictes) of Plinius and the Kirrhadai of the Periplus Maris Erythræi.
* ↑ The Enôtokoitai are called in Sanskṛit Karṇaprâvaramâs, and are frequently referred to in the great epic poems—e.g. Mahâbh. II. 1170, 1875. The opinion was universally prevalent among the Indians that barbarous tribes had large ears: thus not only are the Karṇaprâvaramâs mentioned, but also Karṇikâs, Lambakarṇâs, Mahâkarṇâs (i.e. long or large eared), Ushṭrakarṇâs (i.e. camel-eared), Oshṭhakarṇâs (i.e. having the ears close to the lips), Pânkarṇâs (i.e. having hands for ears). Schwanb. 66. "It is easy," says Wheeler (Hist. Ind. vol. III. p. 179), "for any one conversant with India to point out the origin of many of the so-called fables. The ants are not as big as foxes, but they are very extraordinary excavators. The stories of men pulling up trees, and using them as clubs, are common enough in the Mahâbhârata, especially in the legends of the exploits of Bhîma. Men do not have ears hanging down to their feet, but both men and women will occasionally elongate their ears after a very extraordinary fashion by thrusting articles through the lobe. . . . If there was one story more than another which excited the wrath of Strabo, it was that of a people whose ears hung down to their feet. Yet the story is still current in Hindustân. Bâbu Johari Dâs says:—'An old woman once told me that her husband, a sepoy in the British army, had seen a people who slept on one ear, and covered themselves with the other.' (Domestic Manners and Customs of the Hindus, Banâras, 1860.)" The story may be referred to the Himâlayas. Fitch, who travelled in India about 1585, says that a people in Bhutân had ears a span long.
* ↑ These wild men are mentioned both by Ktêsias and Baeto. They were called Antipodes on account of the peculiar structure of their foot, and were reckoned among Æthiopian races, though they are often referred to in the Indian epics under the name Paśchâdangulajas, of which the ὸπισθοδάκτυλοι of Megasthenês is an exact translation. Vide Schwanb. 68.
* ↑ 'Okupedes' is a transliteration into Greek, with a slight change, of the Sanskrit Êkapadas, ('having one foot'), the name of a tribe of the Kirâtæ noted for swiftness of foot, the quality indicated by the Greek term. The Monepodes are mentioned by Ktêsias, who confounded them with the Skiapodes, the men who covered themselves with the shadow of their foot.
* ↑ What Megasthenês here mentions as the characteristics of a single tribe are by the Indians attributed to several. The one-eyed men they are wont to call êkâkshâs or eka-vilo-chanâs—the men with hair standing erect, urdhvakeśa, Indian Cyclôpes even are mentioned under the name of Lalâṭâkshas, i.e. having one eye in the forehead: vide Schwanb. 70.
* ↑ "That the Astomi are mentioned in the Indian books we cannot show so well as in the case of the Amuktêres, whom Megasthenês describes as παμφάγους, ὠμοφάγους, ᾿ολιγοχρονιους. Nevertheless the very words of the description are a proof that he followed the narratives of the Indians, for the words Παμφάγος, &c. by which he has described the Amuktêres, are very rarely used in Greek, and are translations of Indian words." Schwanb. 69.
* ↑ Pindar, who locates the Hyperboreans somewhere about the months of the Ister, thus sings of them:—"But who with venturous course through wave or waste To Hyperborean haunts and wilds untraced E'er found his wondrous way? There Perseus pressed amain, And 'midst the feast entered their strange abode, Where hecatombs of asses slain To soothe the radiant god Astounded he beheld. Their rude solemnities, Their barbarous shouts, Apollo's heart delight: Laughing the rampant brute he sees Insult the solemn rite. Still their sights, their customs strange, Scare not the 'Muse,' while all around The dancing virgins range. And melting lyres and piercing pipes resound. With braids of golden bays entwined Their soft resplendent locks they bind, And feast in bliss the genial hour: Nor foul disease, nor wasting age, Visit the sacred race; nor wars they wage, Nor toil for wealth or power."(10th Pythian ode, ll. 46 to 69, A. Moore's metrical version.)Megasthenês had the penetration to perceive that the Greek fable of the Hyperboreans had an Indian source in the fables regarding the Uttarakurus. This word means literally the 'Kuru of the North.' "The historic origin," says P. V. de Saint-Martin, "of the Sanskrit appellation Uttarakuru is unknown, but its acceptation never varies. In all the documents of Upavedic literature, in the great poems, in the Purâṇas,—wherever, in short, the word is found,—it pertains to the domain of poetic and mythological geography. Uttarakuru is situated in the uttermost regions of the north at the foot of the mountains which surround Mount Mêru, far beyond the habitable worlds It is the abode of demigods and holy Ṛishis whose lives extend to several thousands of years. All access to it is forbidden to mortals. Like the Hyperborean region of Western mythologists, this too enjoys the happy privilege of an eternal spring, equally exempt from excess of cold and excess of heat, and there the sorrows of the soul and the pains of the body are alike unknown. . . . . It is clear enough that this land of the blest is not of our world."In their intercourse with the Indians after the expedition of Alexander, the Greeks became acquainted with these fictions of Brâhmaṇic poetry, as well as with a good many other stories which made them look upon India as a land of prodigies. Megasthenês, like Ktêsias before him, had collected a great number of such stories, and either from his memoirs or from contemporary narratives, such as that of Dêimachos, the fable of the Uttarakurus had spread to the West, since, from what Pliny tells us (vi. 17, p. 316) one Amômêtus had composed a treatise regarding them analogous to that of Hecatæus regarding the Hyperboreans. It is certainly from this treatise of Amômêtus that Pliny borrows the two lines which he devotes to his Attacoræ, 'that a girdle of mountains warmed with the sun sheltered them from the blasts of noxious winds, and that they eigoyed, like the Hyperboreans, an eternal spring.' 'Gens homiuum Attacorum, apricis ab omni noxio afflatu seclusa collibus, eadem, qua Hyperborei degunt, temperie.' (Plin. loc. cit. Ammianus Marcellinus, xxiii. 6, 64.) Wagner transfers this description to the Sêres in general, (of whom the Attacoræ of Pliny form part), and some modern critics (Mannert, vol. IV. p. 250, 1875; Forbiger Handb. der alten Geogr. vol. II. p. 472, 1844) have believed they could see in it a reference to the great wall of China.) We see from a host of examples besides this, that the poetic fables and popular legends of India had taken, in passing into the Greek narratives, an appearance of reality, and a sort of historical consistency." (Étude sur la Géographie Grecque et Latine de l'Inde, pp. 413-414.) The same author (p. 412) says, "Among the peoples of Sêrica, Ptolemy reckons the Ottorocorrhœ, a name which in Pliny is written Attacoræ, and which Ammianus Marcellinus, who copies Ptolemy, distorts into Opurocarra. There is no difficulty in recognizing under this name the Uttarakuru of Sanskṛit books."Schwanbeck (p. 70) quotes Lassen, who writes somewhat to the same effect:—"Uttarakuru is a part of Sêrica, and as the first accounts of India came to the West from the Sêres, perhaps a part of the description of the peaceful happy life of the Sêres is to be explained from the Indian stories of the Uttarakuru. The story of the long life of the Sêres may be similarly explained, especially when Megasthenês reckons the life attained by the Hyperboreans at 1000 years. The Mahâbhârata (VI. 264) says that the Uttarakurus live 1000 or 10,000 years. We conclude from this that Megasthenês also wrote of the Uttarakurus, and that he not improperly rendered their name by that of the Hyperboreans."—Zeitschr. II. 67.
* ↑ Not Spain, but the country between the Black Sea and the Caspian, now called Georgia.