Idaho County free press. [volume] (Grangeville, Idaho Territory) 1886-current, 1888-04-06
EAST INDIAN MYTHS.

Where Herodotus and Other Ancient
Writers Found Their Fables.
The Greeks accepted, without hesi-
tation, the tales that were told Of men
without noses, and with two orifices
above the mouth. for the purpose of
breathing, which, it has been suggest
ed. may have been an unconscious
caricature of the Mongols. says a
writer referring to the fables of the old
Greek historians. The pigmies, only
three spans in height, who were
warred upon be cranes and by part
ridges as large as geese, may have
been a dwarfish race. dwelling in
woods and at the foot of mountains.
who earned precarious livelihood as
bowmen and trappers.
Bhotan people, whose ears are
enormously elongated by artificial
means. may have been represented as
a tribe whose ears reached to the
ground, and which were otherwise so
hung that their owners would coil
themselves up and go to sleep in them.
The swift runners VIII, could run down
a horse might have found tn cir ana
logues within quite recent period
and may perhaps still find them in
some of the native states. The fable
of the gold-digging ant, as large as
wild foxes, has been long since ex-
planned as referring to Thibetan min
ers. men of low stature. who inhabit
the mountainous country to the north
of Kashmir.
The animals mistaken for ants may
very well have been marmots, which
are said to be plentiful in those parts.
AS for the mOnstrous shapes which no
traveller pretends to have seen with his
own eyes. they existed. no doubt. in
bright colors on the inner walls of
pagodas, and were intended to depict
the Rakshasas of demons, odious alike
to men and gods. Such was the proba-
BILE origin of the beings who were born
without mouths and lived on the
aroma of fruits and flowers; of those
whose feet were burned the wrong
| way. the heels being in front, while the
| instep and toes were behind; of those
who bore the head Of dog and were
| furnished with claws, who lived by
hunting and fowling, and who clothed
| themselves with the skins of wild
| beasts; of those who had the ear of a
dog, erect hair and shaggy breasts and
with one eye in the center of the fore
head; finally of those without nostrils,
who devoured raw meat and all man.
ner of abomination and died in their
youth, ungainly creatures with the
upper lip hanging over the lower. OF
no greater Importance are the marvel
Gus animals enormously delineated
rather than invented. such as
serpents with membranous wings.
that flew by night; horses with deers'
heads surmounted by black horn.
with legs without joint, and with the
tail of a pig; tigers twice the size of a
Ion; the ph@nix, sprung from the
suns rays. that lived its life of five
thousand years in India. and. singing
its own dirge. died in its own nest of
aromatic herbs hard by the fountains
ofthe Nile. 1t would be sheer waste
of time to bestow further thought upon
the childish inventions fathered by
Philostratus upon Appollonius of Ty-
ana, or rather upon the journal of his
fellowtraveler. Damis. Quite as little
attention is due Latin writers who pro-
fesscd to have derived their informa a.
ton from Indian merchants settled AT
Alexandria, or from apocryphal en-
bassies supposed to have been dis
patched by Indian Kings to Roman
Emperors. In more than one of these
romances allusion is made to the load
stone islands in the Indian Ocean.
which were believed to draw iron bolts
out of ships at an incredible distance,
and which have beei thus explained
by the fact that the seas in question
were navigated by vessels the plank
of which were bound together by ropes
and cord. without the use of nails and
bolts. -Asiatic Quarterly Revieao.