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The difficulties of travel through the Andhra kingdom are noted under § 50. Fa-Hien also found the kingdom of Dakshina “out of the way and perilous to traverse. There are difficulties in connection with the roads; but those who know how to manage such difficulties and wish to proceed should bring with them money and various articles and give them to the king. He will send men to escort them. These will, at different stages, pass them over to others, who will show them the shortest routes. ” ( Travels, xxxv. )
62. Dosarene. — This is the Sanscrit Dasarna, the modern Orissa, the “Holy Land of India.” The name appears in the Vishnu Purana and the Ramayana, as a populous and powerful country. Ptolemy mentions also a river Dosaron, the modern Mahanadi. The ivory from this region has long been famous. It is mentioned both in the Mahabharata and the Vishnu Purana, as the most acceptable offering which the “king of the Odras” could take to the Pandu sovereign. (See also Mitra, Antiquities of Orissa, I, 6.)
62. Cirrhadae. — This was a Bhota tribe, whose descendants, still known as Kirata, live in the Morung, west of Sikkim. They are of Turanian race, with marked Mongolian features as described; and were formerly independent and powerful, having provided a dy- nasty of considerable duration in Nepal. Their location is not on the sea, as indicated by the text, but in the valleys of the Himalayas; we need only omit the words “the course trending, ” easily inserted by a scribe, to make our author’s information correct. T he Mahabharata locates them on the Brahmaputra.
Lassen (I, 441-450) fully describes the Bhota race, whose name survives in the modern Bhutan. They were allied to the Tibetans, and inhabited much of Bengal at the time of the Aryan migration. Lassen names ten different tribes, one being the Kirata. Their native capital was at Mokwanpur in Eastern Nepal. They were a warlike, uncultivated, polygamous race, whose native animism yielded imper- fectly to Brahman or Buddhist teaching, and w'hose neglect of religious rites caused the Brahman Hindus to reduce them to the rank of Sudras. Hence the contemptuous description of their Mongolian faces as “noseless.” Pliny calls them Scyrites (VII, 2), and says “they have merely holes in their heads instead of nostrils, and flexible feet, like the body of a serpent.” Ptolemy calls their country Kir- rhadia.
The Kirata were under-sized, and by the Aryan Hindus were called ’pigmies.’’ In the Brahman mythology there was a bird of Vishnu, called Garuda, who was a special enemy of the Kirata, and
