254
Lassen (II, 657) thinks this story the original of the battle between pigmies and cranes, in Hesiod and other Greek writers.
JVIegasthenes relates the story in some detail, and is reproved by Strabo (XV, i, 57): “he then deviates into fables, and says that there are men of five, and even three spans in height, some of whom are without nostrils, with only two breathing orifices above the mouth. Those of three spans in height wage war with the cranes (described by Homer) and with the partridges, which are as large as geese; these people collect and destroy the eggs of the cranes which lay their eggs there; and nowhere else are the eggs or the young cranes to be found; frequently a crane escapes from this country with a brazen point of a weapon in its body, wounded by these people.”
This tribe is especially referred to in one of the Kavyas, called Kiratarjumya, which recounts the combat, first mentioned in the Ala- habharata , between Siva in the guise of a Kirata, or mountaineer, and Arjuna.
62. Bargysi. — These are the Bhargas of the Vishnu Purana, there mentioned as neighbors of the Kirata, and doubtless of like race. (Taylor, Remarks on the Sequel to the Periplus, in Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Jan. 1847.)
62. Horse-faces and Long-faces. — This is no invention of our author, but was no doubt told him by some friend at Nelcynda, who spoke by his book — the Sanscrit writings. The Aryans professed the greatest contempt for the Tibeto-Burman races at their eastern frontier, and their references to them are full of exaggeration and fable. The Vara Sanhita Purana mentions a people “in the moun- tains east of India,” that is, in the hills on the Assam-Burma frontier, called Asvavadana, “horse-faced.”
(Taylor, op. cit. ; so Wilford in Asiatic Researches, VIII and IX.)
62. Said to be Cannibals. — Herodotus notices such a custom among the “other Indians, living to the east, who are nomads and eat raw flesh, who are called Padaeans.” (Ill, 99.) “When any one of the community is sick, whether it be a woman or a man, if it be a man the men who are his nearest connections put him to death, alleging that if he wasted by disease his flesh would be spoiled; but if he denies that he is sick, they, not agreeing with him, kill and feast upon him. And if a woman be sick, in like manner the women who are most intimate with her do the same as the men. And whoever reaches old age, they sacrifice and feast upon; but few among them attain this state, for before that they put to death every one that falls into any distemper.”
