Page:Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian.djvu/74

 55 winter and a summer sowing, which both hare rain : for a year, he says, is never fonnd to be without rain at both those seasons, whence en-> sues a great abnndance, since the soil is always productive. Much fruit is produced by trees ; and the roots of plants, particularly of tall reeds, are sweet both by nature and by coction, since the moisture by which they are nourished is heated by the rays of the sun, whether it has fallen from the clouds or been drawn from the rivers. Eratosthenes uses here a peculiar expression : for what is called by others the ripening of fruits and the juices of plants is called among the Indians coction, which is as effective in producing a good flavour as the coction by fire itself. To the heat of the water the same writer ascribes the wonderful flexibility of the branches of trees, from which wheels are made, as also the fact of there being trees on which wool grows. ^] Conf. Eratostli. op. Strabo. XV. i. 13,— p. 690 :— From the vapours arising from such vast rivers, and from the Etesian winds, as Eratos- thenes states, India is watered by the summer rains, and the plains are overflowed. During these rains, accordingly, flax* is sown and millet, also sesamum, rice, and ho8morum,f and in the winter time wheat, barley, pulse, and other esculent fruits unknown to us. % Conf. Herod. II. 86. " Vellerajue utfoliis depectant Unuia Seres f— Virgil, Geor. ii. 121. — Falconer. • ivov, perhaps the ivov t6 dnh htvhpiav o£ Arrian. t ^o<r/iopoj*— Strabo XV. i. 18. Digitized by Google