Page:Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian.djvu/98

 79 the case in Iberia J — that the rivers carry down gold dust, and that a part of this is paid by way of tribute to the king. Fragm. XXX. Plin. Hist, Nat. VII. ii. 14-22. Of fabulous races. According to MegasthenSs, on a mountain called N u 1 o § there live men whose feet are turned thestm sheltered tliem from the blasts of noxious winds, and that they eigoyed, like the Hyperboreans, an eternal spring.' seclusa coUibns, eadem, qua Hyperborei degunt, tem- perie.' (Plin. loc. cit. Ammianns Marcellinns, xxiii. 6, 64.) Wagner transfers this description to the Sires in general, (of whom the Attacoroe of Pliny form part), and some modern critics (Mannert, vol. IV. p. 250, 1875 ; Forhiger Handh. d'&r alien Qeogr. vol. II. p. 472, 1844) have be- lieved 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 reaHty, and a sort of historical consistency." {E*tvde sur la Q^ographie Orecque et Latine de Vlnde, pp. 413-414.) The same author (p. 412) says, " Among the peoples of Sirica, Ptolemy reckons the OUorocorrhce. a name which in Pliny is written Attacoraa, and which Ammianns Mar- cellinns, who copies Ptolemy, distorts into Opnrocarra. There is no difficulty in recognizing under this name the Uttarakum of Sanskrit books." Schwanbeck (p. 70) quotes Lassen, who writes somewhat to the same effect « — " Uttarakum is a part of Sirica, and as the first accounts of India came to the West from the Seres, perhaps a part of the description of the peaceful happy life of the Seres is to be explained from the Indian stories of the Uttarakum. The story of the long life of the Sires may be similarly explained, especially when Megas- thenls reckons the life attained by the Hyperboreans at 1000 years. The MahAhhdrata (Vl. 264) says that the Uttarakums live 1000 or 10,000 years. We conclude from this that Megasthenis also wrote of the Uttarakums, and that he not improper^ rendered their name by that of the Hyperboreans. — Zeitschr. II. 67. X Not Spain, but the country between the Black Sea and the Caspian, now called Georgia. § V. L. milo. Digitized by Google
 * Gens homiunm Attacomm, apricis ab omni noxio ai&ata