Page:Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian.djvu/99

 80 backward, and who have eight toes on each foot ; • while on many of the mountains there lives a race of men having heads like those of dogs, who are clothed with the skins of wild beasts, whose speech is barking, and who, being armed with claws, live by banting and fowling. || [•* Kt^sias asserts on his own authority that the number of these men was upwards of 120,000, and that there is a race in India whose females bear off- spring but once in the course of their life, and that their children become at once grey-haired.] ' Megasthends speaks of a race of men among the Nomadic Indians who instead of nostrils have merely orifices, whose legs are contorted like snakes, and who are called Scyritaa. He speaks also of a race living on the very confines of India on the east, near the source of the Gran- ges, the A s t o m i, who have no mouth ; who cover their body, which is all over hairy, with the soft down found upon* the leaves of trees ; and who live merely by breathing, and the perfume inhaled by the nostrils. They eat nothing, and they drink nothing. They require merely a variety of odours of roots and of flowers and of wild apples. The apples they carry with them when they go on a distant journey, that they may always have something to smell. Too strong an odour would readily kill them. {I Called by Kt^siaa KvwKcc^aXoi, and in Sanskyit tfwui. muchAs or iSvdimichAs. Digitized by Google