Page:The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea.djvu/148

 while the other was too bitter. Bent (Southern Arabia, 379, 381, 387) gives a good description of this peculiar tree, with its thick, twisted trunk and foliage resembling an umbrella turned inside out. He notes that very little is now exported from Socotra, the cultivated product from Sumatra and South America having superseded it. The method of gathering is the simplest possible, the dried juice deing knocked off the tree into bags, and the nicely-broken drops fetch the best price.

According to the Century Dictionary the word cinnabar is "of eastern origin: cf. Persian zinjarf, zinjafr,= Hindu shangarf, cinnabar."

The bit of folk-lore quoted by Pliny confirms the Indian connections of Socotra. Combats with a dragon or serpent for possession of a sacred place, or for the relief of a suffering people, appear in all the Mediterranean countries; such were related of Apollo at the oracle of Delphi, of Adonis in Syria (perpetuated in the modern faith in St.George in the same locality), to say nothing of Marduk and Tiamat in the Babylonian creation-story. But in all these legends, held by Semitic people or borrowed from them, the contender is a hero or a god; while in Socotra it is an elephant. Pliny offers a materialistic explanation, which is unconvincing because elephants are not found in Socotra or in the neighboring parts of Africa. It is evidently a local faith rather than a natural fact, and light may be thrown upon it by Bent's observation (Southern Arabia, 379) that dragon's blood is still called in Socotra "blood of two brothers."

In the Mediterranean world this gum was used medicinally and as a dye; in India it had also ceremonial uses. One must refer, not to the Buddhism of the Kushan dynasty, apparently dominant as far south as the modern Bombay at the time of the Periplus, but rather to the earlier faith Brahmanism overlaid upon nature-worship, then prevalent among the Dravidian races farther south. The members ot the Brahman triad were Brahma, Vishnu and Siva, the creator, presence, and destroyer; they were worshipped especially at a shrine on an island in Bombay harbor, called Elephanta (in constant connection commercially with the Gulf of Aden), and an elephant's head the visible emblem of the sacred syllable AUM, representing the triad, which was pronounced at the beginning and the end of any reading of the sacred books, and had many mystic properties. The elephant signified more particularly the first person of the triad, Brahma the creator, while the dragon or serpent, in the form of the cobra, represented Siva the destroyer; and these combats of Pliny, between an elephant and a dragon, the blood from which was called "blood