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 tribes. Ptolemy places them east of the Ganges, and corroborates the Periplus as to their personal appearance. Lassen (III, 38) identifies the name with the Sanscrit vaishāda, "wretchedly stupid," and says they were a tribe of Sikkim. Our author locates them "on the borders of the Land of This," indicating that Tibet was then subject to China. The location of their annual fair must have been near the modern Gangtok (27° 20′N., 88° 38′E.) above which the Cho-La or the Jelap-La Pass leads to Chumbi on the Tibetan side of the frontier, from which the overland route mentioned in §64 led across the table-land to Koko Nor, Siningfu and Singanfu. Other passes through Nepaal are possible, particularly that by the Arun River, but the route through Sikkim involves the least deviation from the direct line from Koko Nor to the Ganges; while from Gyangste to the source of the Arun a pass must be scaled higher by 3000 feet than Jelap-La. (See Freshfield, The Roads to Tibet, in Geographical Journal, xxiii, Jan. and March, 1904; and The Highest Mountain in the World, ibid., xxi, March, 1903—O'Connor, Routes in Sikkim;—Louis, Gates of Tibet.)

Pseudo-Callisthenes (III, 8) refers to the Bisadae "who gather a leaf. They are a feeble folk, of very diminutive stature, and live in caves among the rocks. They understand how to climb precipices through their intimate knowledge of the country and are thus able to gather the leaf. They are small men of stunted growth, with big heads of hair which is straight and not cut." (McCrindle, Ancient India, p.180.)

Fergusson (History of Indian Architecture, I, 13) says: "The Tibetans are a fragment of a great primitive population that occupied both the northern and southern slopes of the Himalayas at some very remote prehistoric time. They were worshippers of trees and serpents; and they, and their descendants and connections, in Bengal, Ceylon, Tibet, Burma, Siam, and China, have been the bulwark of Buddhism. In India the Dravidians resisted Buddhism on the south, and a revival of Aryanism abolished it in the north."

65. Feast for several days.—This description of a tribal festival and market resembles many accounts of other primitive peoples. Compare the following from Herodotus (IV, 196):

"The Carthaginians further say that beyond the Pillars of Hercules there is a region of Libya, and men who inhabit it; when they arrive among these people and have unloaded their merchandise, they set it in order on the shore, go on board their ships, and make a great smoke; that the inhabitants, seeing the smoke, come down to the sea, and then deposit gold in exchange for the merchandise, and