ae ee 
“2 
Proceedings 35 
was opened for the first time a skeleton in gilt armour was found 
within. Here the tradition had persisted a thousand years or more, 
but this is little compared with cases where practically identical 
tales are told by widely separated races, going back perhaps to 
the time, about 2000 years B.c., before the separation of the con- 
quering tribes who spoke the parent Aryan language. The view 
is widely accepted that the tales current in parts of N. Europe 
of swarthy cunning dwarfs who were clever at metal-work and 
lived in subterranean houses, preserve a memory of a prehistoric 
conquered race. May we not similarly look for memories of a 
still older race ? 
One difficulty is that it is hard to separate the demonic and 
purely imaginative elements from those based on reality, It is 
extremely common to find in folk-tales a fusion of mythical and 
historical elements. 
The great Sanskrit epic Ramayana, though perhaps put into 
its present form c. 400 B.c., is based on traditions dating from 
the time some centuries earlier when the Aryans conquered S. 
India. The hero Rama fights the Rakshasas, a race of fierce demons 
in the S., who have carried off his wife. Rama is aided by an 
army of monkeys under their king Hanuman. The traditional 
explanation is that by the demons and monkeys are represented 
respectively the hostile and friendly aboriginal savages. 
The Greek physician Ctesias, who lived at the Persian court 
in the fifth century B.c., collected information about India from 
the Persians. Of the fragments of this work Dr.L.Schmitzt writes 
that ‘it does not in any way deserve to be treated with contempt 
. . . . Many things in his description which were formerly 
looked upon as fabulous, have been proved by the more recent 
discoveries in India to be founded on facts.’ It contains the fol- 
lowing quaint passage. ‘In the mountains [of the N.W.], they 
say men live, with dogs’ heads, who dress in the skins of wild 
beasts. They have no language, but bark like dogs and understand 
one another. Their teeth are larger than those of dogs, their 
nails like dogs’ claws, but stronger and longer. They live in the 
mountains as far as the Indus. They are black and very just, 
like the rest of the Indians with whom they have to do. They 
+ In Smith’s Dict. of Class. Mythol. and Biogr. 
