154 Lieut.-Colonel Ton’s Comparison of the Hindu and Theban Hercules. 
Though ages of oppression have shaded the virtues of the Rajpit, and 
dimmed his moral perceptions, he has lost none of his veneration for these 
stirring scenes, or the recital of the doctrines which form his rules of con- 
duct, and whose application in the ordinary intercourse of life renders his 
discourse more emphatic. 
But to return to the immediate object of research—our Hindu Hercules : 
Arrian says, that one of the tribes of the Punjab was “ called Sobii, that 
they wore the skins of wild beasts, were armed with clubs, and marked their 
oxen with its impress, for the reason that they were a colony left there by 
Hercules, and in commemoration of him:” on this and other information 
furnished to him by Megasthenes, he remarks :— 
“ This was not the Theban, nor the Tyrian, nor the Egyptian Hercules, 
but some great king whose dominions lay not far distant from India.” May 
we not conjecture the Hericila descendant of Batprva? Arrian adds, that 
this tribe, the Sobii, carried the effigies of Hercules (Batprva) on their ban- 
ners; that is, the identical figure which has prompted this disquisition. 
Moreover, I think this club-bearing nationt is not yet extinct, and that the 
Chobi votaries who yet fill the temples of Herr and Barpeva in Straséna 
are the very people.t 
Whoever has witnessed the annual commemoration of Hrrt’s recovery of 
his birthright, would have little doubt that the Chobis of Mathura were the 
Sobii of Arrian. The festival concludes with the storming of the castle of 
Kansa, in which these sturdy, well-fed, church-militant Chobis mount the 
breach, each armed with a long club, tipped with iron rings, with which 
of the Iliad of the Hindus, which the celebrated Hastings pronounces to possess “a sublimity 
of conception and diction almost unequalled ;” and the version of Dr. Wilkins he “ fears not to 
compare with the best prose versions of the Iliad or Odyssey.” 
Take for instance Crisuna’s description of the immortality of the soul, in the dialogue with 
ArsunaA, when he incites his courage “to throw off the old garment” in that day's battle: —“ The 
weapon divideth it not, the fire burneth it not, the water corrupteth it not, the wind drieth 
it not away ; for it is indivisible, inconsumable, incorruptible, and is not to be dried away ; it 
is eternal, universal, permanent, immovable; it is invisible, inconceivable, and unalterable.”— 
Bhagvat Gita. 
+ According to the various classical authorities, borrowing from Megasthenes, every tribe is 
made a nation, and every town (poora) a city (polis). 
{ The permutation of ch for s iscommon. The people of the South always pronounce ch as s ; 
ex.gr. in no meaner name than the notorious Pindarri leader CHEETOO, the SzEToo of the 
Southron. 
