338 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



They came more particularly from the southern side of 

 Hindu Koh and Paropamissus, in their last debased 

 condition, constituting the Indo Arab races, but here 

 almost universally become true Ethiopians and Cush- 

 ites, by union with nations still more nielanic, and who 

 formed the great majority of the population. Other 

 mountain conquerors first came to the south by de- 

 scending the passes of Thibet, leading to the high basin 

 of Cashmeer, where the name of the capital being 

 Nagara before it became Caspatyrus, supposes the po- 

 pulation to have been Naga, and of the same stock 

 with that of the lower Indus, where the name was 

 likewise given to a city, an Heliopolis, as Strabo 

 asserts, where the snake worship was then, as it still 

 is, in existence in Cutch.* This very degrading wor- 

 ship was not inconsistent with the idolatrous sacri- 

 fice to the giant divinity Muhishan, whose statues 

 have a serpent wound about the loins, and whose 

 legend is of so ancient and peculiar a character, that 

 he may be regarded as a solar god among the abori- 

 ginal tribes, he alone riding his war buffalo in battle 

 against Durga, and therefore the supreme type of in- 

 digenous power before the horse was known in the 

 peninsula of India, f That this divinity was by Hindu, 



* Cutch and Gujrat may both be connected with the 

 Cuthite race, and fit localities for migrators by sea; for 

 from Diu, in Cutch, Gama despatched the open boat that 

 conveyed the intelligence of his arrival in India. It went 

 round the Cape, and arrived safe at Lisbon. Nearchus 

 went from Kurrachee. 



t We have before mentioned the figure of a Rajah riding 



