THE HUMAN SPECIES. 843 



reigns in Oude. In this great and brilliant poem, is 

 the first notice of the people of Balkh, in Transoxiana, 

 Tinder the name of Bahlikas. They are represented 

 as a kind of fairy philosophers, residing in the holy 

 mountain, or sacred centre of religion ; still bearing a 

 certain resemblance to the revered and wise Scythians 

 of the Greek poets. 



In the second period we have no longer wars of en- 

 tirely distinct human stems, or at most with only the 

 partial adhesions of the Naga races to the invaders ; 

 they became wars of invasion upon predecessors, or 

 intestine conflicts among tribes equally mixed. The 

 Mahabarata mythologises the worldly interests of these 

 nations into religious struggles between the Pandoos 

 and Kurus or Cauravas, the children of the moon and 

 the sun ; which may be interpreted by the Celtic, or 

 followers of a lunar arkite doctrine, opposed to the 

 Semitic or solar worship, which belonged more pro- 

 bably to the people of the south. The Pandoo brethren 

 appear to be Gomerian Celtse, sons of Pandu and of 

 Coonti, a princess of Mathura, sister of Heri and 

 Baldiva, the Indian Hercules. Coonti had, by several 

 gods, Yudistra, Bhima, Arjoon, Nycula, and Sydiva, 

 all clearly historical heroes or tribes, enveloped in 

 mythological and allegorical forms ; but the mytholo- 

 gical circumstances being a parallel of the Egyptian, 

 Greek, and Roman, they are necessarily older than 

 the ages of Bali-Rama, or of the Pandoo brethren.* 



* It may be observed, that the Pandoos are children of 

 the watery element. Coonti is a native of the locality 



