156 COSMOS. 



thenes, Nearchus, Aristob.tlus, and other companions of Alex- 

 ander's campaigns. These narrators, influenced by the tone 

 of feehng characteristic of their age, and closely connecting 

 together facts and individual opinions, have experienced the 

 varying fate of all travelers, meeting at first with bitter ani- 

 madversion, and subsequently with a milder judgment. The 

 latter has been more frequent in our own day, since a more pro- 

 found study of Sanscrit, a more general knowledge' of geo- 

 graphical names, the discovery of Bactrian coins in Topes, 

 and, above all, an actual acquaintance with the country and 

 its organic productions, have placed more correct elements of 

 information at the disposal of the critic than those yielded to 

 the partial knowledge of the caviling Eratosthenes, or of Strabo 

 and Phny.* 



If we compare, according to differences in longitude, the 

 length of the Mediterranean with the distance from west to 

 east which separates Asia Minor from the shores of the Hypha- 

 sis (Beas), from the Altars of Return, Ave shall perceive that 



* Compare Schwanbeck, ^'Defide Megasthenis et pretio,'" in his edi- 

 tion of that writer, p. 59-77. Megasthenes frequently visited Pahbo- 

 thra, the court of the King of Magadha. He was deeply initiated in 

 the study of Indian chronology, and relates " how, in past times, the 

 All had three times come to freedom ; how three ages of the world had 

 run their course, and how the fourth had begun in his own time" (Las- 

 sen, Indiscke Alterthumskunde, bd. i., s. 510). Hesiod's doctrine of four 

 ages of the world, as connected with four great elementary destruc- 

 tions, which together embrace a period of 18,028 years, is also to be 

 met with among the Mexicans. (Humboldt, Vues des Cordilleres et 

 Monumens des Peuples indigenes de V Amirique, t. ii., p. 119-129.) A 

 remarkable proof of the exactness of Megasthenes has been discovered 

 in modern times by the study of the Rigveda and of the Mahabharata. 

 Consult what Megasthenes relates concerning " the land of the long^ 

 living blessed beings" in the most northern parts of India — the land c. 

 Uttarakuru (probably north of Kashmeer, toward Belurtagh), which; 

 according to his Greek views, he associates with the supposed " thou- 

 sand years of the life of the Hyperboreans." (Lassen, in the Zeitschrift 

 fur die Kunde des Morg^nlandes, bd. ii., s. 62.) A tradition mentioned 

 by Ctesias (who has been too long esteemed below his merits), of a 

 sacred place in the northern desert, may be noticed in connection with 

 this point. {Ind., cap. viii., ed. Baehr, p. 249 and 285.) The marti- 

 choras mentioned by Aristotle {Hist, de Animal., ii., 3, § 10; t. i., p. 

 51, Schneider), the griffin half eagle and half lion, the kartazonon no. 

 ticed by jElian, and a one-homed wild ass, are certainly spoken of by 

 Ctesias as real animals ; they were not, however, the creations of his 

 inventive fancy, for he mistook, as Heeren and Cuvier have remarked, 

 the pictured forms of symbolical animals, seen on Persian monuments, 

 for representations of strange beasts still living in the remote parts oif 

 India. There is, however, as Guigniaut has well observed, much diffi 

 culty in identifying the martichoras with Persepolitan symbols. (Creu 

 «er, Religions de I'Antiquifi: Notes et Eclaircissements, p. 720.) 



