ANUGANGAM, ScC. 6<} 



prevent from coac'^ulating in their stomachs. In the 

 evening they excite a gentle vomiting, and throw 

 lip tlie whole. This strange narrative is not v/ithout 

 foundation : many rehgious people in India, in order 

 to avoid the defilement attending the coarser eva- 

 cuations, take no other food but milk : and previous 

 to its turning into /trees, as they say, tliey swallow a 

 small string of cotton, wliich, on their pulling it 

 back, brings up the miik, or those parts of it, which 

 they consider as the Caput mortuum. Tliis they 

 make the credulous multitude believe : their disciples 

 are ready to swear to it; and they have even deluded 

 persons, otherwise of great respectability. I suppose 

 they conceal themselves, with great address; and 

 their evacuations cannot be very frequent, nor very 

 copious; for they really live upon nothing else but 

 a very small (juantity of milk : but certainly more 

 (at least I should suppose so) than they do acknow- 

 ledge: and the ceremony of the string they per- 

 form occasionally, before a few friends. I have 

 known many of these people : they are all hermits, 

 who seldom stir from the place they have fixed upon. 

 There is one neat the military lines, at Sicroivre, near 

 Benares, on the banks of the Burna: but, I believe, 

 he is rather in too good case, for a man living upon so 

 scanty an allowance. 



The next place in Ptolemy, is Abragana, placed 

 by him to the S. E. or nearly so, of Paliana, and 

 Aspacora. This I conceive to be the large district of 

 Bregion, called also Bramahsong ; extending from 

 Nopal, along the borders of India, and Asani, to- 

 ward the east; and the capital city of which was 

 called, also, b)' the same name. Ptolemy places a 

 famous city, about 350 geographical miles, horizontal 

 distance, from Thogara, to the eastward, under the 

 name c^ Seiri, the metropolis: but of what country? 

 of the Seres? no surely ; for they are not introduced 

 into his maps. It was obviously the metropolis of 



F 3 



