27. The Mouthless Indians of Megasthenes, 
By Rev. H. Hostsn, 8.J. 
J. W. McCrindle, the distinguished translator of the an- 
cient Greek and Latin Geographers and Historians who wrote 
on India, took great pains to bring together whatever would 
rationally explain the distorted and fabulous passages in their 
accounts. There are few of those texts which modern research 
has not to some extent elucidated, and it is comforting to note 
how deep a substratum of truth underlay the knowledge of 
India possessed by the ancients. 
I shall single out for examination one of en pas- 
sages, which McCrindle dismisses without com 
hose who live near the sources of the Ganiea** writes 
Solinus, ‘‘ requiring nothing in the shape of ot subsist on 
‘* the odour of wild apples, and when they go on a long journey 
‘* they carry these with them for safety of their ‘life, which they 
‘*can support by: inhaling their portanis: Should they inhale 
‘¢ very foul air, death is inevitable.’ 
Pliny expatiates at greater length on the subject. ** He 
hi 
7 Se all over hairy, with the soft down found upon the leaves 
of trees,” and who live merely by breathing and the perfume 
- «inhaled by the nostrils. They eat nothing, and they, drink 
“i nothing. They require merely a variety of odours of roots 
and of flowers and of wild apples. The apples they carry 
A with them, and when they go on a distant journey, that they 
‘*may always have rapa to smell. Too strong an odour 
* would Fugit kill them.’ 
o’s account of the Asiomi contains some variants. 
“¢ of the Ganges, and subsist on the savour of roasted flesh * and 


| ScHWANBECK, Fragm. xxx, B.; Soxrnus, 52. 26-30; McCrrinpis 
Ancient . ges as described by oe and Arrian, London, Triibner, 
1877, p. 8 
2A a7 rence to sine trees. Cf. — in McCrinpDLe, op. cit., 
pp. gor sii and McCrinpDte’s Ktesias, p. 
3 Sox pene 5 ong xxx; Pury, Hist. Nat., vii, 14-22; Meoe- 
CRINDLE, be ome 
+ The natives of the Himalayas are fond of strips of meat smoked 
over the heart 
