Vol. ae No. 8.] The Mouthless Indians of Megasthenes. 293 
[W.8.] 
with Himalayan tribes, noted for their shortness of stature.! 
cyratat, according to Strabo, were arace beyond India. ‘They 
are snub-nosed either because in the tender years of infancy 
their nostrils are pressed down and continue to be so through- 
out their after-life, or because such is the natural shape of the 
organ.’’* The Scyratai of Strabo and the Scyritae of Pliny 
have been identified with tolerable certainty with the Kiratas 
of the Ramayana, a barbarous people who inhabited woods and 
mountains, lived by hunting and were so diminutive that their 
name became a synonym for dwarf. Like the Pygmies of Me- 
gasthenes, they were eeig by the Indians to fight with vul- 
tures and eagles.’ Kirat is a name still applied to a part of 
Nepal, and Lassen placed one sheanes of the Kiratas on the ban 
of the Kausiin Nepal and another in Tippera.* The following 
description of noseless Risers: 2) bee in Strabo seems 
also to refer to the nosed Scyratai: ‘* But, deviating 
into fables, he [Megasthenes) says ed are men five spans and 
even three spans in height, some of whom want the nose, and 
having only two orifices above the mouth through ae they 
breathe. Against the men of three spans, war, as Homer has 
sung, is waged by i cranes, and also by SuAildes: Whttch 
are as large as geese.’ 
The habitat of the Trispithami and Pygmies and of the 
Scyratae being thus determined, it will be easier to see what 
grounds we may have for recognizing another Himalayan tribe, 
if not c same, in the apparently fabulous description of the 
Astom 
The ‘*¢mouthless” tribe referred to by Megasthenes lived in 
or damgirt in Persian. 
In the higher altitudes of the Himalayas it manifests itself 
in the most distressing forms. Mirza M. Haidar relates that 
during his expedition in Tibet, it sees upon men and animals 
alike. One morning he discovered to his consternation that more 
than 2,000 horses of his party had died of it during the night.° 
The natives of Pamir, Western Tibet and Nepal seem invariably 

1 Cf. ee ss McCrinDLE, Ktesias, pp. 87-59. 
2 Cf. McCri Le, Megasthenes 2, p. 15S. 
3 Cf. abid., pp. 173 3 note, 74 note; and id., Ktesias, p. 88. 
4 Cf. 4 asthenes, p- 
5 Cf. wees 
6 Cf. N. Eur as and E. D. Ross, Tarikh-i-Rashidi of Mirza Muham- 
Cf. 
mad Haidar, London, naan & Low, 1895, pp. 412-413. 
