240 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



Nngnrn, the known capital of a most ancient Naga people.* 

 Further, in the plains, are Nagpoor, and a ruined city without 

 i, at the gates of Benares (perhaps the r< ! k . i of tradi- 

 tion), once adorned with .statues of a woolly-haired race; and 

 lower still, on the Indus, Pattala, the ancient empire of the 

 or serpent kings, before it became a mytholo 

 I e cities existed, and a given social state was 

 advancing to civilization among the typical woolly-haired trib - 

 of higher Asia, but declined and fell, from the moment the 

 Hindoo races invaded Bharata or the peninsula of India. The 

 people, nevertheless, which they subdued, expelled, and vainly 

 endeavored to extirpate, survived, in scattered purer groups, in 

 the more inaccessible parts of the continent, chiefly along the 

 subordinate ramifications of the Himalaya range, from the Indus 

 to Indo-China, and the Malay peninsula; or in the form of 

 hybrid tribes, even at present lurking in the Vindaya chain, 

 and spread through the southern states to Ceylon. Taking 

 the characteristics of some tribes still remaining for the general 

 standard, they were a strong-built under-sized people, with a 

 depressed forehead, frizzled hair, crushed nose, thick lips, and 

 black skin, all to some extent cannibals, and incapable of 

 rising, by their own intellectual powers, much beyond the 

 degrees of social improvement they had attained ; yet not so 

 low, but that some of the worst features of their religious and 

 moral notions were adopted by their conquerors. The names 

 of the nations varied of course. Among the most ancient and 

 general, was that of Nats, Nagas, Nishadas, Kabendas, Bhils, 

 and Puharees.t They are now found under similar denomi- 



* This Nagara stood on the Indus, between latitude 32 and 33°, and was 

 a Dionysiopolis, according to Ptolemy ; but more probably the fanum of 

 some Naag Sahib, a serpent god with human sacrifices, such as the Naag 

 tribes had upon the upper Nile, and still retain in Cutch. Naag and 

 Naga, if it be a Sanscrit word, is also well known in more than one Afri- 

 can dialect. 



t Several of these names recur, most significantly, among the Negro 

 tribes of Western and Southern Africa, particularly those of Nagas ot 



