336 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



given to a city, a Heliopolis, as Strabo asserts, where the 

 snake worship was then, as it still is, in existence in Cutch.* 

 This very degrading worship was not inconsistent with the 

 idolatrous sacrifice to the giant divinity Muhishan, whose 

 statues have a serpent wound about the loins, and whose 

 legend is of so ancient and peculiar a character, that he may 

 be regarded as a solar god among the aboriginal tribes, he 

 alone riding his war buffalo in battle against Durga, and, 

 therefore, the supreme type of indigenous power before the 

 horse was known in the peninsula of India.! That this 

 divinity was, by Hindu, Arab, or Cushite invention, converted 

 to Kali, is evident by the similarity of Moloch, in Syria, with 

 both ; and, by the retreat of Mahades, another form of the same, 

 to the mountains of Kylas, when in danger from the assaults 

 of Ravan, is shown that his worship was not then admitted in 

 southern India. 



Notwithstanding the repeated contradictions and dualisms 

 of all the Indian mythological compositions, there are to be 

 found shadowy pictures of historical events in the great San- 

 scrit poems still extant; for although even the oldest were 

 written many ages after the transactions to which they refer, 

 probably by men who had no circumstantial traditions, and 

 were more imbued with the marvellous and imaginative to 

 form mythological themes, according to poetical formulae, than 



* Cutch and Gujrat may both be connected with the Cuthite race, and 

 fit localities for migrators by sea ; for from Diu, in Cutch, Gama 

 despatched the open boat that conveyed the intelligence of his arrival in 

 India. It went round the cape, and arrived safe at Lisbon. Nearchus 

 w r ent from Kurrachee. 



t We have before mentioned the figure of a Rajah riding his war-ox, 

 and the almost Ethiopian CafiYes of Africa mounted on them, to a recent 

 period. It is probable that Hannibal derived from his Ethiop Numidian 

 companions the celebrated stratagem, when, by means of oxen with com- 

 bustibles burning on their horns, he puzzled the Romans, and extricated 

 himself from a difficult position. It may be remarked, that the Black 

 Muhishan is opposed to Durga a divinity of the invading mountaineers. 



