10 R. Banerji — Identification of Aboriginal Triles. [Jan. 



Kiimara Sambliava or the Birth of the War-god, when describing the Lord 

 of mountains, Himalaya.* 



Although the Kiratas were classed by our poets and sages among the 

 3Xleclic]ilias or barbarians, still it is clear that they were not hated or shun- 

 ned by the Aryan conquerors, like the other aboriginal tribes of India. The 

 great hero of the Mahabharata, Arjuna, adopted the name, nationality, and 

 guise of a Kirata for a certain period, to learn archery, and the use of other 

 arms from S'iva, who was considered as the deity of the Kiratas. This 

 episode of the Mahabharata was taken up by the poet Bharavi, who describes 

 it in detail in his celebrated poem Kiratarjuniya. 



Again, both the Himalaya-born goddesses Uma and Ganga have the 

 nicknames of Kirati applied to them by our lexicographers ; and it is a ques- 

 tion therefore whether these goddesses were the daughters of some Kirata 

 chieftain of the Himalaya, married to S'iva, a Hindu divinity, affording an 

 example of miscegenation among the two races effected at a very early period 

 of History ; or whether S'iva was himself a Mongolian. His residence in the 

 far Kylasa, his braided hair, his oblique eyes, his great proclivity for smoking, 

 his reputed authorship of the Tantrika, nasal, monosyllabic Mantras, go far to 

 prove him to be a Mongolian rather than of an Aryan type. I have shown 

 that the modern Kiranti or Kiratis are the Kiratas of Ancient India ; this can 

 be also proved geographically and ethnologically — we find them occupying the 

 same country as described in the Puranas, and their physical traits and man- 

 ner of livelihood agree. 



The Kiratas, though now turned into cultivators and eaters of rice, 

 were flesh-eaters in Ancient India, like their brethren living on the other 

 side of the Himalayas ; in fact, their chief occupation was nothing else but 

 the chase. 



It is remarkable that the medicinal Chirretta is a corruption of Kirata, 

 which is the Sanskrit name for this drug. The only other synonyms in 

 Sanskrit are JBhunimha, Andryya-tikta and Kandalitikta, the first means 

 that it is the nim or azadiraclita of the earth ; the second implies the 

 bitter of the non-Aryans ; and the third signifies that which contains bitter 

 in its trunk. The second name is very suggestive. It is a well known fact 

 that the Chirretta grows in the lower ranges of the Himalaya, the country 

 of the modern Kirantis or Kiratis. 



In the topographical lists of the Mahabharata, Bhisma Parva, separate 



TT^WW f^T'^f^^fil'^^J II Chapter I. Verse 15. 



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