RELATING TO THE INDIANS. 613 



Part of the Indians found a refuge in Mount Taurus, whence they 

 returned to India, but the curly-haired Blemys, king of the ruddy Indians, 

 submitted to Bacchus. He, itappeared, held Deriades, his rule and man- 

 ners in abhorrence : his own country was Arabia Felix, but he afterwards 

 removed to iEgypt and ^Ethiopia, becoming king of the latter country, of 

 which the people were called after him Blemyes. This is no more than 

 the version which Nonnus chuses to give of the old and numerous tradi- 

 tions that identified the Indians and Ethiopians, as intimated by Philos- 

 tratus, who speaks of Ethiopian colonies of Indians, cultivating the wis- 

 dom of their ancestors, the wisest of mankind. — Life of Apollonius, b. 6. 

 ch. 16. 



Bacchus, following up his advantage, marches towards India, and is 

 met on his way by Staphylus, king of the Assyrians, with his son Botrys, 

 and on the visit of the Divinity to the palace of the Assyrian monarch, he, 

 his son, his wife Methe, and an old man named Pithus, are introduced 

 to the taste of the juice of the grape, and become intoxicated. The males 

 are finally metairforphosed into the articles their names imply, or Staphyle 

 a grape, Botrys a bunch of grapes, and Pethos a barrel, whilst Methe 

 signifies intoxication. The whole is therefore merely a diffuse pun, or 

 series of puns, although the late Col. Wilford was disposed to detect 

 Sanscrit etymologies under these appellations, Pita or Pitri — and Mdtd 

 or Mai, by which designations Siva and Bhavan! are often worshipped, 

 and are so particularly, according to him, on the banks of the Indus. 

 Staphyle he would resolve into Ashta phalam, the eight-leaved Lotus, 

 the type of the great universal mother. Mata, drunk, has possibly some 

 relation to Methe. 



We have in the eighteenth book a new origin for the Indians, who are 

 descended from one of the sons of Terra, or Giants, named Indus, cast down 

 from heaven by Jupiter in the Saturnian war. 



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