ORIGIN OF TIIE BIN LAS. 
241 
that amongst them, some are called Padda a term which can be easi¬ 
ly converted into Batta; and he mentions their practice of killing 
and eating their old relatives, which agrees perfectly with the account 
given by Sir S. Raffles of the Battas; “ I was informed, says he, in 
his memoirs, that formerly it was usual for the people to eat their 
parents who were too old for work. The old people selected the 
horizontal branch of a tree, and quietly suspended themselves by 
their hands, while their children and neighbours forming a circle 
danced round them, crying out when the fruit is ripe , then it will 
fall. This practice took place during the season of limes, when salt 
and pepper were plenty, and as soon as the victims became fatigued, 
and could hold on no longer, they fell down, when all hands cut them 
up and made a hearty meal of them”—Memoirs, p. 427. 
I would not found any objection to the admission of this opinion, 
from the observation that a few centuries after Herodotus the Indi¬ 
an Archipelago was entirely unknown, as in the time of Strabo, Hi¬ 
pparchus and Eratosthenes, who were living in the years 20,190 and 
220 before the Christian era ; because it is certain that on account of 
the extensive practice afthe Hebrews and Tyrians in the art of na¬ 
vigating, the knowledge of navigation and geography was much more 
extensive in the time of Herodotus and anteriorly, than in the time 
of Strabo, Hipparchus and Eratosthenes, when the art of navigation 
was less practised, and had lost much of its activity ; so the Peninsula 
and the Archipelago might be known in the time of Herodotus and 
forgotten in the following centuries. We see in history a similar ex¬ 
ample in the Cape of Good Hope, which was known a long time before 
Herodotus, since he himself relates that 128 years before his birth, 
that is in the year 610 before the chris*tian era, the Hebrews and 
the Tyrians rounded Africa by order of the king of Egypt, and that 
they doubled the Cape of Good Hope, a road which was yet known to 
Eratosthenes, and after that was entirely forgotten, during near 2,000 
years ; since the maps drawn according to Hyyarchus, Strabo and 
Ptolomy show a land embracing the Erythrean sea, or the sea of In¬ 
dia, meeting on one side with Africa at the Prasurn Promontory, and 
on the other with Eastern Asia at Catigara. It was only in 1497 A, 
