ON A RACE OF HORSES WITH THIRTY-FOUR RIBS. 4C§ 
There is a curious passage on that subject in the ‘ Laws of 
Yagnavalkya/ book iii, p. 85, et seq. See ‘ Yagnavalkya, 
edit. Stenzler, text and German translation.” 
There can scarcely, then, remain a doubt as to the existence of 
horses to the north of the Himalayas possessing only this small 
number of ribs ; for though, at the very distant period at which 
these hymns were composed, a knowledge of anatomy must 
have been very rudimentary, yet for religious purposes a cer¬ 
tain amount was necessary, particularly with regard to the 
osteology of the different animals offered up for sacrifice. 
The author of the hymn in question, Dirghatamas, like all 
the other authors of the hymns which constitute the ‘ Riga- 
Veda,’ was at the same time poet, priest, and sacrificer; he 
belonged, in fact, to the lettered class, which at that time 
was the only one that studied science. True, the attention 
of the early Aryans was chiefly devoted to celestial pheno¬ 
mena, and with these their oblations and sacrifices were 
closely related ; so that their ideas of anatomy may have been 
extremely limited.. But still, a knowledge of the number of 
bones possessed by the different animals so immolated must 
have been necessary to a Hindoo priest who had to conduct 
the rites of such an important religious ceremony as that of 
the Acvamedha. The very ancient documents just cited 
prove that among the Hindoos this kind of practical ana¬ 
tomy was studied, and that the number of hones, and espe¬ 
cially the ribs, was known at the very earliest epoch. Thus, 
in addition to the mention of thirty-four ribs in the horse, 
we find that twenty-six is the number correctly given for the 
cow, sheep, dog, and cat. It is impossible that Dirghatamas 
could have erred in his enumeration of the horse’s ribs, for 
this animal was constantly offered as a sacrifice, and a mis- 
. reckoning would readily have been perceived by his colleagues 
or the spectators who witnessed these sacrifices. Besides, 
these hymns have passed through the hands of several early 
commentators, who, being Hindoos and priests, would un¬ 
doubtedly have indicated the mistake had it existed. That 
the number thirty-four has not been inserted instead of thirty- 
six by these commentators and copyists, is proved by the 
circumstance that the Sanskrit for thirty-four rhymes with, 
and is the complementary measure to, the subsequent lines, 
while thirty-six does not at all accord. 
In confirmation of the statement that certain Asiatic peoples 
have been in the habit of counting the number of bones in 
the animals they killed, it is curious to find Hue alluding to 
such a practice as prevalent among the priests of the nomadic 
Mongols of Chinese Tartary so late as 1844. Travelling 
