466 ON A RACE OF HORSES WITH THIRTY-FOUR RlUS. 
among the Ortous, the Abbe and his companions were in¬ 
vited to dine off a sheep by a young Lama priest. “ After 
dinner,” he says, “ every one having thoroughly regaled, our 
neighbours took their kitchen utensils and returned home, 
except the young Lama, who said he would not leave us 
alone. After much talk about the east and the west, he 
took down the skeleton of the sheep, which had been hung 
up in the tent, and amused himself with reciting, or rather 
singing, the nomenclature of all bones, large and small, that 
compose the frame of the sheep. He perceived that our 
knowledge on this subject was very limited, and this asto¬ 
nished him extremely. We had the greatest difficulty in 
making him understand that in our country ecclesiastical 
studies had for their object more serious and important 
matters than the names and number of the bones of a sheep. 
Every Mongol knows the number, name, and position of the 
bones which compose the frame of animals, and thus they 
never break the bones when they are cutting up an ox or a 
sheep. With the point of their large knife they go straight 
and at once to the juncture of the bones, separating them 
with astonishing skill and celerity.”* 
The probable date at which Dirghatamas sung of “ the 
thirty-four ribs of the quick horse” is lost in the haze of ob¬ 
scurity ; the most moderate estimate would place it at 
between three or four thousand years ago. It has been 
stated that the Vedas, of which the A^amedha is one, were 
written or inscribed fourteen hundred years before our era; 
and it is easy to see that they were a collection of composi¬ 
tions much more ancient than that age. 
On philological evidence alone, then, it is demonstrated 
that a primitive people, the Aryans of the Vedic age, inhabit¬ 
ing Central Asia, were accustomed, from time immemorial, 
to count and designate the bones of animals, and that one of 
their poet-priests has formally affirmed, in a sacred hymn, 
the existence of only thirty-four ribs in the horses of that 
region and age. 
It may be also stated that this zoological fact is quite ad¬ 
missible, because it is analogous to others already known to 
science; the number of ribs mentioned by this ancient priest 
cannot in any way be the result of insufficiency of anatomical 
knowledge nor of an error on his part, or yet of his copyists, 
for, in addition to corroborative evidence in the hymn itself, 
the statement is confirmed by a subsequent commentator. 
It would appear from the able researches of M. Pietrement, 
* ‘ Souvenirs d’un Voyage dans la Tartarie et le Thibet, pendant les 
Annees, 1844, 1845, and 1846.’ By M. Hue. Paris, 1868, vol. i, p. 340, 
