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So Tibullus (IV, i, 45), “Ultima vicinus Phoebo tenet Arva Pa- daeus;” and Strabo (XV, i, 56), quoting Megasthenes’ account of Indian mountaineers “who eat the bodies of their relatives.”
The same practices were said by Dr. Taylor to be followed a couple of generations ago by the Kukis, or Kuki Chin, a Tibeto- Burman tribe in the Chin Hills between Assam and Burma; the sick and aged were killed and eaten because of the belief that by such means their souls remained in the tribe, and were preserved from the agonies of transmigration into the bodies of animals.
The name of “Padaeans” is probably meant for Purushada, under which they appear in the Vara Sanhita Parana.
63. Ganges. — The name is applied in the same paragraph to district, river and town. By the district is meant Bengal; by the river, more especially the Hughli estuary, but east of Ganga-Sagar island and not west of it, as at present. This, until about the 15th century, was the largest mouth of the Ganges; the Hughli river and Sagar island were the sacred places, and still retain their sanctity. This ancient mouth, the Adi Ganga, silted up, and the river constantly tending eastward, finally joined its main channel to that of the Brahma- putra, emptying into the Meghna estuary as at present ( Imp . Gaz., XII, 133-4 J. By the town of Ganges is probably meant Tamra-lipti, the modern Tamluk (22° 18' N., 87° 56’ E. ), which gave its name to the Tamra-parnI river in the Pandya kingdom, and to the island of Ceylon. This was the sea-port of Bengal in the Post-Vedic and Buddhist periods, being frequently mentioned in the great epics. It was the port of the “ Bangalis, who trusted in their ships,” who were conquered by the hero of Kalidasa’s Raghuvamsa. Here it was that Fa-Hien sojourned two years, after which he embarked in “a large merchant vessel, and went floating over the sea to the southwest . . . to the country of Singhala.”
This identification, which is supported by many scholars, seems preferable to that of Fergusson and Dr. Taylor, who would place Tamra-lipti at the modern Sonargaon (23° 40’ N., 90° 36’ E. ), the ancient Suvarnagrama, the chief port of Eastern Bengal under the Gupta Empire and in the middle ages. Near here was Vikramapura, the modern Bikrampur, one of the capitals of Chandragupta Vikrama- ditya. But its importance does not seem to date from so early a period as that of the Periplus; while it is more likely that the name of Ganges would have been localized on the sacred, and at that time the principal, estuary.
Strabo has been accused of ignorance for remarking (XV, i, 13) that the Ganges “ discharges its waters by a single mouth.” But his
