close to the Malabar coast, and nowhere else; there is none north of the Vindhya. Then again, the precious vocabularies and lists of all kinds of things and names which those precise old Babylonians were so fond of making out and which have given us so many startling surprises, come to the fore with a bit of very choice information, namely that the old Babylonian name for muslin was sindhu, i. e. that the stuff was simply called by the name of the country which exported it.

18. This is very strong corroborative evidence of several important facts, viz. that the Aryan settlers of Northern India had already begun, at an amazingly early period, to excel in the manufacture of the delicate tissue which has ever been and is to this day -doubtless in incomparably greater perfection—one of their industrial glories, a fact which implies cultivation of the cotton plant or tree, probably in Vedic times already';-that their Dravidian contemporaries were enterprising traders; that the relations between the two races were by no means of an exclusively hostile and warlike nature. For, if the name sindhu proves the stuff to have been an Aryan product, it was certainly not Aryan export trade which

1 It is well known that our name for the fine and dainty fabric called "muslin" (mousseline) is derived from that of the city on the Tigris, Mosul, which, throughout the Middle Ages and to the present day, has been famous for its fabrication. How long before-who can tell? An imaginative and inquisitive mind might wonder whether, if all the links could be recovered and joined together, this particular industry might not be traceable to those almost prehistoric commercial relations between Dravidian India and Chaldean Babylonia. Did the latter learn the art from India and import the cotton from there-and did the Assyrians carry it north along with other arts? A stupendous issue to hang on so frail a thing!

supplied the foreign markets with it, for there was no such trade, the Âryas of Penjâb not being acquainted with the sea, or the construction of sea-going ships. It is clear that the weaving of fine stuffs must have been an Aryan home-industry; that Dravidian traders—probably itinerant merchants or peddlers--collected the surplus left over from home consumption, certainly in the way of barter, the goods then finding their way to some commercial centre on the western coast, where the large vessels lay which carried on the regular export and import trade. All this internal evidence is still further strengthened by another item of information which, though coming from a very different quarter, dovetails into it exactly. Professor Max Müller has long ago shown that the names of certain rare articles which King Solomon's trading ships brought him, were not originally Hebrew.' These articles are sandal-wood (indigenous on the Malabar coast and nowhere else), ivory, apes and peacocks, and their native names, which could easily be traced through the Hebrew corruptions, have all along been set down as Sanskrit, being common words of that language. But now, quite lately, an eminent Dravidian scholar and specialist brings proof that they are really Dravidian words, introduced into Sanskrit. This is a dazzling ray of light, and proof so conclusive, when added to an already strong and compact case, that further corroborative evidence would be welcome, but scarcely necessary.

1 Science of Language, First Series, pp. 203, 204 (1862).

2 Dr. Caldwell, Introduction to his Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages.

3 Compare the sculptures on Shalmaneser's Black Obelisk, Story of Assyria, pp. 185-195.

19. The late Greek historian Arrian mentions a maritime city, PATÂLA, as the only place of note in the delta of the Indus. This city, very probably the port from which the muslin went forth, and which is identified with modern Hyderabad, is renowned in legend and epos as the capital of a king of the Snake race—i. e., a Dravidian king—who ruled a large part of the surrounding country. This native dynasty is closely connected with the mythical traditions of the two races, through its founder, King VASUKI-a name which at once recalls the great Serpent Vâsuki, who played so important, if passive, a part on a memorable mythic occasion (see p. 187). The connection between the Dravidians of Northern and Western India and the first Babylonian Empire,-the Babylonia of the Shumiro-Accads, before the advent of the Semites' becomes less surprising when we realize that there was between them something more than chance relations, that they were in fact of the same race or stock-that which is broadly designated as Turanian. Philology points that way, for the Dravidian languages are agglutinative; craniology will not disprove the affinity, for a glance at the Gôndh types on illustration No. 23, and the turbaned head of Tell-Loh (Accadian Sirgulla) will show the likeness in features and shape. But even more convincing is the common sacred symbol-the Serpent, the emblem of the worship of Earth, with its mystery, its wealth and its forces. The Accadian supreme god Êa was worshipped at his holiest shrine at

1 See Story of Chaldea, ch. iii., “Turanian Chaldea," and ch. iv. 2 Ibid., p. 214.

Eridhu under the form of a Serpent, and as Eridhu was the centre from which the first Chaldean civiliza

tion started and spread, so the serpent-symbol was accepted as that of the race and its religion.' The 1 See Story of Chaldea, pp. 215, 246, 287.

Turanian Proto-Medes also, before they were conquered by the Aryan followers of Zarathushtra,' worshipped the snake-symbol of Earth, which afterwards was identified by the Eranian Mazdayasnians with Angramainyush, the Evil One, the Spirit of Lie and Death. This Proto-Median Serpent, like his Dravidian brother, had the honor of being admitted into the Aryan Mythic Epos. The snakeking (originally snake-god) AJI-DAHAK (“the Biting Serpent") figures in the mythical legends embodied in the Eranian SHAH-NAMEH ("Book of Kings") as the wicked Turanian king AFRASIAB, whose shoulders were kissed by the Evil One, when there sprouted from them two living snakes, who had to be fed daily on human brains-a pretty close equivalent of the Dravidian human sacrifices,-until the invincible Eranian hero, as in duty bound, delivered the world from the threefold monster.' But the most remarkable bequest left to classical Aryan India by the intimacy between her pre-Aryan inhabitants and their Chaldean race-brethren, is the legend of the Deluge, in which the part of Hâsisadra and the Biblical Noah is given to the Aryan sage and progenitor of the present human race, MANU. The story has no roots in Aryan myth,

1 See Story of Media, etc., pp. 144, 267, 268.

2 The Shah-Nameh is the Eranian national epic. It was written, in the eleventh century, by the poet FIRDÂUSI, at the suggestion of his patron, the great Sultan Mahmud of Gazna. It purports to be the history of Persia from the earliest times down to that monarch's reign, but is really, at least the first half of it, a complete collection of the hero-myths of the Eranian race, embodying the glorious memories of the life-long struggle between Erân and Turân,