44
exercise any calling or art except hia own: for instance, a soldier cannot become a husbandman, or an artizan a philosopher.[ref 1]
(42.) 54India possesses a vast number of huge elephants, which far surpass those found elsewhere both in strength and size. This animal does not cover the female in a peculiar way, as some affirm, but like horses and other quadrupeds. 55The period of gestation is at shortest sixteen months, and at furthest eighteen.[ref 2] Like mares, they generally bring forth but one young one at a time, and this the dam suckles for six years. 56Most elephants live to be as old as an extremely old man, but the most aged live two hundred years.
57Among the Indians officers are appointed even for foreigners, whose duty is to see that no foreigner is wronged. Should any of them lose his health, they send physicians to attend him, and take care of him otherwise, and if he dies they bury him, and deliver over such property as he leaves to his relatives, 58The judges
- ↑ "It appears strange that Megasthenês should have divided the people of India into seven castes . . . Herodotus, however, had divided the people of Egypt into seven castes, namely priests, soldiers, herdsmen, swineherds, tradesmen, interpreters, and steersmen; and Megasthenês may therefore have taken it for granted that there were seven castes in India. It is a curious fact that, from the time of Alexander's expedition to a comparatively recent date, geographers and others have continually drawn analogies between Egypt and India."—Wheeler's Hist. of India, vol. III. p. 192, note 54-56. Conf. Fragm. xxxvi.
- ↑ For some remarks on this point see Blochmann's translation of the Aîn-i-Akbarî, p. 118.
