Dirghatamas, and describes the sacrifice of the horse in very full detail. In the eighteenth verse we read:
"The axe approaches the thirty-four ribs of the quick horse, beloved of the gods. Do you wisely keep the limbs whole, find out each joint and strike."
This passage is curious in many respects. It refutes the statement of Strabo (xv., 54), that the Indians did not slaughter their victims: "They do not slay the victim, but suffocate it, to the end that it may not be offered to the god mutilated, but entire." It also seems to imply that the horses then offered at the sacrifices had only thirty-four ribs. This statement, however, startled even the orthodox commentators in India, and Sayana remarks in his commentary on this passage, that other animals, such as goats, etc., have only twenty-six ribs, as might be proved by what he considers as far more convincing than ocular evidence, viz., a passage from the "Brahmanas," in which it is said, "Its ribs are twenty-six." In another passage, in his commentary on the "Satapatha brahmana," xiii., 5, 1, 18, Sayana returns to the same subject, but unfortunately that passage, as edited by Prof. Weber, is so corrupt that I at least cannot make sense of it, though it is clear that Sayana says there that their ribs are thirty-six. Another commentator, Mahidhara, explaining the horse-sacrifice, as prescribed in the "Yagurveda," seems to have no anatomical misgivings, but states that the horse has thirty-four, goats and other animals twenty-six ribs.
I confess that I was myself very much puzzled by the passage in the "Rig-Veda." It was quite clear that the reading katustrimsat, thirty-four, cannot be called in question; it was equally clear that that number would not have been mentioned except for some special purpose. That it was the habit of the ancient Hindoos to count the various bones of the human or animal skeleton, may be seen in the "Law-book of Yagnavalkya," iii., 85, et seq. There we read:
"The neck consists of fifteen bones, a collar-bone on each side, and the chin; two at its root, and the same on the forehead, the eyes, and the cheeks, and the nose of firm bone. The ribs with their supports and the Arbudas (Zippenknorpel) are seventy-two. Two front-bones, four skull-bones of the head, seventeen bones of the chest, these are the bones of a man."
Similar passages occur elsewhere, and establish the fact that the ancient anatomists of India made a point of knowing the exact number of the bones in the different portions of the bodies both of men and animals.
Not being able to find a satisfactory solution of my difficulty, I applied to Prof. Huxley, and I am glad, with his permission, to print the following letter, which offers a most ingenious, and, to my mind, satisfactory solution:
"26 Abbey Place, N. W."
"My dear Sir: I have been much interested in M. Pictrement's ‘Mémoire.’ His work ‘Les Origines des Chevaux domestiques’ is well known to me, but I
