hich still exists in
Brittany and in Wales, is the best proof that their inhabitants are
descendants of the Tartar nation.

Whatever Pinkerton and others may say, the modern Rajput warriors do
not answer in the least the description Hippocrates gives us of the
Scythians. The "father of medicine" says: "The bodily structure of these
men is thick, coarse and stunted; their joints are weak and flabby; they
have almost no hair, and each of them resembles the other." No man,
who has seen the handsome, gigantic warriors of Rajistan, with their
abundant hair and beards, will ever recognize this portrait drawn by
Hippocrates as theirs. Besides, the Scythians, whoever they may be,
buried their dead, which the Rajputs never did, judging by the records
of their most ancient MSS. The Scythians were a wandering nation, and
are described by Hesiod as "living in covered carts and feeding on
mare's milk." And the Rajputs have been a sedentary people from time
immemorial, inhabiting towns, and having their history at least several
hundred years before Christ--that is to say, earlier than the epoch of
Herodotus. They do celebrate the Ashvamedha, the horse sacrifice; but
will not touch mare's milk, and despise all Mongolians. Herodotus says
that the Scythians, who called themselves Skoloti, hated foreigners, and
never let any stranger in their country; and the Rajputs are one of
the most hospitable peoples of the world. In the epoch of the wars of
Darius, 516 B.C., the Scythians were still in their own district, about
the mouth of the Danube. And at the same epoch the Rajputs were already
known in India and had their own kingdom. As to the Ashvamedha, which
Colonel Tod thinks to be the chief illustration of his theory, the
custom of killing horses in honor of the sun is mentioned in the
Rig-Veda, as well as in the Aitareya-Brahmana. Martin Haug states that
the latter has probably been in existence since 2000-2400 B.C.----

But it strikes me that the digression from the Babu's chum to the
Scythians and the Rajputs of the antediluvian epoch threatens to become
too long, so I beg the reader's pardon and resume the thread of my
narrative.

The Banns Of Marriage

Next day, early in the morning, the local shikaris went under the
leadership of the warlike Akali, to hunt glamoured and real tigers
in the caves. It took them longer than we expected. The old Bhil, who
represented to us the absent dhani, proposed that in the meanwhile