The Mahabharata describes this warfare against the snakes literally: of which, in one attack, he seized and made a burnt-offering (hom) of twenty thousand. It is surprising that the Hindu will accept these things literally. It might be said he had but a choice of difficulties, and that it would be as impossible for any human being to make the barbarous sacrifice of twenty thousand of his species, as it would be difficult to find twenty thousand snakes for the purpose. The author’s knowledge of what barbarity will inflict leaves the fact of the human sacrifice, though not perhaps to this extent, not even improbable. In 1811 his duties called him to a survey amidst the ravines of the Chambal, the tract called Gujargarh, a district inhabited by the Gujar tribe. Turbulent and independent, like the sons of Esau, their hand against every man and every man’s hand against them, their nominal prince, Surajmall, the Jāt chief of Bharatpur, pursued exactly the same plan towards the population of these villages, whom they captured in a night attack, that Janamejaya did to the Takshaks: he threw them into pits with combustibles, and actually thus consumed them! This occurred not three-quarters of a century ago. Footnote 2.7.105: Arrian says that his name was Omphis [Āmbhi], and that his father dying at this time, he did homage to Alexander, who invested him with the title and estates of his father Taxiles. Hence, perhaps (from _Tak_), the name of the Indus, _Attak_; [?] not _Atak_, or ‘forbidden,’ according to modern signification, and which has only been given since the Muhammadan religion for a time made it the boundary between the two faiths. [All these speculations are valueless.] Footnote 2.7.106: In Bihar, during the reign of Pradyota, the successor of Ripunjaya. Parsva’s symbol is the serpent of Takshak. His doctrines spread to the remotest parts of India, and the princes of Valabhipura of Mandor and Anhilwara all held to the tenets of Buddha. [As usual, Jains are confounded with Buddhists. There is no reason to believe that the Nāgas, a serpent-worshipping tribe, were not indigenous in India.] Footnote 2.7.107: This is the celebrated fortress in Khandesh, now in the possession of the British. Footnote 2.7.108: In the list of the wounded at the battle of Kanauj he is mentioned by name, as “Chatto the Tak.” Footnote 2.7.109: He reigned from A.D. 1324 to 1351. Footnote 2.7.110: ‘The victorious’ [see p. 118 above]. Footnote 2.7.111: The _Mirātu-l-Sikandari_ gives the ancestry of the apostate for twenty-three generations; the last of whom was Sesh, the same which introduced the Nagvansa, seven centuries before the Christian era, into India. The author of the work gives the origin of the name of Tak, or Tank, from _tarka_, ‘expulsion,’ from his caste, which he styles Khatri, evincing his ignorance of this ancient race. Footnote 2.7.112: