Most nations have indulged the desire of fixing the source whence they issued, and few spots possess more interest than this elevated Madhya-Bhumi, or ‘central region’ of Asia, where the Amu, Oxus, or Jihun, and other rivers, have their rise, and in which both the Surya and Indu[2.1.17] races (_Sakha_) claim the hill,[2.1.18] sacred to a great patriarchal ancestor, whence they migrated eastward. The Rajput tribes could scarcely have acquired some of their still existing Scythic habits and warlike superstitions on the burning plains of Ind. It was too hot to hail with fervent adoration the return of the sun from his southern course to enliven the northern hemisphere. This should be the religion of a colder clime, brought from their first haunts, the sources of the Jihun and Jaxartes. The grand solstitial festival, the Aswamedha, or sacrifice of the horse (the type of the sun), practised by the children of Vaivaswata, the ‘sun-born,’ was most probably simultaneously introduced from Scythia into the plains of Ind, and west, by the sons of Odin, Woden, or Budha, into Scandinavia, where it became the Hi-el or Hi-ul,[2.1.19] the festival of the winter solstice; the grand jubilee of northern nations, and in the first ages of Christianity, being so near the epoch of its rise, gladly used by the first fathers of the church to perpetuate that event[2.1.20][25]. ----- Footnote 2.1.1: “Every Purana,” says the first authority existing in Sanskrit lore, “treats of five subjects: the creation of the universe; its progress, and the renovation of the world; the genealogy of gods and heroes; chronology, according to a fabulous system; and heroic history, containing the achievements of demi-gods and heroes. Since each purana contains a cosmogony, both mythological and heroic history, the works which bear that title may not unaptly be compared to the Grecian theogonies” (‘Essay on the Sanskrit and Pracrit Languages,’ by H. T. Colebrooke, Esq.; _As. Res._ vol. vii. p. 202). [On the age of the Purānas see Smith, _EHI_, 21 ff.] Footnote 2.1.2: Resolvable into Sanskrit, _janam_, ‘birth,’ and _is_ and _iswar_, ‘lords’ [γένω, γίγνομαι, Skr. root _jan_, ‘to generate’]. Footnote 2.1.3: Son of the sun. Footnote 2.1.4: The snowy Caucasus. Sir William Jones, in an extract from a work entitled _Essence of the Pooranas_, says that this event took place at Dravira in the Deccan. Footnote 2.1.5: The present Ajodhya, capital of one of the twenty-two satrapies constituting the Mogul Empire, and for some generations held by the titular Vizir, who has recently assumed the regal title. [Ghāziu-d-dīn Haidar in 1819.] Footnote 2.1.6: