ill

(Yudhislithira)1 attained the fulfilment of his wishes
by worshipping the sun. As the Mahabharat is all
'symbolic, we also find there that the sun, having
appeared to him in the form of a man, announced to
him : " I am pleased with thee; I will provide thee
" with food during twelve years, then for the space
£C of thirteen years thou wilt obtain a wonderful
" empire." And the sun gave him a kettle, saying:
" The property of this kettle is, that every day all
tc sort of food in such quantity as thou wishest,
" comes forth from it, under the condition that
" thou first distribulest it among Brahmans and
" Fakirs, and then among thy valiant brothers,
" the Kshatriyas." Herodetes, the author of the
history of the Yiinan (Greeks), stated that in a
town of Riimi there was in a temple an idol in the
shape of Iskalapiiis, which was known under the
image of Apu, that is " the sun," and that, whatever
question they addressed was answered by him.2

1 Yudisht'hira, according to the Vichnu-purena (Wilson's transl., pp.
437-459), was the son of Kunti, also called Pritha', and of the deities
Dharma, Vayu, and Indra. He was the half-brother of Kama, whom his
mother conceived by Aditya, " the sun."

2 In the History of Herodotus, if this be meant above, the name of
Esculapius does not occur. The denomination of Rumi may be applied
to Asia Minor, Turkey, the whole ancient and modern empire of the
Greeks and Romans; in so vast a space there was certainly more than one
town with a temple and an oracular statue of Esculapius. One circum-
stance is singularly true in the above account of Apu, to wit: that Escu-
lapius was formerly called Apius, Apwyov au^c-ovo-tv'Hictou yovov* adjuto-