Show GENERAL INTEREST IN QUEER PEOPLE monstrosities can always command attention the public interest in freaks of nature which makes it still profet able to maintain circus sideshows where various malformed queerly distorted distort d unfortunates are exhibited to gaping crowds Is an all interest ot of long standing says the following article front from the new york world it goes back not only to ro tile the courts ot of medieval kings where dwarfs and hunchbacks hunch backs frequently furnished cruel amusement to bored nobles imd and their ladles it Is also to be found even before the christian era it has recently been demonstrated that this insatiable curiosity concerning human beings of unusual shape coloring or habits Is of very ancient origin in the quarterly journal of the international school of vedic and allied research it Is revealed by an expert that the ancient inhabitants of india referred in one of their early scriptures to such monstrosities ties as three eyed people one legged mountaineers and people with ears as large as pillows dr B E washburn Il emirl professor ro fessor of sanskrit and comparative para tive philology at yale university who Is vice president of the american section of the international school of vedic and allied research points out in the article referred to the epic view of the earth that the stories about those these queer people sometimes are based on facts while others are travelers tales distorted the epic referred to the mahaba lin horata rata was probably composed about B C but Is made up of 0 stories that had been handed down from even older times ta means the great war of 0 the blia ratas tile tho people of india which took place probably in the twelfth century B 0 but the epic contains in its one hundred thousand stanzas much material which Is not directly connected with the great war a mere eighteen days battle the epic Is really an dla dia of information presenting the philosophic social and ethical ideas of ancient india the colorful epithets applied to alie various tribes described serl beI in the course of the long rambling story reveal to us t the he fat that the ancients were just as much interested in freaks of nature na as the average circus going american Is today one Is reminded of the big lipped women from africa featured in a 8 great circus when one reads odthe 0 the who use their ears as coverings it might be supposed that this Is a reference to a tribe whose ears cars were naturally very large but professor dopkins draws our attention to the tact fact that the large eared folk mentioned in the old pie epic have evidently survived to our own day lie ile says 1 I myself saw near madura madam some individuals with cars so distended hy by heavy earrings that an english official with me exclaimed why they might use their ears as pill lows the three eyed people mentioned in the epic might seem to give some it edibility to the theory that the so called pineal gland in tho the human brain Is the remnant of what once was a third eye certain reptiles do have the structure of an eye in the aneal gland but professor nop hop kins suggests that the third eye of these three eyed tois may have been a sectarian forehead mark bark the mark of cain referred to in zark th bib bible e has been supposed by sonic some to have been a tribal mark tattooed or burned on the forehead such a marl mark on the men mentioned in the epic may easily have been in the shape of a glaring eye in the center of the forehead foie hend to inspire terror in their enemies just as the american indians painted themselves grotesquely tes quely before going into battle |