Show GENERAL INTEREST IN QUEER PEOPLE monstrosities can always command attention the public interest in freaks of nature which makes it still profitable to maintain circus sideshows where various malformed queerly distorted unfortunates are exhibited to gaping crowds Is an interest of long standing says the following article from the hie new york world it goes back not only to the courts of medieval kings where dwarfs and hunchbacks hunch backs frequently furnished cruel amusement to bored nobles and their ladles ladies it Is also to be found even before the christian Chri era it has recently been demonstrated this insatiable curiosity concerning human beings of unusual 11 shape coloring or habits Is of very ancient origin in the quarterly journal of the international school of bedle 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 as three eyed people one legged mountaineers and people with ears as large large as aa pillows dr D E washburn ashburn 7 einal professor of Sanskrit Sans kilt and comparative para tive philology at yale university who Is vice president of tho the american section of the international school of vedic and allied research points out in the article referred to tile epic view of the earth that the stories about these queer people sometimes are based on cacti facts while others are travelers tales distorted the epic referred to the alabab barata was probably composed coro posed about U B 0 but la Is made up of stories taftt had been handed down from even older times to ta means tile the great war of the blia ratas the people of india which took place probably in the twelfth century B C but the epic contains in its one hundred thousand stanzas much material which is not directly connected with the ilie great war a mere eighteen days battle the epic Is really an din dia of information presenting the philosophic social and ethical ideas of ancient indin india the colorful cepl theta applied to the ali e various tribes described in the course of the long rambling story reveal to us the fact that the ancients were just as much interested in n freaks of nature as the average circus going american Is a today one Is reminded of the big lapped women from africa featured in a great circus when one reads of the who use their ears as coverings it might be supposed that this Is a reference to a tribe whose ears were naturally very large but professor hopkins draws our attention to the fact that the large eared folk mentioned in the old epic have evidently survived to our own day ile he says 1 I myself saw near madura some individuals with ears so distended by heavy earrings that an english 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 gome to the theory that the so called pineal gland in the human brain Is the remnant of what once was a third eye certain reptiles do have the structure of an eye tn in the pineal ineal gland but professor hop hins alna suggests that the third bird eye of these three eyed toss may have been a sectarian forehead mark the mark of coln cain referred to in th bible has been supposed by sonic some to have been a tribal wark mark tattooed or turned burned on tile the forehead such a mark on the men mentioned in the epic may easily have been la in the shape of a glaring eye in the center 0 of the forehead to inspire terror in their enemies just as the american indians pointed painted themselves grotesquely tes quely before going into battle |