OTTOROCORRAS
OTTOROCORRAS (
Ὀττοροκόρρας,
Ptol. 6.16. § § 2, 3), the E. termination of the Emodi Montes.
This is an example of a Sanscrit word which has been preserved in Ptolemy's geography, as it is merely the Greek form of the
Uttarakuru of the “Mahábhárata,” or the highland of the happy Indian Hyperboreans, who lived there sheltered from the cold blasts, about whom, under. the name of ATTACORRI, as Pliny (
6.20) relates, a certain Amnometus wrote a book. Ammianus (23.6.65), copying PtolEmy, has OPUROCARRA, and Orosius (
1.2) Ottorogorras.
The sacred race of men living in the desert of whom Ctesias (
Ind. 8, ed. Bähr) speaks, belong to this imaginative geography, which saw in the snow-capped summits of the
Himalaya the chosen habitation of the Gods and of the Blessed.
According to Ptolemy (
6.16.5,
8.24.7) there was a people of the Ottorocorrae, with a town of the same name, to the E. of the Casii Montes, or mountains of
Kaschgar; as the city is one of Ptolemy's points of recorded astronomical observations, having almost 14 hrs. 45 min. in its longest day, and being 7 hrs. E. of Alexandreia, there must have been some real locality bearing this name, which must be assigned to
E. Thibet. (Lassen,
Ind. Alt. vol. i. pp. 511, 847.)
[
E.B.J]
