ARTS IN THE STONE AGE. 35S 



with symbols of their divinities it may be their Mars and Ceres 

 under the form of weapons of w r ar, or instruments of agriculture. 

 Nor is this so unlikely as it might otherwise appear, when we know 

 that these celts are still objects of worship in India. Mr. Evans, 

 quoting from the Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, says 

 that they are there venerated as sacred, and it is known that, in a cer- 

 tain village in the Shewaroy hills, some hundreds of polished celts, 

 of varying sizes, resembling those found in England and Scotland, are 

 preserved in a temple, arranged in rows. They are guarded with the 

 utmost jealousy by the priests, each representing some particular 

 sioamy or deity, and each receiving from time to time a dab of red or 

 white paint, as a proof that the priest has performed before it the cus- 

 tomary poojah or worship. 



This being so, the discovery of these implements in Europe may 

 have some bearing upon an important ethnological question. We 

 have good reason to believe that the dolmen-builders came, in the first 

 instance, from India, for we find in Wilts and Berks, and elsewhere, 

 exact counterparts of some megalithic structures, and those of a pe- 

 culiar construction, which yet remain in the same Shewaroy district in 

 which the celt-worship is still practised. May we not, then, regard it 

 as possible that the fabrication of polished instruments, as well as the 

 practice of dolmen-building, originated in India, where they are still 

 retained, and that these costly polished celts were brought hither by 

 our Aryan ancestors, as the Israelites carried their Teraphim about 

 with them, or as the Trojans, after the fall of their city, are repre- 

 sented in Virgil as carrying with them their household gods : 



" Ilium in Italiam portans, victosque penates; " 



and that the worship was only abandoned here as men became enlight- 

 ened, or were subjected to the dominion of some race of a different 

 theology? Since we find abundant traces of the Aryan language in 

 our own, and of their sepulchral architecture in our dolmens, why 

 should we not find in our fields and fens some of their idols? It is 

 quite consistent with, and in a certain sense confirmatory of, such a 

 belief, that, in almost every country in which these things are found, 

 they are regarded by the common people with superstitious reverence, 

 as if the practice of adoration had in the lapse of ages merged in a 

 vague and faint tradition of sanctity. 



Nor is it any objection to this hypothesis, but the reverse, that 

 these implements are usually found in and about dolmens, as at Tu- 

 miac and Mont St. Michel, where nearly seventy highly-polished celts 

 of imported materials Asiatic jade and hard tremolite were found 

 ranged in regular order. It has been usual with almost all people, in 

 all ages, that those things which they most esteemed in life should 

 rest with them in their graves ; and as we often find in our own coun- 

 try the priest's paten and chaliee placed in his coffin, or the Anglo- 



