4 86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



with their neighbors. Saying of the Kois that they all seem to 

 suffer from chronic fever (which sufficiently shows why they are 

 left unmolested in their malarious wilds) Morris tells us that 



" They are noted for truthfulness, and are quite an example in this respect to the 

 civilized and more cultivated inhabitants of the plains." 



According to Shortt, in his Hill Ranges of Southern India 



" A pleasing feature in their [Sowrahs] character is their complete truthful- 

 ness. They do not know how to tell a lie. They are not sufficiently civilized to 

 be able to invent." 



I may remark in passing that I have heard other Anglo-Indians 

 assign lack of intelligence as the cause of this good trait a not 

 very respectable endeavor to save the credit of the higher races. 

 Considering that small children tell lies, and that lies are told, if 

 not in speech yet in acts, by dogs, considerable hardihood is shown 

 in ascribing the truthfulness of these and kindred peoples to stu- 

 pidity. In his Highlands of Central India, Forsyth writes : 



"The aborigine is the most truthful of beings, and rarely denies either a 

 money obligation or a crime really chargeable against him." 



Describing the Ramdsis, Sinclair alleges that 



" They are as great liars as the most civilized races, differing in this from the Hill 

 tribes proper, and from the Parwaris, of whom I once knew a Brahman to say : 

 ' The Kunabis, if they have made a promise, will keep it, but aMahar [Parwari] is 

 such a fool that he will tell the truth without any reason at all.' " 



And this opinion expressed by the Brahman, well illustrates the 

 way in which their more civilized neighbors corrupt these vera- 

 cious aborigines; for while Sherwill, writing of another tribe, 

 says " The truth is by a Sonthal held sacred, offering in this re- 

 spect a bright example to their lying neighbors the Bengalis," it 

 is remarked of them by Man that 



" Evil communications are exercising their baneful influences over them, and 

 soon, I fear, the proverbial veracity of the Sonthal will cease to become a by- 

 word." 



In The Principles of Sociology, vol. ii, 437 and 574, I gave 

 the names of others of these Indian hill-tribes noted for veracity 

 the Bodo and Dhimals, the Carnatic aborigines, the Todas, the 

 Hos ; and here I may add one more, the Puluyans, whose refuge 

 is "hemmed in on all sides by mountains, woods, backwaters, 

 swamps, and the sea," and who " are sometimes distinguished by 

 a rare character for truth and honor, which their superiors in the 

 caste scale might well emulate." So too is it in a neighboring 

 land, Ceylon. Wood-Veddahs are described as "proverbially 

 truthful and honest." From other regions there comes kindred 

 evidence. Of some Northern Asiatic peoples, who are apparently 

 without any organization for offense or defense, we read : " To 



