506 BURMA, ITS PEOPLE AXD PRODUCTIONS. 



This 'quoit' is really an 'anklet' or ' bangle,' like that fij;urctl in Memoirs 

 Geological Survey of India, vol. x. pi. vii. Dr. Mason goes on to add : 



"It will not be disputed but the celts of Burma have tho/wrwi of pro-historic 

 implements, but all I have seen appear to mc of comparatively modem manufacture, 

 and I think Mr. Theobald, who knows most about them, is of the samo opinion. The 

 natives say they are jneked up in the streams, or found on the mountain sides, or 

 dug out of the ground, b>it their representations are utt(irly untrustworthy and deserve 

 no more credence than their assertions that they came down originally from heaven 

 with the lightning, or that they have ])o\ver to cure disease." 



To avoid misconception here, I may say that I told Dr. Mason that not im- 

 probably 'celts' were still manufactured, especially from jade, in Upper Burma, for 

 sale ; but I nowise intended to convey any doubt of the genuine and archaic charai'ter 

 of the models which these modern celts were intended to imitate. As for Dr. Jfason's 

 very disparaging estimate of native testimony, it is, to say truth, based on prejudice. 

 I can only say that the very large weapon figured in pi. iii. vol. x. Memoirs 

 Geological Survey of India, was picked up in a wild mountain stream by a servant of 

 mine, in my presence, and such is no doubt the way that all genuine celts arc no\v-a- 

 days found. Dr. Mason goes on to add : 



" But sujiposing, for the sake of argument, that these spades and hoes were 

 formerly used in Burma for agricultural purposes, their use necessitated the existence 

 of means to cut down trees, and clear the forest, and, therefore, of iron instruments, 

 for all the celts in Burma would not cut down a single teak tree; so we are forced to 

 the conclusion that these stone and copper imjilements co-existed with iron, when wo 

 may suppose iron was scarce, and not sufficiently abundant for all purposes ; a state 

 of thiugs which it is not necessary to go down to below zero in the Mosaic chi'onology 

 to find. 



"Not many days' walk fnim Balmoral, where the Queen oats off gold and silver, 

 I have seen, in the latter half of the nineteenth century people dining on wooden 

 dishes. Now were these people, with their wooden platters in the pantry, sunk by a 

 sudden catastrophe into the mud of the lake by which they dwell, they might, before 

 the century closes, be dug up again a veritable ' cran-'nog,' and by the reasoning now 

 applied to celts, it might be proven tliat they lived in a ' wooden age ' before crockery 

 was known. 



" Many people stand masticating the truths of the Bible as an ox docs his fodiler, 

 lest they should incontinently swallow a myth, but at sight of such trumpery shams 

 as these Hindu and Chinese ' Brummagem ' wares, they instantly read us marvellous 

 dissertations on pre-historic times, long before Closes was born or thought of, on this 

 wise — ' These stone instruments clearly prove that there was a period in pre-historic 

 times when the Burmese or the inhabitants of Burma, of whatever race they were, 

 were wholly unacciuaiuted with the arts of fabricating iron, steel, and metal instru- 

 ments for cutting, and they resorted to the more ditHeult work of fashioning stono 

 into adzes and axes, and other cutting instruments.' — Credat Juddeus A2}ella, -non et/o." 



It is needless, however, to pursue the subject, or point out how untimablo 

 Dr. Mason's views are, as the authenticity of .stone weapons as a class is quite bej-ond 

 challenge, though the particular uses to which many of them were put may be open 

 to ([ucstion. E(iua]ly certain is it, that although stone weapons may still be used by 

 barbarous tribes in out-of-the-way nooks and corners of the world even at the present 

 day, yet identical or similar weapons were used by our savage forefathcu-s in war and 

 the chase, and in their domestic life, at a ]ieriod long before the dawn of history, 

 cither sacred or profane, and when the ^lamnioth and Cave-bear, and other extinct 

 contemporaries of those animals still wandered over Europe (England included), and 

 shared the douunion of the wild with man himself. 



