BULLETIN 



ESSEX IITSTITUTE. 



Vol. 19. Salem: July to Dec, 1887. Nos. 7-12. 



( )X THE SAXTHALS, A SKMI-BARBAROUS TRIBE 

 OF NORTHEASTERN BENGAL. 



KY OIL SAMUEL KNEELAN1). 



When in Copenhagen in 1885, I hud the opportunity to 

 see some photographs of the Santhal tribe, and afterward 

 obtained possession of some ornaments worn by the San- 

 thals, a tribe of northeast Bengal, before their conversion 

 t<> Christianity by Messrs. Borresen and Skefsrud of the 

 Danish mission, established and successfully carried on by 

 them at Ebenezer station, in the hill districts to the north- 

 west of Calcutta, from the year L867. Before describing 

 these specimens a brief account of the character, manners 

 and customs of this people, as obtained from Danish mis- 

 sionaries and English officers, and acquaintance with their 

 race in Ceylon, may be interesting. 



The Santhals are probably from the same stock as the 

 Kharwars, an aboriginal race which, after long wanderings 

 in the highlands of Asia, came to India many thousand 

 year- ago. They seem to have been the first dwellers in 

 India, but were followed by degrees from Central Asia by 

 many other peoples, of whom the Hindoos were the most 

 powerful and best known. Colonel Dalton (Ethnology of 



ESSEX INST. BULLETIN, VOL. XIX. 8* (95) 



