116 ON THE SANTHALS 



handsome faces, and the fore-arms are often elaborately 

 tattooed. The children are uncommonly pretty and both 

 sexes go nearly naked until the age of five or six years ; 

 the men have contracted the sedateness of the continental 

 Malay, among whom they live, and have not the jollity of 

 their Ceylon and Madras brethren and the Polynesians. 

 The Ceylonese men carry their hair straight back from 

 the forehead, put up behind in a knot like a woman's and 

 kept in place by a tortoise-shell comb ; it is sometimes al- 

 lowed to hang down the shoulders. When covered at all, 

 the head bears a small turban or many colored straw hat. 

 The dress is loose and flowing, as in the SanthaPs ; the fea- 

 tures are handsome. They are considered as of less mixed 

 stock than the Tamils or Tamulians, and are very dark. 

 The children are singularly pretty, and the sexes hard to 

 distinguish even by the dress, until the beard begins to 

 grow. The Tamil boatmen are tall and well-formed, and 

 carefully shave their scalps and faces. The Coolies dress 

 simply in a waist cloth, but the better classes wear folds of 

 white linen or cotton, rolled around the body and carried 

 over the left shoulder leaving the right arm free. Females 

 of all ages wear bracelets and anklets of silver or other 

 metal, but not the nose and car ornaments of the Klings. 

 They chew betel, which the Santhals do not. These so- 

 called Dravidians have adopted many of the customs and 

 ideas of their Mahommedan and Hindoo conquerors, while 

 the Kolarians, and the Santhals especially, driven to the 

 mountains, and practically independent, have preserved 

 their traditional characteristics, and may be cited as the 

 best specimens of the pre-Aryan, probably aboriginal, in- 

 habitants of India, and very likely as coming the nearest, 

 of any tribes now living, with the Juangs, to the pro- 

 Malay stock. 



1 am of opinion that sufficient attention has not been 



