4i8 



NATURE 



[September 29, 19 10 



bining distinctly savage features with a fairly advanced 

 civilisation, is illustrated by the Adittanalur cemetery -n 

 the Tinnevelli district recently excavated by Mr. Rea. 

 I'wo skulls discovered here are prognathous, suggesting a 

 mixture of the Negrito and Uravidian types. There is no 

 trace of cremation, and in most cases the smallness of the 

 urn openings implies that the corpses were exposed to birds 

 of prey, and that only such bones as could be discovered 

 after removal of the (lesh were collected for interment ; or, 

 according to another interpretation of the facts, we have an 

 instance of the custom of mourners carrying with them, 

 like the modern Andamanese, the relics of the dead. These 

 interments certainly extended over a long period, neolithic 

 weapons being found in some graves, while in others iron 

 arms were discovered fixed point downwards near the urns, 

 as if they had been thrust into the ground by the mourners. 

 In the richer graves gold frontlets, like those of MyceniE 

 and other Greek interments, were fastened over the fore- 

 head of the corpse. These were, like the Greek specimens, 

 of such a flimsy type that they could never have been used 

 in real life. It is a remarkable instance of a survival in 

 custom that at the present dav some tribes in this region 

 tie a triangular strip of gold on the forehead of the dead, 

 the import of which, on the analogy of the death masks of 

 Siam, Cambodia, ancient Mexico, and Alaska, we may 

 interpret as an attempt to guard the corpse from the 

 glances of evil spirits while the spirit is on its way lo 

 deathland, or to be used in processions of the corpse. 



The question remains : To what races may we attribute 

 these successive phases of culture in southern India? The 

 Tamil literature, as interpreted by Bishop Caldwell and 

 Mr. V. Kanakasabhai, shows the existence of an advanced 

 type of archaic culture in this region ; but the evidence to 

 connect this with the existing remains is as yet wanting. 

 We may reasonably assume that neolithic man survives in 

 the existing population, because we have no evidence of 

 subsequent extensive migrations, except the much later 

 arrival of Indo-Aryan colonies from the north, and that of 

 the Todas, whom Dr. Rivers satisfactorily identifies with 

 the Nayars and Nambutiri Brahmans of Malabar. The 

 occurrence of a short-headed strain among some tribes in 

 western India probably represents some prehistoric migra- 

 tion by sea or along the coast line from the direction of 

 Baluchistan or the Persian Gulf. The suggestion that it 

 is the result of a Scythian or Hun retreat from northern 

 India in the face of an advancing ,\ryan movement is not 

 corroborated by any historical evidence, and is in itself 

 improbable. The customs of dolmen and kistvaen burial 

 still persist among some of the present tribes, and they 

 display some reverence for the burial places of their for- 

 gotten predecessors. This feeling may, however, be due to 

 the habitual tendency of the Hindu to perforin rites of 

 propitiation at places supposed to be the haunts of spirits, 

 and need not necessarily connote racial identity. 



The most primitive type identifiable in the population of 

 south India is the Negrito, which appears among the 

 \"eddas of Ceylon, and among the Andamanese, who retain 

 the Negrito skin colour and hair, but have acauired, prob- 

 ably from some Mongoloid stock, distinct facial characters. 

 It has been the habil with some writers to exaggeraie the 

 Negrito strain in the south. But tribes like the Badagas 

 and Kotas, which have been classed as representative cf 

 this type, possess none of the Negrito characters, which 

 appear only among the more primitive Kurumbas, 

 Malayans, Paniyans, and Irulas. In all the modern tribes 

 the distinctive Negrito marks — wooUiness of hair, prog- 

 nathism, lowness of stature, and excessive length of arm 

 — have become modified by miscegenation or the influences 

 of environment. 



The resemblances in culture of the Indian Negrito with 

 the cognate races to the east and south-east of the Penin- 

 sula are too striking to be accidental. The Kadirs of 

 Madras climb trees like the Bornean Dayaks, clip their 

 teeth like the Jakun of the Malay Peninsula, and wear 

 curiously ornamented hair combs like the Semang of Perak, 

 among whom they .serve some obscure magical purpose. 

 The Negrito type deserves special examination in relation 

 to the recent discovery of Pygmie.s in New Guinea, and the 

 monograph on the Pygmy races in general by Dr. P. W. 

 Schmidt, who regards them ^s the most archaic human 

 type, from which he supposes the more modern races were 

 developed, not by a process of gradual evolution, but /)cr 

 NO. 2135, VOL. 84] 



saltitm. If there be any force in these speculations he is 

 justified in expressing his conviction that the investigation 

 of the Pygmy races is, at the present moment, one of the 

 weightiest and most urgent, if not the most weighty and 

 most urgent, of the tasks of ethnological and anthropo- 

 logical science. 



This Negrito stock was followed and to -a considerable 

 extent absorbed by that which is usually designated the 

 Dravidian. The problem of the origin of this race has been 

 obscured by the unhappy adoption of a linguistic term to 

 designate an ethnical group, and its unwarrantable exten- 

 sion to the lower stratum of the population of northern 

 India. At present the authorities are in conflict on this, 

 the most important question of Indian ethnology. One 

 school denies that this people entered India from the north 

 or north-west on the ground that the immigration of a 

 dolichocephalic race from a brachycephalic area is im- 

 possible, and insists that the distinction between the 

 so-called Dravidians and Kolarians is linguistic, rot 

 physical. The other theory postulates the origin of the 

 Dravidians from the north-west, that of the Kolarians from 

 the north-east ; and avoids the difficulty of head form by 

 referring the Dravidians to one of the long-headed races of 

 central or western Asia or north Africa, or by suggesting 

 that their skull form has become modified on Indian soil Ly 

 environment or miscegenation. 



Recent investigations, archasological or linguistic, throw 

 some new light on this complex problem. Sir T. Holdich, 

 in his recent work " The Gates of India," asserts that 

 Makrdn, the sea-board division of Baluchistan, is full of 

 what he calls "Turanian," or Dravidian remains. He 

 explains the position of the Brahui tribe in Baluchistan, en 

 whom the controversy mainly turns, by assuming that 

 while they now call themselves Mingal or Mongal and 

 retain no Dravidian physical characters, the survival cf 

 their Dnavidian tongue is due to the fact that it is their 

 mother langu.age, preserved by Dravidian women enslaved 

 by Turco-I^Iongol hordes. Relics of the original Dravidian 

 stock, he suggests, may be found m the Ichthyophagi, or 

 fish-eaters, whom Nearchus, the admiral of .-Mexander the 

 Great, observed on the Baluchistan coast, living in dwellings 

 made of whale-bones and shells, using arrows and spears 

 of wood hardened in the fire, with claw-like nails and long 

 shaggy hair, a record of the impression made upon the 

 curious Greeks by the first sight of the Indian aborigines. 



In the next oiace, inquiries by Dr. Cirierson in the course 

 of the Linguistic Survey prove that what is called the 

 Mon-khnier linguistic family, which preceded the Tibeto- 

 Burmans in the occupation of Burma, at one time prevailed 

 over the w^hole of Further India, from the Iraw'adi to the 

 Gulf of Tongking, and extended as far as .■\ssam. To this 

 group the Munda tongue spoken by some hill tribes in 

 Bengal is allied ; or, at least, it may be said that lan- 

 guages with a common substratum are now spoken not 

 only in Assam, Burma, Annam, Siam, and Cambodia, but 

 also over the whole of Central India as far west as the 

 Berars. " It is," says Dr. Grierson, " a far cry from 

 Cochin-China to Nimdr, and yet, even at the present day, 

 the coincidences between the language of the Korkus of the 

 latter district and the Annamese of Cochin-China are 

 strikingly obvious to any student of language who turns 

 his attention to them. Still further food for reflection is 

 given by the undoubted fact that, on the other side, the 

 .\Iunda languages show clear traces of connection with the 

 speech of the aborigines of Australia." The last assump- 

 tion has been disputed, and it is unnecessary to discuss this 

 wider ethnical grouping. Though identity of language is a 

 slippery basis on which to found an ethnological theory, it 

 seems obvious that the intrusive wedge of dialects allied to 

 the Mon-Khmer family implies that the Central Indian 

 region was at one time occupied by immigrants who forced 

 their Way through the Eastern Himalayan passes, their 

 ariival being antecedent to the migration which introduced 

 the Tai and Tibeto-Burman stocks into Further India. 



When the solution of this problem is seriously under- 

 taken under expert guidance, the first step will be to make 

 an exhaustive survey of the group of forest tribes, from the 

 SantAls and Paharias on the east, passing on to the Kols 

 and Gonds, and ending with the Bhds on the west. At 

 present our information of the inter-relations of these tribes 

 is fragmentary, and their superficial uniformity does not 

 exclude the possibility that they represent more than one 



