June i, 1905] 



NATURE 



105 



confined in an aquarium, he points out, was observed 

 by iMobius to seek a sleeping place at night, and to 

 lay itself down to rest on one side. The psychologist 

 aiid the student of evolution will find in these chapters 

 of Mr. Boulenger a perfect mine of information. No 

 more instructive lessons in adaptation can be gathered 

 than from the descriptions and figures illustrating this 

 part and certain sections of Prof. Bridge's work — 

 as witness the te.Kt cuts given herewith. 



ABORIGINAL INDIA.' 



lyTR. BR.'\DLEY-BIRT'S book dealing with the 

 •'■'■'■ Santal Parganas merits the success achieved by 

 his former volume on Chota Nagpore. This time, he 

 lays his scene in the mountainous, forest-clad outlier 

 of the Vindhyan range, which stands like an island 

 in the midst of the great Gangetic plain. Dominating 

 the great waterway which leads from the borders of 

 the Punjab to the Bay of Bengal, it has for centuries 

 been the stronghold of the aboriginal tribe who 

 sought refuge in it from the 

 .'\ryan flood descending from the 

 north-west on the fertile plains 

 of Bengal. From his almost in- 

 accessible stronghold, the Paharia 

 looked down upon the coming 

 and going of the Hindu, the 

 Pathan, and the Moghul. Em- 

 pires rose and fell before his very 

 eyes whilst he, hating the 

 foreigner of every race and creed, 

 remained wrapped in his primi- 

 tive barbarism, a hunter living 

 on the produce of the surround- 

 ing forest, not to be starved into 

 submission, because he had no 

 need of the produce of the plains. 

 His only dealings with succes- 

 sive invaders were when he 

 swooped on the villages below, 

 killing and robbing their inhabi- 

 tants, or cutting off travellers 

 and the camp followers of pass- 

 ing armies. Neither Hindu nor 

 Mahomedan could subdue him 

 by main force without extrava- 

 gant loss. 



.Attempts to bribe the moun- 

 taineer with land around the mountain failed, for he 

 did not care to cultivate, and the keeping of a bargain 

 with the hated foreigner formed no part of his moral 

 code. 



.'\t last appeared the British, whose fair complexion 

 impressed the Paharia with an idea that they were of 

 higher origin than the earlier conquerors. In 

 .Augustus Cleveland came a man who found a way 

 to tame the savage, to enlist his sympathy, and to 

 offer an outlet for his martial instincts. Some of the 

 Paharias were enlisted as an irregular force, whilst 

 an endeavour was made to isolate the rest in a ring 

 of neutral territory, from which the Hindu and the 

 Mahomedan of the plains were to be excluded. Much 

 of Cleveland's good work was undone by a successor 

 of sterner and less considerate temperament. The 

 solution of the difficulty was finally found, about 1830, 

 when a wandering branch of the Santals, another 

 aboriginal tribe, appeared upon the scene and eagerly 

 accepted the land below the hills which the Paharia, 

 refusing for himself, made untenable for the plains- 

 man. The Santal, an enthusiastic though uncivilised 

 cultivator, recognised as a kinsman by the Paharia, 



1 "The Story of an Indian Upland." By F. B. Br.adley-Birl. Pp.xvi + 

 354. (London : Smith, Elder and Co., 1005.) Price 12s. o,/. net. 



NO. 1857, "*^OL. 72] 



formed an efficient buffer between the hillman and 

 the inhabitants of the surrounding plain. The Santal, 

 in turn, gave trouble in 1856, when he broke into 

 rebellion directed against the peaceful penetration of 

 the moneylender and the landgrabber. 



It is with these two aboriginal tribes that Mr. 

 Bradley-Birt chiefly deals. As men, they are perhaps 

 more interesting to the ethnologist and the philologist 

 than to the ordinary student of human nature, but the 

 author has succeeded in enlisting such interest as we 

 can spare to one tribe still in the purely agricultural 

 stage, and to another which has scarcely as yet 

 progressed beyond that of the hunter. 



His picture of village life on, and at the foot of, the 

 Rajmahal hills glows with local colour and swims in 

 the atmosphere of the jungle and the plain. It was 

 scarcely necessary for him to assure his reader that 

 most of the book was written in camp, in the midst 

 of the Paharias and the Santals. As one reads, one 

 seems to inhale the fresh, crisp air of an Indian cold 

 weather morning, or to pant in the heavy atmosphere 

 of the forest as the line of Paharia hunters presses. 



Mode of Irrigai 



shouting and slaying, through the dense under- 

 growth. 



Much that Mr. Bradley-Birt describes, or depicts m 

 his photographs, is not' peculiar to the Santal Par- 

 ganas. The primitive mode of irrigation, with basket 

 swung by two men, which forms the subject of the 

 illustration here reproduced, is still practised by 

 millions who have never heard of the Santals, or been 

 within a thousand miles of their home. .Ml over 

 India the cultivator watches his crops at night from 

 a rough platform raised on a ricketty scaffolding of 

 bamboos. Sometimes it happens, in regions not 

 unlike the Rajmahal hills, that the vigil ends in a 

 tragedy, when the sleepy watcher is torn from his post 

 by the man-eating leopard. But the inclusion of 

 these incidents in no way detracts from the charm of 

 the picture of simple village life, a life of agricultural 

 labour tempered by feasting and dancing in seasons 

 -,\hen there is no labour to be performed. 



The Paharias' rude religion has drawn nothing 

 from Hinduism or Islam. The Santal equally pro- 

 fesses his separation from those creeds, but his love 

 of pleasure has induced him to adopt some of the 

 Hindu festivals, for instance the Jatra, which he 

 celebrates in February. 



