lx REPORT—1868. 
The next subject which I have to bring officially before you will interest 
the members of the Congress no less than ourselves, and relates to the action 
of your Committee appointed last year to represent to the Secretary of 
State for India “the great and urgent importance of adopting active measures 
to obtain reports on the physical form, manners, and customs of the indige- 
nous populations of India, and especially of those tribes which are still in the 
habit of erecting Megalithic monuments.” 
Upon consideration the Committee decided that it would be better in the 
first instance, to direct the attention of the Secretary of State to the last- 
mentioned subject only, both because the whole inquiry was so vast, and 
because systematic efforts are now being made by the Indian Government to 
obtain photographs and histories of the native Indian tribes, Their efforts 
are, as regards the photographs obtained in India, eminently successful, which 
renders it all the more disappointing that the descriptive matter appended to 
them in this country, and which is happily anonymous, is most discreditable 
to the authority under which it is issued*. 
It will, no doubt, surprise many here to be told that there exists within 
300 miles of the British capital of India, a tribe of semi-savages who 
habitually erect dolmens, menhirs, cysts, and cromlechs, almost as gigantic 
in their proportions as the so-called Druidical remains of Western Europe, 
which they greatly resemble in appearance and construction; and what is 
still more curious, though described and figured nearly a quarter of a century 
ago by Col. Yule, the eminent oriental geographer, except by Sir John Lub- 
bock these erections are scarcely alluded to in the modern literature of 
prehistoric monuments. In the Bengal Asiatic Journal for 1844, you will 
find Col. Yule’s description of the Khasia people of East Bengal; an Indo- 
Chinese race, who keep cattle but drink no milk, estimate distances traversed 
by the mouthfuls of pawn chewed en route, and amongst whom the marriage 
tie is so loose that the son commonly forgets his father, while the sister’s son 
inherits property and rank. Dr. Thomson and I dwelt for some months 
amongst the Khasia people, now eighteen years ago, and found Col. Yule’s 
account to be correct in all particulars. The undulatory eminences of the 
country, some 4-6000 feet above the level of the sea, are dotted with groups 
of huge unpolished square pillars, and tabular slabs supported on three or four 
rude piers. 
In one spot, buried in a sacred grove, we found a nearly complete circle 
of menhirs, the tallest of which was thirty feet out of the ground, six feet 
broad, and two feet eight inches thick ; and in front of each was a dolmen or 
cromlech of proportionately gigantic pieces of rock. 
The largest slab hitherto measured is thirty-two feet high, fifteen feet 
broad, and two feet thick. Several that we saw had been very recently 
erected, and we were informed that every year some are put up, but not during 
the rainy season, which we spent in the country. The method of separating 
the blocks is by cutting grooves, along which fires are lighted, and into which, 
when heated, cold water is run, which causes the rock to split along the 
groove; the lever and rope are the only mechanical aids used in transporting 
and erecting the blocks. The objects of their erection are various—sepulture, 
marking spots where public events had occurred, &c. It is a curious fact 
that the Khasian word for a stone, ‘‘ Mau,” as commonly occurs in the names 
of their villages and places, as that of Man, Maen, and Men, does in those of 
* IT am informed that measures have been taken to repair this, and that Col. Meadows 
Taylor, than whom a more competent man could not be found, has been appointed to 
undertake the literary and scientific portions in future. 
