xxviii Annual Address. 1 February, 1914. 



iu 



_ade in view of the importance to the officers of Government 

 of a knowledge of the customs of the people of the country and 

 their traditions and conditions of life. The original idea appears 

 to have been that the Society would become a centre of 

 reference and a Bureau of information for all Government 

 officers in Bengal who desired to pursue researches in these 

 matters. I regret to find that the Civil officers of Govern- 

 ment are not taking advantage of the Bureau to the extent 

 that was anticipated, but I believe that the reason is that the 

 existence of the Bureau and the assistance it is capable of 

 giving are not sufficiently well known. I find that many of the 

 officers with whom I come in contact never heard of it. One 

 officer to whom the Bureau was invaluable, was Mr. O'Malley, 

 whose excellent Census Report appeared during the past 

 year. The subjects with which the Bureau deals are such 

 as should be of profound interest to officers of Government 

 in all departments ; and the direct management of the 

 Bureau is in the hands of Mahamahopadhyaya Hara Prasad 

 Shastri who is exceptionally well qualified to answer enquiries 

 upon these subjects and to offer suggestions as to sources of 

 information, courses of study, or method of treatment. I trust 

 that henceforward far greater use may be made of the services 

 of the learned Shastri by officers of Government in this Presi- 

 dency than has been made in the past. I am taking steps 

 to make the existence of the Bureau and its objects well 

 known, and I hope in the near future to see a considerable 

 development in this branch of the Society's work. 



Mr. W. Kirkpatrick has continued his valuable researches 

 into the folklore and customs of the Gehara Kanjars and has 

 published a paper dealing with the marriage ceremony and 

 marriage customs of this Gypsy tribe. The same author has 

 also contributed a paper to which I have already referred on 

 the resemblances which exist between colloquial Hindustani 

 and the language of the European Gypsies Mr. J. Coggin 

 Brown has given an account of the A-Ch'ang or Maingtha 

 tribe of the Hohsa-Lahsa States in Yunnan, and has attempted 

 to prove that the grouping of these people with the Tai 

 is incorrect, and that they are really an almost submerged 

 Tibeto-Burman Clan. 



The important branch of prehistoric Archaeology has 

 received some attention. Babu H. C. Das Gupta has described 

 two spade celts from Assam, and has added evidence which 

 helps towards the association of these and similar forms 

 with the ancestors of the Mon-Hkmer peoples. Mr. J. Coggin 

 Brown exhibited a number of polished stone implements from 

 Yunnan before a meeting of the Society. 



An exhaustive memoir by Mr. James Hornell on the anti- 

 quity and the present condition of the Chank Bangle industry 

 in India, published during the year, forms a timelv contribu- 



