THE HUMAN SPECIES. 189 



conquest in the wars of Lankadwipe or Ceylon ; although they 

 nad many wars with their more western conquerors. The 

 nation is further mixed up with Brahminical mythology; for 

 Bhil, the chief god of these foresters, slew Heri, one of the 

 Pandoo family. Bheel likewise shot Chrishna with an arrow ; 

 and the Kabandaz of the same primeval stock are related to 

 have captured Kama. These, with many others, extending to 

 beyond the Brahmaputra, may be considered as the physical 

 Nagas of Sanscrit lore ; that name being still applied to the 

 Cookies, whose inveterate cannibalism we have already men- 

 tioned ; and other tribes of the same source, such as the Chong, 

 extend to the extremity of the Malay peninsula. 1 * 



The nations of this class, mystified in the records of tradi- 

 tion, mythology and legends, are again prominent in Southern 

 Asia ; such as the Nagas and Nishadas, the Acephali of Greek 

 authors, or Nimreks, Flatheads, Dombuks, Kakasiah, or Black 

 Brethren; in Persian lore, they are the objects of constant per- 

 secution and extermination, by the earliest heroes of the first 

 Iranian riding conqueror tribes — Husheng, Temurath Div- 

 bend, &c, who sometimes vanquish Deeves, at others subdue 

 the black tribes of Southern Persia, among whom there appear 

 to have been one or more, whose foreheads were naturally, or, 

 perhaps by art, greatly depressed — a character we shall soon 

 see which occurs again in America. Bones and crania of men, 

 with this conformation, have been found in Yemen;! profdes 

 ~A Negroes, similarly conditioned, occur in Egyptian figures, 

 published by Gau and others ; and the same frontal structure 

 is observed in portraits referred to Caratchai (black Circassians, 

 more probably Koords), allied to the Georgian stock, as if they 



* There are tribes of Negroes in Central Africa, likewise known by the 

 name of Nagas ; and Cookies is again the name of the dark slaves of 

 New Zealand. 



t Communicated by an officer who was employed in surveying that 

 coast. 



