171< Note^ on the Baigds of Bahif/Mt. [Nov. 



wit] I one or two outlets, or as three sides of a square, all the houses in one 

 row being joined together, and have a neat verandah in front, all the houses 

 having their fronts towards the centre of the square. The neatness of a 

 Baiga village which has been established above a year, is quite wonderful, 

 and sets a good example to the larger and more civilized villages of the 

 plains. Moreover, they seldom remain in one place more than three years, 

 and when they are once deserted, nothing but a few pieces of charred bamboo 

 and the smTounding clearings show where they once existed. 



84. The shyness of the Baiga s has been frequently mentioned in various 

 reports, and many people who have had to deal with them have complained 

 of the difficulties which they have experienced in meeting them, as no sooner 

 have the intending visitors come within sight or hearing of one side of the 

 village .than the inhabitants have disappeared in the opposite direction 

 amongst the rocks and jungles. Whether such is or is not now the case in 

 the wildest parts of the country I do not know ; but, so far as my brief 

 experience goes in my visits to villages on the Bhainsighat range and near 

 the Tipagarh hill, I have alwa3"S found the Baigas quite friendly ; the men 

 have come out into the middle of the squares to converse, and the women, 

 so soon as they have seen that no mischief w^as intended, have clustered 

 with theii' children in the verandahs of their houses.* 



I 



3. From Edward Thomas, Esq., on the notice of the coin of Plato, 



lately purchased by the British Museum. 



' The notice of the coin of Plato, lately purchased by the British 

 Museum, w^hich appeared in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, for 

 February last (p. 31), is imperfect, under its most important aspect, in con- 

 sequence of the waiter having apparently rehed upon the cast forwarded to 

 the Society instead of critically examining the original piece itself. 



' The singular value of this coin consists in its bearing on its surface the 

 full date of issue in the Seleucidan era, in which respect it is unique in the 

 entire Bactrian series, and, moreover, the date itself furnishes a just tribute 

 to the value of Numismatic science, inasmuch as it exactly accords with the 

 epoch General Cunningham had already assigned as that of the decease of 

 Eukratides and the accession of his successor, which the obverse of this 

 specimen sufficiently declares Plato to have been (Prinsep's Essays, ii, 175). 



' Although we were fully prepared to anticipate the natural use of the 

 Seleucidan era by the Bactrian Greeks, its confirmatory appearance gives 

 weight to the theory of its extension among the subordinate dynasties with 

 whom the Greeks came in contact, and materially strengthens my own view 

 of the propriety of the application of that system of reckoning to the dates 



* A full account of the Baigas will be found in the Central Provinces Gazet- 

 teer, p. 278. Ed. 



