1879.] in Central India. 7 



" celt," figured at page 363 of Sir W. Wilde's Catalogue of the Irish Anti- 

 quities above referred to. At page 367, Sir W. Wilde shows how this class 

 of celts is supposed to have been fixed on to the handle, and be writes : 

 " Fig. 252 represents 2 simple, flat, wedge-sbaped celts passed through a 

 wooden handle and secured by a ligature, possibly of thong or gut." 



And on the preceding page, he remarks — 



" Left without historic reference, and with but few pictorial illustra- 

 tions, we are thrown back upon conjecture as to the mode of hafting and 

 using the metal celt. As already stated, this weapon-tool is but the stone 

 implement reproduced in another form, and having once obtained a better 

 material, the people who acquired this knowledge repeated the form they 

 were best acquainted with, but economized the metal and lessened the bulk 

 by flattening the sides. In proof of this repetition in metal of the ancient 

 form of stone celt may be adduced the fact of a copper celt of the precise 

 outline, both in shape and thickness, of one of our ordinary stone imple- 

 ments having been found in an Etruscan tomb, and now preserved in the 

 Museum of Berlin." 



In this specimen, however, as indeed in the case of nearly all the iron 

 axes found in Central India, the bands are of iron. And it does not ap- 

 pear unnatural, that, the tribes who used these weapons having discovered 

 the use of iron, and the place of the stone hatchet having been supplied by 

 an improved axe of iron, the ligatures of thong too, should, in like 

 manner, have given way before the bands of iron shewn in the engraving. 

 An axe, similar to this one in nearly every respect, was found by me in the 

 main group of barrows at Junapani. One of the bands, however, was 

 missing. In another case the bands were found loose by the side of a 

 small axe to which they evidently belonged. Col. Glasfurd found in the 

 Godavery district an iron axe similar in other respects to these, but without 

 .the bands. I am inclined to think that the bands, being of thinner metal 

 than the weapon itself, may have been eaten away by rust and have thus 

 disappeared. The specimen found by Mr. Dangerfield is in excellent 

 preservation, the spot on which it was found being dry and hard. 



This axe was shewn to Col. Maisey, some of whose beautiful drawings 

 of the Bhilsa or Sanchi Topes are engraved in General Cunningham's work. 

 He immediately remarked, that the specimen exactly resembled the wea- 

 pons carved on the " Topes" of which he had made sketches years before. A 

 reference to Plate XXXIII, Fig. 8, Cunningham's Bhilsa Topes,* will shew 

 the hatchet with bands. In the carving on the Tope the bands are not 

 placed well in the centre. But the accuracy of the native sculptor may 

 have been at fault. A hatchet fastened on to the wood in the manner re- 

 * See also " Orissa" by Dr. Rajendralala Mitra, c, i. e. 



