78 Specimen of Iron from the Bhunakar hills. [Jan. 



the trees, destined to smelt its produce. The expanse thus cleared is 

 abandoned for a regrowth of the Sauls. The furnace or chuld is of 

 clay, about 3 to 3^ feet broad, and each is served with three large 

 bellows worked by the feet ; the heat produced is considerable. The 

 ore undergoes a second, and sometimes a third smelting, and the iron 

 is called the best in India. The price on the spot is 3 Rs. a maund. 



The Sontals of these forests are described as a hardy but not a 

 comely race, eating like the Dhangars, rats, snakes and any vermin ; 

 they are equipped with bow and arrow wherever they go, and let 

 nothing alive escape them. Animal life there is consequently little of, 

 although the barren character of the forest, and the scarcity of water, 

 must also account in a measure for this. Spotted deer (the Axis of 

 Buffon) and two bears were shot by my informants, but the animals 

 seemed to have all what is termed a great deal of travel in them, as 

 with creatures used to roam far for food. The Sontals are handy in 

 devising and constructing implements. Their cart is chiefly of hewn 

 Saul wood, the wheels being solid, and the whole constructed of wood 

 alone. The knife they use for cutting food is of a very hard wood, 

 not procurable in that part of the country. They were not observed 

 to have the bamboo at all in use. 



I think the peculiarity of using wooden articles, even to the knife, 

 in an iron country is as remarkable a fact as I have met with in India. 

 The explanation is most likely to be found in some superstition con- 

 nected with the desecration of the staple they live by, if used by them 

 for vulgar purposes of common life. An analogous idea of reverence 

 for the thing they use or live by, may be traced largely throughout 

 Hindu society, from the silkworm tender, who preserves a diet, lives 

 single, and neither washes nor shaves during the production of the 

 cocoon, to the writer who worships his inkhorn, and the champion 

 (pahlwdn) who will not lift his two-handed sword (band) till he has 

 salaamed to it. This consideration might be followed out in an expo- 

 sition of what may be termed " the philosophy of idolatry." 



