1855.] Memorandum on an unknown Forest Race. 209 



for his homicide, which act by the way he explained very clearly 

 to us by signs as well as words, or that they were frightened in 

 some way by the Dhangurs or villagers ; for the next morning it was 

 found that they had absconded ! and I could never hear of them 

 again to my very great disappointment, for I felt, and still feel 

 certain, that they were of a race utterly different from the Coles 

 and Dhangurs, and probably approaching to the Veddahs of Ceylon. 

 "When we recollect that until the Goomsur Campaign, we knew 

 nothing of the extraordinary people inhabiting those jungles, and 

 that it is only since we have had a station at Darjiling that we 

 know any thiDg of the Lepchas, and recently again to the eastward 

 of the singular people who live on trees in the Chittagong or Tippe- 

 rah territories.* When we recollect all this, and that not many 

 years before Lord William Bentinck's government a Civil Servant 

 of high standing, in a public minute, scouted the idea of the exist- 

 ence of Thuggee,t and again in the note from Captain Oakes which I 

 have submitted to the Society J when we find that the ruins of the city 

 of Doolinee are within a few miles of the station of Purulia, and yet are 

 only now to say discovered, through a rude legend of a petrified city 

 perseveringly investigated. When we consider all this, then, I hope 

 it will not be thought extravagant to suppose, that we really have 

 a small forest tribe buried somewhere in the vast jungles of the 

 wild country between Palmow, Sumbhulpore and the head waters of 

 the JNerbudda ? and I place my recollection of them now before the 

 Society, in the hope that by giving it publicity, we may direct 

 enquiry to the subject, and perhaps rescue from utter oblivion a 

 remnant of one of the aboriginal races of India who, as to appear- 

 ance, may well justify the singular myth of Hanuman's aid to Rama 

 in the conquest of Lanka ; which, like all other myths has no doubt a 

 remote foundation in truth, such a one for instance as the tradition 

 that the people who assisted the hero-god in his war, were like 



* It was about the date to which I refer above, or later I think, that the Toda- 

 wurs of the Nilgerries were first discovered. 



f I have seen this in one of the early volumes of the Asiatic Annual Register, 

 about 1820, I think, but I cannot refer to it. 



X Published below : Its publication was deferred in the hope of further particu- 

 lars from Captain Oakes, after his proposed visit, 



2 E 2 



