136 J. Cockburn—Notes on Stone Implements. [No. 3, 
a cross ligature of tendon or cord gives additional security to keep the 
‘head from falling out and the handle from splitting.* 
That some celts were so handled has received additional confirmation 
from a Plate in Fergusson’s Zree and Serpent Worship, where a man, 
considered an aborigine}, is represented cleaving wood with a celt, which, 
as the cross ligature and the projection of a portion of the metal above the 
handle show, was handled in the manner suggested in the Cat. Ant. R. I. A. 
But figs. 274 to 251 in that work, and all bronze celts of the long narrow 
type were, I am inclined to think, hafted imbedded in a knot as in the 
modern Assamese axe. Flat copper celts of exactly the same type as 
represented in the bas-reliefs of the Sanchi Tope have been found in the 
Mainpuri District, in the Gangetic Dudbt and also in the Balaghat District, 
hardly more than a foot below the surface, indicating their use at a com- 
paratively modern date.§ Copper or bronze (?) implements were, I am 
inclined to think, in use all over the Dudb in the second century after 
Christ, in conjunction with iron, which was either too costly to be pro- 
cured by the poorer classes or too valuable to manufacture agricultural 
implements of. At this era I would assume that certain tribes of aborigines 
who yet maintained their independence, in impenetrable jungles or hills 
in various parts of the country, continued in or were slowly passing out of 
a stone age. The chert flakes and arrow heads found in Bundelkhand 
on the surface possibly originated at this time, as well as some of the 
numerous polished celts found in this part of the country. 
We know how rapidly savage communities pass from a Stone age into 
an age of Iron, from the evidence of Capt. Cook regarding the New Zealan- 
* A remarkable find of copper implements at the village of Gungeria, Mhow taluk, 
Balaghat District, is recorded in P. A. 8. B. for May, 1870, (with a Plate), when 424 
copper celts and some silver ornaments were found a few inches below the surface of 
the ground. I would suggest that specimens 1 A, 1 B were socketed as in the Assamese 
axe, while 3 A, 3 B, 3 C were handled after the fashion shown in the railing at Sanchi, 
and as divined in the Cat. of the Royal Irish Academy. With regard to the very extra- 
ordinary silver plates found at the same time, I would throw out the suggestion that they 
were human ornaments, and not bovine. The only instance of a similar silver ornament 
worn among savages at the present day, is the possibly analogous thin silver plate, 
worn on the forehead by the Mishmi women (see Dalton’s Ethnology of Bengal). It 
is improbable that the race who made these ornaments venerated the cow at all. 
t+ Fergusson calls these people Dasyus and elsewhere speaks of them as hated and 
despised aborigines. 
t P. A.S. B., 1868, pp. 251, 262. 
$ A flat-copper celt of exactly this oblong type has been found associated with 
Buddhist remains in the Chaubara mound, Muttra. General Cunningham, Report of the 
Archeological Survey, 1871-72, p. 16, Vol. 2. 
