02 PROFESSOR SIR W. TURNER ON 



untidy. The Gonds are about the same height as the Marias and Bhatras, but are 

 larger and heavier in build than the Onions or Kols. They are scantily clothed and the 

 women are tattooed. The dead are cremated and the ashes are then buried, but it is 

 said that the women and children are buried without being cremated. The grave is 

 duff so that the head lies to the south and the feet to the north. In character, the 

 Gonds are reserved, sullen, and suspicious, and the Marias are a shy, timid people. 

 They are totemistic and exogamous. They practise both infant and adult marriage, 

 and widows remarry. The unmarried young men sleep in a common dormitory, and 

 in some villages there is a similar provision for the unmarried young women. Dalton 

 says that they are indifferent cultivators, and careless about the appearance of their 

 houses. The Gonds, who are not Hinduised, worship their own deities and the spirits 

 of the forests in which they live. From the Census Report of 1891, it would appear 

 that 1,379,580 people were returned as speaking the Gond branch of the northern 

 Dravidian group of languages, though the actual numerical strength of the Gonds is 

 said to be 2,897,591. 



The Edinburgh University Anatomical Museum contains four skulls of Gonds from 

 the Godavery district, though the exact locality is not known. They had originally 

 been in the collection of the late Dr Handyside, and were marked " wild tribes called 

 Gotten or Gond, from Godavery district of Central India." They were all adults, 

 though the wisdom teeth were not erupted in D ; three were presumably males and 

 one a female. 



Norma Verticalis. — The crania had a marked family likeness. They were 

 elongated, narrow, with vertical sides, and dolichocephalic in form and proportions. 

 In the males the parietal eminences were feeble, in the female (C) they were more pro- 

 jecting and gave greater relative breadth to the cranium. In both sexes they were 

 situated considerably in front of the occipital point. The vault of the skull was some- 

 what roof-shaped, but not ridged in the sagittal line. The skulls were cryptozygous or 

 nearly so. In three specimens the Stephanie diameter was greater than the asterionic. 



Norma Lateralis. — The skulls rested behind on the cerebellar part of the occiput. 

 The glabella and supra-orbital ridges, although visible, were not prominent even in the 

 men. The forehead in the males only slightly receded ; in the female it bulged slightly 

 forward. The antero-posterior curve of the cranial vault rose gently to the vertex, and 

 from the obelion it sloped downwards and backwards into the occipital squama, which 

 projected behind the in ion. There was no sign of parieto-occipital flattening. The 

 frontal longitudinal arc in each skull was slightly less than the parietal, but always 

 considerably in excess of the occipital arc. 



The nasal bones were of moderate size, with the bridge not prominent and concave 

 forwards ; the fronto-nasal suture was not depressed, and the nasal spine of the superior 

 maxillae was moderate. The junction of the side walls and floor of the anterior nares 

 was rounded, and in three specimens the floor of the nose was separated from the 

 incisive region of the maxilla by a low ridge. The canine and incisor fossae were of 



