92 PROFESSOR SIR W. TURNER ON 



Teli. Table V. 



The Teli or Til i is a banking, trading, and oil-pressing caste in Bengal, Behar, and 

 Orissa. Some are Hindus, others Mahommedans in religion. In Bengal, amongst the 

 richer classes, they permit infant marriage and forbid the marriages of widows. In 

 Orissa, again, they adhere more to aboriginal customs ; they hold, says Mr Eisley, 

 totems in reverence. Infant marriage is not essential, and widow marriage is allowed. 

 They cremate the dead. They number from 4,000,000 to 5,000,000 of people. 



Two crania of this caste have come under my observation ; one, No. 598 in the 

 Indian Museum, a male from the village Pittoria, near Ranchi, Chiita Nagpiir ; the 

 other a female, presented to me by Dr Hedley Wood, from Raipur in the Central 

 Provinces. The general form in the norma verticalis was the elongated ovoid so 

 frequently referred to in the preceding descriptions of the dolichocephalic crania of the 

 aborigines ; this form being associated with vertical sides and a rounded occipital 

 squama. The length-breadth index in the man was 72*8, and the basi-bregmatic 

 diameter exceeded the parieto-squamous ; in the woman the index was 72 ; the basi- 

 bregmatic height was much below the parieto-squamous diameter, and the parietal 

 longitudinal arc was longer than the frontal. The forehead was not receding ; the 

 glabella and supra-orbital ridges were not prominent. The nasal bones were not 

 projecting, and the bridge was flattened ; the nasal spine of the superior maxillae was 

 moderate ; a ridge marked off the floor of the nose from the incisive region of the 

 upper jaw ; the anterior nares were wide, and the index in each specimen was platy- 

 rhine. In the Teli man, the upper jaw w 7 as orthognathous, in the woman prognathous. 

 In the man the orbital index w T as microseme, in the woman mesoseme. In both, the 

 palato-maxillary index was just within the brachyuranic group. In the woman's skull 

 there were no osseous irregularities. The cranial capacity in the man was 1370 c.c. ; 

 in the woman it was only 1005 c.c. 



Uriya. 



In addition to the crania described in the preceding part of this memoir, which are 

 definitely associated with particular races, tribes, or castes, the Indian Museum contains 

 a number of skulls from Orissa, marked in the catalogue Ooria or Uriya. Uriya is a 

 linguistic term, which expresses a particular derivative of Sanskrit. It is the mother 

 tongue of a very large percentage, said to be 95*1 per cent., of the Hindu population 

 of Orissa, of those who inhabit the plains as distinguished from the aborigines who live 

 in the mountains, and the name of the language is given to the people who speak 

 it. As the aborigines of this province speak either Dravidian or Kolarian, the Uriya 

 tongue of the Hindu population in Orissa contains a mixture of archaic forms and words 

 derived from those languages. Uriya-speaking people form a considerable proportion 

 of the class of domestic servants in the north-east of India, which probably accounts for 



