114 PROFESSOR SIR W. TURNER ON 



Negrito race could have reached southern India and passed to south-eastern Asia and 

 Australia. 



That a Negrito race is scattered in the Philippine Islands is well established, and 

 that similar people exist in other islands of the great eastern Archipelago, and in a few 

 localities on the adjacent continent, has been asserted by eminent authorities. There 

 can be no doubt that the Mincopies, or natives of the Andaman Islands in the Bay of 

 Bengal, have the Negrito characters of low stature, very dark skin approaching black, 

 with woolly or frizzly black hair growing in short, close curls. The proximhty of these 

 islands to the Indian peninsula has seemed to indicate that a Negrito population had 

 preceded in India the present dark-skinned Dravidian race, and that traces of their 

 existence can be still found in the aboriginal people. Although some writers have 

 referred to black, frizzly or woolly-haired tribes in certain of the mountainous districts 

 in India, the evidence on this head is by no means conclusive, and it may be a question 

 if the terms woolly or frizzly may not have been loosely used to characterise the wavy 

 hair which has been seen in individuals of some of the aboriginal tribes. The statements 

 which have been made in regard to this question have been carefully analysed by A. B. 

 Meyer, in his Memoir on the Distribution of the Negritos* and he has come to the 

 conclusion that the present state of our knowledge does not permit a judgment to be 

 given that the aboriginal people of India were Negritos. As bearing on this matter, I 

 may state that Dalton, in his Ethnology of Bengal, figures a Santal with curly hair, 

 quite distinct, however, from the short, close locks of the natives of the Andaman Islands. 

 In his portraits of the Juangs and Korwas, two tribes short in stature and primitive in 

 habits, the hair is long, more or less matted, but not curly. Messrs Forbes Watson 

 and Sir J. W. Kaye have reproduced f photographs of a Santal, Kurumbas, Yenadies, 

 a jungle tribe of Chingleput, a Toda and a Kandh with curly tangled hair. Edgar 

 Thurston, in his description of the short, broad-nosed tribes of Southern India, figures 

 Kadirs from the Anaimalai Hills, in whom the hair was curly, relatively long, and 

 projecting from the head, not unlike the " mop " of the Papuans. He also gives 

 portraits of Paniyans from Malabar and Kurumbas from the Nilgiri Hills, in whom the 

 hair had a similar character. These tribes or races are primitive in their habits, and the 

 stature does not apparently exceed 5 feet 2 inches. Wavy and curly black hair are, 

 he says, in the south Dravidians common types ; but he had seen no head of hair to 

 which the term woolly could be correctly applied.^ The wavy or curly character seems 

 to be no more marked than the curly locks not unfrequently seen in the white races. 



I need not dwell upon the physical characters and the customs of the people of the 

 Andaman Islands, as they have been described in considerable detail by J. Mouat,§ 

 E. H. Man, || de Quatrefages,1F and E. S. Brander. ## 



* Dresden, 1899. + The People of India, 10 vols., 1868, e. s. London. India Museum. 



X Madras Bulletin, vol. ii. No. 3, p. 187, 1899. § Adventures in Andaman Islands. London, 1861. 



|| Journ. Anihrop. Inst., xiv., 1885. 



T Les Pygmies, Paris, 1887 ; and in conjunction with M. Hamy, Crania Ethnica, p. 184. 

 ** Proc. Roy. Soc. Edin., 1880, p. 415. 



