CRANIOLOGY OF PEOPLE OF INDIA. 281 



affinities. This conclusion is supported by the length and marked dolichocephalic 

 proportion of the cranium, which is more pronounced in the Dra vidian tribes than in 

 Indo- Aryans like the high-caste Brahmans of Bengal.* 



It should, however, be pointed out that the relatively long and narrow (leptoprosopic) 

 face possessed by the greater number of the skulls is an Indo- Aryan character, so that 

 possibly these families of Thugs were the result of intermarriage between members of 

 the two dominant Dra vidian and Indo- Aryan races. 1" Their religion, Hindu or Musal- 

 man as the case might be, would have been determined by the traditions and usage 

 of their families, and by the prevailing religion of the district in which they lived. 



Much has been written of late years on the skulls of those who had committed 

 serious crimes, and a criminal type of skull has been looked for. As the Thugs had 

 reduced assassination and robbery to a system, and carried it on in a wholesale manner, 

 so that when a party of travellers was attacked no one was allowed to escape, and the 

 dead bodies were buried without leaving a trace, and as these practices had been 

 hereditary in families throughout several generations, the conditions, it may be thought, 

 were such as to favour the production of a type of head indicative of moral perversion. 

 The skulls were therefore examined for stigmata or characters which could be associated 

 with a low development, or with degenerative changes in the head. 



The lower region of the forehead, as a rule, ascended almost vertically from the 

 glabella and supraorbital ridges, which were not specially prominent, and the nasion 

 was not depressed. The vertex was not flattened, the cranial vault was arched (figs. 54, 

 63), and the mean height was about equal to the mean breadth. In two specimens, 

 however, the forehead was retreating, and the glabella and supraorbital ridges were 

 prominent (fig. 62). Although in several skulls the cranial sutures were undergoing 

 obliteration from age, there was no sign of premature synostosis ; and the presence of 

 sutural bones, and modifications in ossification in the pterion, were not more frequent 

 than is often met with in a similar number of skulls not obtained from criminals. The 

 crania were not deformed either from artificial pressure or from developmental irregu- 

 larity, and there was no departure from the customary symmetry. The dentition was 

 normal, and in only one upper jaw were the wisdom teeth not erupted. The hard palate 

 was usually shallow and moderately wide, but in two specimens it was highly arched 

 and its depth was 16 mm. opposite the second molars. The maxillo-premaxillary suture 

 was faintly marked in a few of the palates. In one skull the atlas was ossified to 

 the occipital bone, but no specimen had a third condyl. Although the intracranial 



* Mr Risley, in his Anthropometric Data of the Tribes and Castes of Bengal, vol. i. p. 21, e.s. Calcutta, 1891, 

 gives a table of measurements of a hundred Brahmans. In 32 the cephalic index was 80 and upwards, in 30 it was 

 from 775 to 79 - 9, in 25 from 75 to 77'4, and in only 13 it was below 75. When an allowance is made for the 

 difference between the index in the living head and in the skull, there still remains a decided preponderance in the 

 Brahmans of heads either brachycephalic or approximating thereto. 



t The influence exercised by intermarriage on the physical characters of a race is discussed in Mr T. H. 

 Holland's interesting study in Contact Metamorphism, which shows the nature and degree of physical modification 

 of the Kulu Kanet caste, owing to true blood fusion with the Mongoloid Kanets of Lahoul in the Western Himalayas 

 (Journ. Anth. Inst., vol. xxxii. p. 96, 1902). 



