THE MALAYS, THE NATIVES OF FORMOSA, AND THE TIBETANS. 815 



removed from the base of its skull, for the sawn edge was horizontal and had been 

 polished. I compared it with some specimens of Tibetan praying drums in the 

 Anatomical Museum of the University, formed by the apposition of the vaults of 

 two skull bowls, and I have little doubt that the cut section had been covered with a 

 layer of dried skin, and had formed one of the two segments of a praying drum. The 

 Tibetans evidently regard the bowl of the skull as an object to be utilised in religious 

 ceremonial and as having a symbolical or mystic signification. Colonel Waddell, in 

 his admirable work on Tibet,* gives a figure " Revelation Gospels " in which a skull 

 bowl is held in the left hand and a trumpet formed of a human thigh bone in the right, 

 and another figure of a hermit of the order of St Mila who holds a skull bowl also in 

 the left hand. The conversion of the femur into a trumpet is another example of the 

 utilisation of a part of the human skeleton in the ceremonial observances of the people 

 of Tibet, and the Museum possesses several specimens of this kind. 



In this skull bowl the section had been made a little above the glabella through the 

 supra-nuchal part of the occiput, and below the highest part of the squamous suture. 

 The length was 176 mm. and the greatest breadth 134 mm., which gave an index 76*1. 

 If the glabella had been present, the index would have been a little less, so that the 

 skull had probably been dolichocephalic. In the bowls of the two praying drums in 

 the Museum the section had been made somewhat higher in the skull, and the relations 

 of length and breadth could not so well be determined. 



Sagittal Sections. 



In this memoir, as in its predecessors, I have reproduced tracings of sagittal 

 sections of some of the skulls which have been described, in order to show the contour 

 of the skull immediately on one side of the mesial plane. Lines, radiating from 

 the basion to definite points on the surface of the skull, as well as other lines which 

 pass between other anatomical points, have been drawn. As I have explained 

 the direction of the lines and the position of their terminal points in my 

 Challenger Report, and in Part iii. of " The Craniology of the People of the Empire of 

 India," I may refer to these memoirs for a detailed description of the significance of 

 the lines. The measurements and the points between which the lines were drawn are 

 given in Table IV. 



In comparing the measurements of the three skulls with each other, it should be 

 kept in view that they differ in the proportions of length and breadth. The Murut 

 is dolichocephalic, the Botan from Formosa is mesaticephalic, the Bajau is brachy- 

 cephalic. Whilst those radial measurements which express the height of the cranium 

 as the basi-lambdal, -perpendicular and -bregmatic, show comparatively little difference 

 in the three crania, the radii which run more in the direction of cranial length, as the 

 basi-inial, -glabellar, -nasial, are much shorter in the Bajau than in the other crania. 



* Lhasa and its Mysteries, London, 1905. 



