706 PRINCIPAL SIR WILLIAM TURNER ON 



bridge, nostrils dilated, clubbed at the tip ; mouth large, lips thick, jaw orthognathic ; 

 zygoma large and salient ; malar bones fiat and prominent ; cheeks full, C. J. Malcolm 

 stated * that, though light and spare in limbs and body, the}^ were very active and 

 capable of undergoing great fatigue. The fullest account of the customs of the Bhils 

 has been given by Captain C. E. Luard, Superintendent of Ethnography,! from which 

 it appears that Bhils cannot marry outside the tribe, though in the septs into which 

 the tribe is divided marriage is exogamous as regards the sept ; infant marriage is 

 not practised, and the remarriage of widows is permitted. They worship the powers 

 of nature, and each village has its tutelary deity : they all reverence the Ber tree 

 {Zizyphus jujuba). 



There is a difference of statement as to stature. Hendley gave the mean of 128 men 

 as 5 feet 6 inches. Malcolm spoke of them as of short stature, active, and when well 

 fed equal in height to a Hindu. Luard stated that they were of low stature, the 

 average height of the men being 5 feet 2 inches. Tattooing is common with both 

 sexes. The characteristic weapon is the bow, and the name Bhil is said to be derived 

 from the Dravidian word, for a bow. The dead are cremated and the ashes are thrown 

 into a neighbouring river. The burning of the dead throws difficulty in the way of 

 obtaining the skulls of this Dravidian tribe. 



In July 1908 Lieut.-Colonel Sir James R. Roberts, I.M.S., then Residency Surgeon 

 at Indore, presented me with six skulls collected in the Alirajpore State, where the 

 Bhils are numerous. They were obtained in the vicinity of a camp where the Bhils 

 had been gathered together during the famine of 1890 and where many had died. 

 Three skulls were apparently males and three females (Table I.); four were adults 

 (Nos. 7, 8, 9, 10) ; in a fifth (11) the permanent molars had erupted but the basi-cranial 

 synchondrosis was not ossified ; whilst in a sixth (12) the synchondrosis was not ossified 

 and the wisdoms were not erupted. The lower jaw had been preserved in only one 

 skull (10), and in another (8) the facial bones were missing. 



Norma verticalis. — The skulls were moderate in size and of dolichocephalic 

 proportions. The cranial outline was ovoid, but in No. 8 the parietal eminences were 

 so prominent that the skull had a pentagonal outline. The vault was slightly raised 

 in the sagittal region, but was not keeled, neither was the suture depressed below the 

 plane of the parietals. The slope from the suture to the eminences was moderately 

 steep, but in No. 12 the transverse arc of the vault was flattened. The side walls of 

 the crania did not bulge, and the greatest parieto-squamous breadth, except in No. 7, 

 was at or near the eminences. The suprainial squama was moderately convex, especially 

 in the females, but in No. 7 the inion formed the occipital pole of the cranium and the 

 squama sloped upwards and forwards. The postparietal region sloped gently downwards 

 to the lambdoid suture. With one exception the skulls were cryptozygous. 



* Trans. Roy. Asiatic Soc, 1. 88. 



t Census of India, p. 162, 1901 ; and more fully in the Ethnographical Survey of the Central India Agency, Mono- 

 graph No. 2, "Jungle Tribes of Malwa,'' Lucknow, 1909, with numerous plates. 



