144 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [Aim. 



and a Mother, Mama. Some may think that the first word in the 

 month of an English or Hindoo child ' Ma-ma' is the mere human 

 bleat like the Ba-a of a lamb. But this is not so ; we now know that 

 still more widely diffused young humans do not call their mothers 

 Ma-ma but ' Ai' or ' Aya,' and it is probably with tribes of these latter 

 1 Aya' races that I am now dealing. 



" Already the Council of the Society has, to some extent, taken up the 

 subject by the Circular to which I direct my motion, by which attention 

 is called to that most essential object, the collection of specimens of the 

 Physique of Indian races and especially of the Crania by which they 

 are principally classed. And my object is to urge on the members 

 of the Society the importance of co-operating in that and other ways, 

 towards ascertaining accurately the position, in the great human race, 

 of the aborigines who form the population of a great tract of country 

 in what I may call the immediate vicinity of Calcutta. For, from the 

 commencement of the hill country immediately west of the line of 

 the East India Railway far into Central India, these races occupy the 

 country in great numbers and they principally supply our labour 

 market. 



M From various sources, the opinion more and more gains strength 

 that before the appearance of the present races, Europe and Asia 

 were, in very remote times, inhabited by another and more primeval 

 race of which the Australian savages have been taken as the near- 

 est modern representatives. All the oldest Crania seem to ap- 

 proach to this type, and in language also traces of the ancient speech 

 seem to linger in the Basque country, in the North of Europe, and else- 

 where. Now the Australian type does not stand alone. It is well 

 ascertained to be but one branch of a very low but very widely spread 

 race of men usually called Negrito (to distinguish it from the true 

 Negro), a very black, very ugly, very thick-lipped, very wretched and 

 very savage race, spread over the whole of the Australian-Indian 

 Archipelago and the extreme Southern Islands and Peninsulas of Asia. 

 In all these countries, this Negrito race is always found to occupy, in 

 an aboriginal character, the interior and more inaccessible parts, while 

 the exterior parts have been occupied in times comparatively recent 

 (but still prior to authentic history) by other races. Approaching 

 India from the South and East we have this Negrito race, in a com- 



