Abors and Galongs : Notes on certain Hill Tribes of the Indo-Tibetan Border. 



By George D-S-Dunbar. 

 [With Plates I— XVI, XVIII— XXIII.] 



Chapter I. — History and External Relations. 



Archaeological discoveries in Crete and in Egypt, in Assyria and in Tanhuang, 

 have brought before us not only the dry bones of official records, but the everyday 

 life of civilizations that nourished thousands of years ago. Aurignacian art has 

 bequeathed to us vivid indications of the conditions under which our remote ancestors 

 struggled for existence amidst the formidable wild beasts of cave and forest and steppe. 

 But the Abor, and his neighbours, set up no records. He and his forebears have rejec- 

 ted stone. Wood, although his country is almost invisible for the trees, he will have 

 none of. Metal work dug up in cultivation, the remains, possibly, of some pre- Abor 

 race, together with any fragment of broken metal, is liable to be incontinently melted 

 down to suit the needs of the hour much as our own ancestors, to serve a Protean 

 fashion in plate, converted their earlier silver into the three-pronged forks of Queen 

 Anne. His ideas of art are limited to elementary patterns on the loom and to the rough 

 conventional designs of the smith in his clay and wax castings. These are chiefly for 

 discs for the women's girdles and for rough ornaments and charms, and are gener- 

 ally in imitation of designs met with on imports from Tibet. The brass bracelets 

 made by the village smiths furnish the best examples of indigenous art. The tattoo 

 marks with which he and his womenkind adorn their faces and the calves of their legs 

 are of the simplest description. So far as observation can determine there exists in 

 the country nothing, either ancient or modern, comparable to the art of pre-historic 

 man in Central Europe, or to his ancient equivalent and survival, the Bushman of 

 South Africa, for the interesting bowls known as dankis and the more or less 

 elaborate bells found throughout these hills are not of local manufacture. 



The word ' ' Abor ' ' is Assamese for an unfriendly man l and should not be confined 



to the clans living between the Dibang and the Subansiri: It is not a word used in 



oriinofName ^e hills , although during the Dana expedition 2 some of 



the inhabitants of the Upper P.oma valley described them- 

 selves as Tagen Abors, having learnt the expression on some visit to the plains. A 

 hillman calls himself a man of whatever village he belongs to, or if his village is a 

 small one may call himself a Basar, Kebang or Simong man after the dominant 

 community under whose shadow his hamlet is permitted to exist. For although 

 community of interests and blood relationship undoubtedly connect the integral 

 portions of the various hill clans, it is the village and not the clan that thinks and 

 holds and acts together. 



> See Butler " Sketch of Assam," p. no. 5 In 1910. 



