INDIAN BOAT DESIGNS. 231 



Islanders also employ the former fishing method, but being of different racial origin, 

 they appear to have borrowed it from the Maldivians via Minicoy. 



The balance-board using fishermen in Palk Bay employ also a method ofsfishing 

 small Octopus for bait which likewise is found in the Pacific — the sinking overnight 

 of large numbers of shells tied at short intervals along a long rope. In Japan the 

 refinement of employing small narrow-necked earthenware jars instead of shells is 

 practised. 



I am inclined to think that the migration of these Polynesians passed on at some 

 indeterminate period from South India and the Maldives to Madagascar, for a good 

 many of the Malagasy tribes older than the Hova (the Hova being by tradition the 

 latest arrived of the various Malagasy- speaking waves of immigration that have suc- 

 cessively broken upon the shores of this island), according to Sir H. H. Johnston, 

 bear a strong facial resemblance not to the Mongoloid Malay, but to the true Poly- 

 nesians of the present day. 



As this paper is not intended to do more than to put forward certain hypotheses, 

 and the limited evidence in favour of such shown by the survival of peculiar boat 

 forms in India, I cannot take up satisfactorily the anthropological aspect of the prob- 

 lems involved; indeed without an extensive anthropometric survey of the fishing 

 communities of our coasts such an attempt would now be folly. It is unfortunate 

 that Mr. Thurston's investigations from this standpoint did not include sufficient 

 examples from the coastal areas in India where Polynesian boat designs persist — hence 

 no data are at present available to check my Polynesian hypothesis with the excep- 

 tion of the measurements which I have taken recently relating chiefly to the Parawa 

 fisher caste of the Tinnevelly coast given below. The subject is a greatly involved 

 one, for we have to face the fact that the Austric -speaking peoples are very hetero- 

 geneous anthropologically though fairly homogeneous linguistically. 



The presumption is however that this strain, if it existed, was brachycephalic 

 and the fact that the Tulu, Canarese, and Marathi-speaking peoples include a large 

 proportion of round skulls, whereas the Malay alis of Malabar are typically long-headed, 

 is decidedly in favour of my main contention, as one of the clearest facts brought out 

 in my survey of boat designs is that the Konkan and the Kanarese coast inhabited 

 by the comparatively broad-headed Marathas, Canarese, and Tulus are distinguished 

 by strong adherence to the outrigger design, whereas on the Malabar coast, occupied 

 by the long-headed Malayalis of Dravidian race, this form of boat is singularly con- 

 spicuous by its absence. 



Thus Thurston ' in a table of the head measurements of representative classes in 

 the areas in question, gives the following : — 



Three classes of Marathas as having cranial indices of 82 "2, 81 -8, and 79*8 res- 

 pectively; of five classes of Canarese-speaking people as 81-7, 78-5, yy^, yy6 and 

 77'3; of two Tulu-speaking classes as 8o-i and 78*0 respectively (Billavas and Bants), 

 while of three classes of Malayalis, the average indices were as low as 75 "i, 74*4 and 



' Castes and Tribes of South India, Vol. I, p. xxxviii. 



