80 



The Antiquities of the 



[No. 32, 



Shortly afterwards I came to a smaller vessel and the fragments of 

 one of the same kind. 



The first I removed enth'e ; it was two inches in diameter, two high, 

 and one and a half across the neck. A cover with a cavity on the 

 top of it being removed from the aperture of this small vessel, dis- 

 covered a quantity of mould, and some very small unburnt bones in- 

 side. When I attempted to take the contents out of this vessel it 

 fell to pieces. 



I conjecture that these were the remains of children. 



The appearance of the relics does not denote that they belonged to 

 a time far distant from the present. 



Anterior to the arrival of our countrymen on the Neilgherries, in- 

 fanticide prevailed amongst the Thautawars, and Mr. tlough says no 

 inducements could persuade these people to declare the manner in which 

 the children were put to death, or show how their bodies were dis- 

 posed of after the perpetration of the act that had deprived them of 

 life. 



Revolving this circumstance in ray mind, and considering the fact 

 of the vessel containing the unburnt bones of infants being found in 

 the same cemetery, with the burnt bones of grown persons, I cannot 

 dismiss the idea, reluctant as I may be to entertain it that the former 

 were destroyed at the funerals of the latter, a barbarous right that 

 would agree with the Scythian practice of immolating females on si- 

 milar occasions. A more appropriate place than the present could 

 not occur to draw a comparison between the obsequies of the Scythians 

 and those of the Thautawars. 



I shall select only such portions of these ceremonies as subserve to 

 maintain the identity, not tiring the readers' patience with lengthy 

 descriptions of the whole of the rites. 



Herodotus, in Melpomene, recounting the funeral of a Scythian 

 king, states, that after the body has been transported through the 

 different provinces of the kingdom, it is placed in state on a couch set 

 round with spears. His concubines are then sacrificed, and a mound 

 of earth is raised over the remains of the king and his women. The 

 following year a number of mares are sacrificed to the deceased. 



Between the foregoing account and what follows, relating to the 

 obsequies of the Thautawars, a striking similarity will be seen to 

 prevail. 



At the expiration of some months, and sometimes of a year after 



