OTHER ANTIQUITIES. 



161 



the presence of the buffalo images, and the similarity in make 

 and texture of the ancient urns to the modern pottery of their 

 work-people, the Khotas, seem to indicate some connection 

 between the Todas of past days and the remains in question." 



The Eev. Mr. Schmid in a letter to the Editor, Bombay 

 Branch Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. Ill, Part I, No. XII, 

 alleges that, I have confined my theories respecting the 

 diffusion of Scythicism to the Nilgiris solely. If he will 

 refer to the Madras Journal of Literature and Science, 1844, 

 he will find that I therein described a cromlech in the low 

 country of the Carnatic, and spoke of the Celtic Scythians in 

 India, three years previous to my paper on the Todas of the 

 Nilgiris (1847). In the former paper I stated the 

 peninsula of India was inhabited by a Celtic Scythian race, 

 prior to the advent of the Hindus, and even glanced at 

 their former existence in China, where in the island of 

 Amoy a cromlech stands, or once stood. 



To return to the route pursued by the early Scythian 

 invaders of India. Colonel Meadows Taylor in his " Student's 

 Manual of the History of India," says, Chapter VIII, page 40, 

 " it may be assumed therefrom that a Turanian or Scythian 

 race became settled in the southern portions of India, after an 

 invasion or invasions by a more southern route than the 

 Aryans, and that the prehistoric monuments may have been 

 constructed by them and are memorials of their progress. 

 Certain it is that in the purely Aryan and northern provinces 

 of India, no such structures have been found. These are 

 cairns, dolmens and cromlechs, huge rocks which have been 

 placed in certain forms as temples, barrows and tumuli. " I 

 believe that this southern route lay along the Malabar Coast|| 



|| In 1829 or 30 I discovered near Navacollum in Travaneore, the temple 

 apparently Druidical, below described. Shrouded by overhanging trees, 

 stood a semi-circular terrace cut from a projection in the side of a hill. It 

 was reached from below by a flight of rude steps, and on it stood a small 

 cromlech consisting of two stones supporting a third ; the front of the terrace 

 overlooking the foot of the hill was enclosed by a low wall (vide sketch). 



