Indian Antiquary Vol 02

SR No.: 032494
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 428
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 20 MB

Page 402

866
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[DECEMBER, 1873.
slightly fenced, and the approaches guarded at powder and priming flasks. Sugar is a thing difficult points by palisading, loop-boled and they do not seem to care about, but they liked our strengthened by heavy stones, and on command- rum, and themselves prepare a liquor from rice ing view-points there are out-looks. The conser which has a pleasant taste, and is drunk, well dilatvanoy is admirable, and the houses, though ed, by suction through reeds from the jar in which smoke-begrimed from having their fire places it is made. We called it hill-beer. Their name inside, are clean. Each house usually has its own for it is "ju." enclosed patch of fenced kitchen-garden to one They manufacture ererything necessary to their side, and, though not built perfectly symmetrical, simple mode of living-cooking and liquor pots, they are ranged to form streets. In the middle wooden platters, baskets, salt, saltpetre, cotton of the town is a large house used as a town-ball. cloth, dhaos, and axes. The eartbenware is moald
The frame-work of a house is of wood for the ed. The baskets are of every shape and size, from posts and beams, and bamboo for the roof; the the store basket, which will hold 50 msunds, to floor is raised a few feet above the ground, and is the little thing which holds the woman's needles laid with bamboo split and beaten flat, the walls and thread: they are woven of shreds of bamboo heing of the same material, woven in a large che- with great neatness. Gourds and bamboos are quer pattern with very neat effect; the roof is a used for water. thatch of gross and palm leaves. The average Their apparatus for cleaning, carding, spinning, dimensions are 30 by 12 (Poiboi's was 40 yards and weaving the cotton is similar to that in use in long), of which the first third is left open ; & ramp Bengal. The cloth is very strong and closeof logs lends up to them, and on one side of the grained, in breadths of three feet, unbleached, with ramp is a platform for sitting out in fine weather ; a narrow blue border, or dyed entirely blue. Some under the eaves are the fowl-houses, and hung of the cloth used by them, resembling & dark over the house front are the skull and horns of tartan, is said to come from Manipur. Salt they animals captured in the chase. The interior, manufacture from the ashes of bamboo leaves, and which is closed by a neatly-made sliding door, is saltpetre from cowdang urinated on. Their forges usually undivided; in some a half-partition por are not in any way remarkable, a pair of large tions off part as a granary; door at the back bamboo oylinders being the bellows: but they turn leads to a small platform behind. In the middle out remarkably good arms, working up the iron of one side an open fireplace is made of slabs of which they get from elsewhere to suit their own stone, above which hangs a frame for smoking
tastes us to shapo. The szos ate of that peculiar ment and fish, and beyond it is usually raised
construction used among most of these tribesplace for sleeping on. In the open front of the flat-ended peg tied in socket in a bamboo bandle. house is the pig-trough and the mortar for cleaning There are no archeological remains, excepting rices' work done by the women daily. This rice, the rough slabe, with rough outlines of figaros which is of large white grain and very nutritious, cut on them, which cover old graves, and there forms their principal food, and is grown by dry are no ronde, communication being by footpaths, cultivation on cleared spots on the hillsides. which in the more populated parts are brood and
Their method of agriculture is having selected easy. * patch of jungle and marked it by putting arrows I had almost forgotten to mention the women, in the split stumps of small trees round it, to fell but we saw so little of them; they are pleasant, and burn it when dry just before the mains, and, round, flat-faced creatures, continually smoking, sonttering the mabes, to dibble in the grin with and lively among themselves; their dress is dhaos, deserting the spot after three years when the sonty bluu kilt, and cloth thrown over the shouldsoil is worked out. The crop cut at its proper ers, with the head usually uncovered, and the hair season is threshed and stored on the ground till the loose or nently braided. They wear no ornamenta. end of the harvest, when it is carried in by the They vary in colour, some being quite fair with rowy women in large baskets slung by a band across the | cheeks. Their children are carried on their backs. forehead, their mode of carrying all barthews. Be The products of the country are India-rubber, sides the rice they raise maize, a sort of yam, sweet wax, and ivory, usually bartered for salt. The potatoes, beans of several sorts, ginger, tobacco, traders are mostly Manipuris.-Report of the Topopot-herbs, gourds, squashes, cotton, plantains, and
graph. Survey of India, 1871-72. plants giving a dark-blue dye, and they domesticate pigs, goats, dogs, fowls, and pigeons, all for food ; ON PROF. HOERNLE'S THEORY OF THE milk they never touch, and the metns, which they
GENITIVE POSTPOSITIONS. allow to roam half-wild, is kept only for its flesh and SIR, -The question of the origin of the genitive borns, the latter being made, for one thing into postpositions in the modern vernaculars of Iudia