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328
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[Nov. 1, 1872.
were chipped off for medicine, was a periect circle. A tracing is given in Fig. 9.
The figure of a fragment of a smaller but similar instrument is given in Fig. 10 a. It is 0.5 of an inch thick on the inner margin, like the former one, but only 08 or 0-9 broad and is bevelled down on both sides to form an edge on the outer margin. A
section is represented in Fig. 10 b. It is made of · reddish brown compact rock which is scratched with a knife, and looks like magnesian limestone.
A small circular pebble with a hole bored through the centre had evidently, by the wear of the rock, been used at some period of its history, for a spindle whirl, and among the numerous nondescripts brought me for examination was a small article made of jade, of which a tracing is given in Fig. 11. It is only 15 of an inch thick. Thematerial is unquestionably Chinese and there can be no doubt but it is of Chinese workmanship. It is said that the inhabitants of Manchuria used jadetipped arrows as late as the twelfth century.
In regard to the use of the implements noted, some of the copper ones appear to have been used for spades and spearheads, and some of the stone ones for adzes and knives or cleavers or daggers; while others are doubtful. There is no reason however to believe that any of them were ever used for such purposes in Burmah. The material of which nearly all are made shows conclusively that they were not made here but have been imported. The far larger proportion of the stone ones are made of basalt or other rock foreign to Burmah, and have probably been introduced from Hindustan. In the northern parts of Burmah, they are usually made of jade and undoubtedly come from China; as do the copper ones, for there is no copper in Burmah, but it is constantly imported from China. The reason they have been introduced into Burmah, both by sea and by land is that they are regard ed by all the native tribes as thunderbolts fallen from heaven, and that they are talismans or amulets, protecting from evil and curing disease. Hence they have a fictitious value, and a trade is carried on with them at enormous prices. The solid copper wedges are rated at their weight in silver, and for the smallest of the copper spear. heads, Fig. 8, thirty rupees were demanded. Thirty rupees had been paid for the stone quoit Fig. 9, and in payment for Fig. 10, fifteen were demanded. These high prices necessarily lead to their manufacture. In America when fossil giants are in demand, they can be found almost anywhere by digging. In Yunan, celts principally of jade are so abundant, that Dr.
Anderson found them for sale in the bazars of Momein. -
It will not be disputed but the celts of Burmah have the form of pre-historic implements, but all I have seen appear to me of comparatively modern manufacture, and I think Mr. Theobald, who knows most about them, is of the same opinion. The natives say they are picked up in the streams, or found on the mountain sides, or dog out of the ground, but their representations are utterly untrustworthy and deserve no more credence than their assertions that they came down originally from heaven with the lightening, or that they have power to cure disease.
But supposing for the sake of argument, that these spades and hoes were formerly used in Burmah for agricultural purposes, their use necessitated the existence of means to cut down trees and clear the forest, and, therefore, of iron instruments, for all the celts in Burmah would not cut down a single teak tree; 80 we are forced to the conclusion that these stone and copper implements co-existed with iron, when we may suppose iron was scarce and not sufficiently abundant for all purposes ; & state of things which it is not necessary to go down to below zero in the Mosaic chronology to find.
Not many days walk from Balmoral, where the Queen eats off gold and silver, I have seen, in the latter half of the nineteenth century people dining on wooden dishes. Now were these people, with their wooden platters in the pantry, sunk by a sudden catastrophe into the mud of the lake by which they dwell, they might, before the century closes, be dug up again a veritable "cran-'nog," and by the reasoning now applied to celts, it might be proven that they lived
in a "wooden age" before crockery was known. | Many people stand masticating the truths of the Bible as an ox does his fodder, lest they should incontinently swallow a myth, but at sight of such trumpery shams as these Hindu and Chinese "Brummagem" wares, they instantly read us marvellous dissertations on pre-historic times, long before Mones was born or thought of, on this wise-" These stone instruments clearly prove that there was a period in prehistoric times when the Burmese or the inhabitants of Burmah, of whatever race they were, were wholly unacquainted with the arts of fabricating iron, steel, and metal instruments for cutting, and they resorted to the more difficult work of fashioning stone into adzes and axes, and other cutting instruments."-Credat Juddeus Apella, non ego.
