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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[MAY, 1876.
a dwarfish race, and that there were sixty thousand of them. In the jungles of Trinomalai, close by, are still to be found a few people called Viliyans. I had two or three of them brought to me, and one was a little man only 4 feet 87 inches high, but perfectly proportioned. The others were as tall as the general run of natives. Whether these are remnants of the former race it is difficult to say, but the similarity of name is at least curious. These people told me that their custom was to abandon a hut in which a relative died. Whether the structures I have described were used as dwellings or not, it is not easy to say, but there is good ground, I think, for presuming that they were used as burial-places.
J. H. GARSTIN, M.C.S. Porto Novo, 7th February 1876.
GAURA. I do not understand Babu Ram Das Sen's argoment (Ind. Ant. vol. V. p. 25). He quotes two lines which run thus :
" Saraswatas, Kanyakubjas, Gauras, Maithilas, and Otkalas are dwellers north of Vindhya known as the five Gausas."
The allusion is to the five northern septs of the Brahman caste. The Vindhya range, running from Bea to sea, is the natural boundary between north and south India. It is surprising that a Hindu should require to be reminded by an Englishman of the five great Brahman septethe Saraswata, Kanyakubja (modern Kanaujia), Gaura, Maithila, and Otkala (from Utkala = Orissa). The context clearly shows that the Gaura sept must have inhabited Bengal. How the passage shows that Bengal was anciently called Banga does not appear.
Gaura is the country south and west of the Padma, or present main stream of the Ganges, i.e. central and western Bengal; while Banga is that north and east of the same river, i.e. eastern Bengal. The Paurinio accounts of things in general are not very trustworthy, least of all in matters of history or geography.
Cuttack, February 5, 1876. JOHN BEAMES.
building such houses as that depicted in the engraving from Col. Welsh's sketch, many of the stone remains discovered in the Madras Presidency and elsewhere are possibly of recent, instead of being of prehistoric date, as they are generally supposed to be.
The passage in question is as follows
"Returning by the Pedenaig Durgum Pass, I must make mention of a race of Indians, now supposed to be extinct, who formerly inhabited certain strongholds in the country, and appear to have been entirely different from every other tribe in their habits, manners and customs. Approaching Naikenyary from the top of the Pass, the road winds along the base of a rocky hill, which leaving on the left hand it crosses by the bănd of a tank, within a few hundred yards of the wretched bangalow of that name. On the top of this hill are the remains of a stone villaget formerly inhabited by the Paundway; there may be forty or fifty ruins, and a description of one will angwer for all. They are generally a square of eight feet and about five in height; the walls, roof and floor being formed of single stones, with two stones set in perpendicular and rounded at top for the entrance door it cannot be called, the only passage being cut in a nall circle in them, exactly opposite each other; tue two stones being set two feet asunder, and the whole strengthened outside by a buttress of loose stones, with others of four feet high above the earth or rock in which they are set nearly perpendicular. I have added a sketch of the one I found most entire, to explain this incoherent description. Every endeavour to get some authentic account of these people failed; all I could learn was that they inhabited the hill-country, had laws and kings of their own, never mingling with other natives, but plundering them and retiring to their strongholds whenever they were pursued or successfully opposed. The whole in a body were called Paundway or Pandweh, and one was styled a Påndwar. I have twice met with sepulchres on the Malabar coast which appeared to me to have some connexion with the owners of these deserted hamlets."
E. W. W.
QUERY-AN EXTINCT RACE. I append a passage I lately came across in Col. Welsh's Military Reminiscences (vol. II. p. 51), referring to an aboriginal tribe in the Madras Presidency, apparently near Arcot. Can any of the readers of the Indian Antiquary give any information about this tribe ? If these people are, or were till recently, extant, and were in the habit of
M. Garcin de Tassy, Professor of Hindustani at the School of Oriental Languages, has just received the Cross of Commander of the Portuguese Order of St. Diago, which is only conferred on men of high reputation in science or literature. --Galignani.
• Military Reminiscences extracted from a Journal of nearly forty years' active service in the East Indies, by Col. James Welsh. London: Smith Elder, & Co. 1830.
+ Can this be now identified ? and, if so, is Col. Welsh's curious sketch even approximately correct? It is, I suspect 'too good to be true. ED.
