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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[OCTOBER, 1877.
of in the other world! Small stones about the as in the Tamil version of the Panchatantra, size of a cocoanut are generally found heaped where it is used to denoto a very large jungle. round the mouth of the urn, and the discovery The great size of the urn being its principal of such stones ranged in a circle, corresponding characteristic, it would seem that the name in to the circular mouth of the urn, will be found use amongst the common people is, after all, to be a reason for suspecting the existence better warranted than that which is used by of an urn underneath.
those who are regarded as correct speakers. The natives of these times know nothing Who the people were who buried their dead whatever of the people by whom this singular in these urns is a problem yet unsolved. The mode of sepulture was practised, nor of the time only points that can be regarded as certain are when they lived. They do not identify them those which have been ascertained by the inwith the Samaņas, that is, the Jainas and ternal evidence of the urns and their contents Buddhists lumped together, about whom toler themselves. From this it is clear that the ably distinct traditions survive, nor does there people buried in them were not pygmies, but appear to be anything in or about the jars of the same size as people of the present time. distinctively Jaina or Buddhistic. There How they were put in may be mysterious, but is a myth current amongst the natives, it is true, | there is no doubt about the size of their bones. respecting the people who were buried in these The skulls were similar to those of the present jars, but this myth seems to me merely & con- time. The teeth also were worn down, Jike fession of their ignorance. They say that in the those of the existing race of natives, by eating Trêtâ yuga--that is, about a million of years grain. In a jar opened by Dr. Jägor, of Berlin, ago-people used to live to a great age, but that a head of millet was found. The grain had however old they were they did not die, but the disappeared, but the husks remained. The unolder they grew the smaller they became. They known people must have lived in villages, the got so small at length that to keep them out of jars being found, not one here and another the way of harm it was necessary to place them in there, bat arranged side by side in considerable the little triangular niche in the wall of a native numbers, as would naturally be done in a burialhouse in which the lamp is kept. At length, ground. They were also a comparatively civil. when the younger people could no longer bearized people, as is evident from the excellence the trouble of looking after their dwarf ances. of their pottery, and the traces of iron imple. tors they placed them in earthen jars, pat with ments or weapons which have sometimes been them in the jars a number of little vessels con- fonnd in the jars. The conclusion from all this taining rice, water, oil, &c., and buried them which seems to me most probable is that they near the village.
were the ancestors of the people now living in The name by which these urns are called in the same neighbourhood. If this were the true the Tamil country does not throw much light explanation, it is singular that no relic, trace, or on their origin. This name assumes three forms. tradition of such a mode of sepulture has surIn the Tamil dictionary it is madamadakkat- vived to the present day. And yet, if we were táli. A more common form of this word is to adopt the Bopposition that they were an alien madamadakkan-dali, the meaning of both which race, it would be still more difficult to conjecture forms is the same, viz. the tali, or large jar, who they were, where they came from, and why which boils over. The meaning attributed they disappeared. to this by some natives is rather far-fetched, I have myself seen those urns both in the viz. that the little people who were placed in Tinnevelly and Madura districts and in northern them used sometimes to come out of the jars and southern Travancore,--that is, on both sides and sit about, as if they had boiled over out of of the Southern Ghats, and the object I have in them. The form of this word in use amongst view in sending these particulars to the Antithe common people seems capable of a more quary is to ascertain in what other districts of rational interpretation. This is madamattan- Indis, they are found. If the area within which dali, or more properly madonmattan-dali. Ma- they are found can be soeurately traced, some dôrmatta (Sansk.) means 'insane, but it is light may be thrown thereby on their history. sometimes used in Tamil to mean' very large,' Idaiyangudi, Tinnevelly District.
