Indian Antiquary Vol 48

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 66

62
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
MAY, 1919
in any part of the old world without full note of their long tale in the prehistoric dawn. These digressions apart, which were entered into merely to show that probably the laudable attempts of the great Cunningham to pre-suppose and evolve a fore-running Hieroglyph or Pictograph from the existing Brâhini type were but love's labours lost, I pass on to the script in question which was deciphered as "Maata." We have already referred to the Acrophonic value of the artifact and now we would point out that " Maata " as an euphonym is very common amongst Egyptian sovereigns (witness name "Ra-maat" of queen Hatashu or Hatshepshet). "The word mät, mat, mat, meaning eye' also runs through several of the Mon-Annam languages to which the Munda of Chota Nagpur bears remarkable affinities, e.g., Mon, mat; Stieng, mat : Bahnar, mat; Annam, mat; Khasi, Khmat (dialectic māt); ( vide Gurdon, p. 206).
Before passing on to other questions it is well to consider the probability of the knowledge of writing in Neolithic India. Bruce Foote in his masterly second volume on the Prehistorio and Proto-historic Antiquities (Notes on the Ages, etc., p. 15) points out: "That the Indian people of Paläolithic times did occasionally make drawings and engravements for special purposes, seem, however, more than probable, because implements suitable for the preparation of such drawings have been found, notably the 'chert-burin' from Jubbulpur resembling one from Les Eyzies." Thus what Masd'Azil has established
in Europe, the Jubbulpur "chert-burin' would lead us to in far-off India, namely, that alpha betiform signs (Alphabetarlige Zeichen) first arose in the transitional period between the Palæolithic and the Neolithic ages. Moreover, graffiti etchings remarkably resembling those from the "Rein-deer" period of prehistoric Europe have been reported from Neolithic Kapgallu hills of the Bellary District. Similarly Mr, c. W. Anderson has reported of the Rock-paintings of Singapore in the Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society for September 1918, of which plate 8, depicting the folded palm of a hand, makes a near approach to the shape of our piece of Hæmatite.
Now not much doubt should remain as to the antiquity of our finds, which was collected by competent savants of the Geological Survey and catalogued as a genuine artifact of Neolithic India by the unassa ilable Indian geological and anthropological knowledge of Mr. Coggin Brown, as these Egyptian similarities unmistakably point to the same mysterious prehistoric connections to whicn I have referred already. At least the mere fact that Indian archæology, which takes us back to Naks-i-Rustam and Behistun tablets of the sixth century B.c., has not a word to say on this shows how far anterior to that period would have been the time of the contact of the Egyptian and Indian cultures as there can be proved to have been some, by these and subsequent evidence. Here we have two Neoliths, one of which we have read with a key supplied by prehistoric Egypt and the other harking back to some characteristics which are unmistakably Egyptian, so can we not say that they belong to a time when either prehistoric India was being influenced by predynastic Egypt (for the key which we have usert belongs to prehieroglyphic and proto-hieratic period) or vice versa, or a common culture was swaying both the lands? Though the prehistoric data from India have not yet been exhausted, five catalogues have already enabled me sufficiently to enter into the same interesting problem in a second paper on the vestiges of a prehistoric race of India and a third paper on the chronology of the Indian early Iron Age and it would be seen that the conclusions. which prehistoric palæography clearly hints at, would be rendered highly probable by a comparative study of some ancient skulls and would almost settle into a valid scientific induction by the tests of prehistoric archæology and metallurgy of India