Indian Antiquary Vol 48

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

Page 67

MAY, 1919)
NEW LIGHT FROM PREHISTORIC INDIA
63
One word more,-my friend Mr. S. Kumar who has piloted me often by giving me timely warnings of the pitfalls ahead suggested that these might be talismans or tribal sept-marks. It does justice to his strong commonsense and clear insight, for on turning over the pages of the Anthropological Journal, Man (1903, Article 28), at his suggestion I found that exactly the same doubts were thrown on Cretan stones when they were being unearthed in the late Nineties of the last century. But it is now held by a comparative study of talismans all over the world, that these are invariably bored for being used as pendants and both our Neoliths betrayed no trace of any boring. As to their being sept-marks, the mere fact that we have been able to decipher them by a key which reads alphabets and also that the reading has been rendered correct by the probable meanings which we have found quite suitable renders improbable the idea that they were mere uncouth symbols looked upon with reverential or superstitious awe.
Lastly, the “Maata" of our Neolith, written undoubtedly with reverse. Brâhmb characters according to Prof. Bhandarkar (who was kind enough to point out also that the reverse form could not have been due to its being used as a seal for the signs were inscribed or rather etched in very narrow lines on a very uneven part and thus could not have been meant for impression elsewhere), means a headman or chieftain. We have seen it forming a part of Egyptian royal names. It survives to-day curiously enough, guch is the degradation of words brought about probably by social circumstances in the lowest degraded class in India, the cleaners of reftise—the "mehtar" and the "mehtua." Russell and, if I remember right, also Risley, have long ago pointed out that the word "mehtar" means a prince or head-man. The very depth of the social scale to which these peoples have sunk, shows the vast lapse of ages which must have gone by since the time these very people were actually princes and chieftains, from which position they sank. and sank till the last of Indian primitive conquerors who gave it its dominant culture, the Sindhu-bank dwellers--the Hindus—came from the direction of "Ariane" and evolved a rigid social system which has shown little signs of any great modification since those ancient times, except it be in these days of mass education and British enlightenment. So these words, as it were, gives a side-light to those remote Neolithic pre-Aryan times, when a piece of red earthy hæmatite much.prized by prehistoric Indiaus, shaped in a beautiful symbolical manner and inscribed with a word meaning a leader, might have been part of the paraphernalia of some pre-Aryan patriarchal ruler. Now is well known that village government has often been shown by others to be of South Indian pre-Aryan (Dravidian or pre-Dravidian) origin. And as village government in India was seldom touched by the imperial ruler of India and has gone on in much the same way for thousands of years, I am inclined to think that we can still trace the rule of a Maata in the modern village headman "Mahto", which word should not be connected by false philology with the much later Sanskrit word "Mahat" 'as Prof. Bhandarkar pointed out that in Sanskrit the word for a chief is " Mahattara” and “Mahattama", the comparative and superlative forms and not simply "Mahat." It seems very probable that the non-Aryan word "Mehetar" was identified with Sanskrit "Mahattara” and by false analogy the superlative "Mahattama " alo caline into being. About the modern "Mahto" rule I woukl refer to Russell's Tribes and Castes, etc., Vul I, p. 386, and Risley's Tribes and Castes oj