XXVIII.—Contributions to the Craniology of the People of the Empire of India. Part I. The Hill Tribes of the North-East Frontier and the People of Burma

Wm. Turner

doi:10.1017/S0080456800035195

XXVIII.—Contributions to the Craniology of the People of the Empire of India. Part I. The Hill Tribes of the North-East Frontier and the People of Burma

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2012

Wm. Turner

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For a number of years I have been collecting specimens and conducting an investigation into the craniological characters of the native inhabitants of our great Indian Empire, and several hundred skulls have now been under examination, and almost all have been measured. The sources to which I have been indebted for material are in part the collection of crania belonging to the Henderson Trustees, long known as the Edinburgh Phrenological Museum, and now deposited by the Trustees in the Anatomical Museum of the University; in part, a few specimens belonging to the University collected by my predecessors in office; in part, the valuable series of Indian crania belonging to the Indian Museum, Calcutta, which through the intercession of Dr John Anderson, F.R.S., the former Director, the Trustees of that Museum, with great liberality, most courteously permitted me to have the loan of for purposes of study; and lastly, a number of crania which have been forwarded to me by friends and former pupils, engaged in the public service in India, to whom I take this opportunity of expressing my indebtedness for the valuable material which I have received from them.

Type: Research Article
Information: Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of The Royal Society of Edinburgh , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , 1900 , pp. 703 - 747

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0080456800035195 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1900

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^{page 704 note *} Quoted in the Report on the Hill Tracts of Chittagong, by Deputy Commissioner T. H. Lewin. Calcutta, 1869.

^{page 704 note †} Tlie Thackerays in India, by Sir W. W. Hunter. London, 1897,

^{page 704 note ‡} Asiatic Researches, 1790, vol. ii. p. 187.

^{page 704 note §} Quoted in Deputy Commissioner Lewin's Report, p. 109.

^{page 704 note ∥} Asiatic Researches, 1801, vol. vii. p. 183.

^{page 705 note *} See his Report on the Hill Tribes of Chittagong, 1869, already quoted, and his book, A Fly on the Wheel, London, 1884. Possibly Lankhé is a modified form of the word Luncta used by Mr John Macrae.

^{page 705 note †} “The Lushai Expedition,” 1871–72, in United Service Institution Journal

^{page 705 note ‡} Census of Assam, 1891.

^{page 706 note *} Asiatic Researches, vol. xvi. p. 261.

^{page 706 note †} Journal Asiatic Soc, Bengal, 1875, vol. xliv. part i. p. 39.Google Scholar

^{page 707 note *} Chin-Lushai Land. Calcutta, 1893.

^{page 707 note †} Expedition to Western Yunnan, Calcutta, 1871.

^{page 707 note ‡} Appendix to Census of Burma, 1892.

^{page 707 note §} Journal Asiatic Soc., Bengal, 1875, vol. xliv. part i. p. 307.Google Scholar

^{page 707 note ∥} Journal Anthropol. Inst., 1882, vol. xi. pp. 56, 196.Google Scholar

^{page 707 note ¶} Journal Royal Asiatic Soc., 1880, vol. xii.Google Scholar

^{page 707 note **} Statistical Account of the Native State of Manipur, 1873.

^{page 707 note ††} Experiences in Manipur and the Nágá Hills. London, 1896Google Scholar.

An excellent account of the social structure, religion, myths, dances and songs, cultivation, trade and war of the Nágás has been compiled by Miss Gertrude M. Godden from the above and other authorities. It is published in the Journal Anthropological Inst., vol. xxvi., Nov. 1896Google Scholar, and vol. xxvii., Nov. 1897.

^{page 708 note *} These people are not to be confounded with a sect of religious mendicants also called Nágás; or with totemistic sections of several castes in Bengal named after Nág, snake. See Mr Risley's, H. H.The Tribes and Castes of Bengal, Ethnographic Glossary, vol. ii. p. 120, Calcutta, 1891.Google Scholar

^{page 709 note *} In this and the succeeding Tables the letters E. U. A. M. mean Edinburgh University Anatomical Museum; H. T. the Museum of the Henderson Trust; T. C. D. the Museum of Trinity College, Dublin. The cubic capacity has been taken by the method which I described in my Challenger Report on Human Crania, part xxix., 1884, to which I may also refer for an explanation of the greater number of the measurements employed in the Tables. The terms chamæprosopic (low faced) and leptoprosopic (high faced) are adopted from Professor Kollmann's memoirs.

^{page 712 note *} Some years ago I described and figured an example of this rare variety in the skull of a Bushman (Challenger Reports, part xxix. p. 12, pl. 1, fig. 4, 1884), and I have recently seen it in the skull of a Papuan from New Guinea (Proc. Roy. Soc. Edin., 3rd July 1899).

^{page 713 note *} Tribes and Castes of Bengal, vol. i. p. 204, Calcutta, 1891.

^{page 713 note †} See for an account of the Kankow campaign, Chin Lushai Land, by Surgeon-Lieutenant-Colonel Keid, I.M.S., P. 67, Calcutta, 1893. In the large map in this work the name apparently of this village, some miles to the north of Fort White, is printed Tiddim.

^{page 715 note *} Challenger Reports part xxix. p.5, 1884.

^{page 716 note *} Catalogue of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, p. 252. 1879.

^{page 718 note *} Miss Mary H. Kingsley (Travels in West Africa, p. 451, London, 1897) states that the West Coast Africans have a horror of the idea of drinking milk, and hold it as a filthy habit.

^{page 718 note †} In some of the Pacific Islands, as in the Solomon group, human skulls and those of pigs, dogs, and dugongs are preserved in and around the Tambu house, and the practice of preserving and decorating the skulls of relatives and enemies alongside of the skulls of animals prevails extensively in New Guinea.

^{page 718 note ‡} The custom of providing a separate sleeping house in each village for all the unmarried girls and another for all the young men prevails generally amongst the races to the north-east and south of Assam (Peal, S. E. in Journal Asiatic Soc., Bengal, vol. lii. part ii., 1883Google Scholar). A similar practice also exists amongst the Khonds, a hill tribe in the Indian peninsula (Frazer, R. W., Silent Gods and Sun-Steeped Lands, London, 1895Google Scholar). It is also the custom with some of the tribes in New Guinea and other islands in Polynesia.

^{page 722 note *} Thesaurus Craniorum, p. 173; and Supplement, p. 88.

^{page 722 note †} Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. xi. p. 215, 1882.Google Scholar

^{page 724 note *} Chin-Lushai Land, p. 72. 1893.

^{page 724 note †} Owen, Rep. Brit. Assoc., 1859, p. 100.

^{page 725 note *} Crania Ethnica, p. 416.

^{page 725 note †} Tribes and Castes of Bengal, Calcutta, vol. i. pp. 232 and 220. 1891.

^{page 725 note ‡} The above figures are compiled from the Census of 1891, Report on Burma, prepared by Mr H. L. Eales, the Provincial Superintendent, Rangoon, 1892.

^{page 726 note *} The Loyal Karens of Burma, by D. M'Kenzie Smeaton. London, 1887.

^{page 726 note †} The Shan country has been visited by many travellers. The works that I have consulted are Dr John Anderson's Expedition to Western Yunan, 1871; Report on Administration of Shan States for 1889–90 and 1892–93, “by J. G. Scott; Census of Burma, 1891; Colonel Woodthorpe in Journ. Anthrop. Inst., August 1896, vol. xxvi. p. 13; From Tonquin to India, by Prince Henri d'Orleans, 1898.

^{page 727 note *} Report on Census of Burma, 1891, p. 201. Rangoon, 1892.

^{page 727 note †} The Dacoits were the disbanded troops of King Thebaw's army. They were not hillmen, but Burmese.

^{page 728 note *} In the Abor Miri group of the Tibeto-Assam languages, Ngá is the personal pronoun (see Report on Census of Assam, 1891, p. 183).

^{page 728 note †} Shan Gyi and San Min from the Insein jail were both catalogued as Burmese; their measurements are given in Table VI.

^{page 739 note *} From the name, Shan Gyi, of one of the men from the jail at Insein (Table VI.), it is possible that he may have been a Shan. It is to be observed that his skull was also brachycephalic. Another skull, that of San Min (Table VI.), described as from the Southern Shan States, was distinctly dolichocephalic, index 74, so that it differed from both the Burmese and Shan type of cranium, and probably belonged to a foreign race.

^{page 739 note †} A fifth adult specimen is in the collection, but as it has been deformed, apparently from hydrocephalus, the measurements have not been given. Its internal capacity was 1930 c.c.

^{page 741 note *} Thesaurus Craniorum, p. 174. The mean interzygomatic diameter of these crania was 132 mm.

^{page 744 note *} The question of the signification of brachycephaly and dolichocephaly has been discussed in a recent memoir by Dr A. B. Meyer of Dresden, “On the Distribution of the Negritos in the Philippine Islands and elsewhere,” and he has arrived at the conclusion that they are not necessarily to be looked upon as constant factors in the determination of racial features. He regards the Negritos and Papuans to be of one race, notwithstanding the differences in the form of the skull and in the stature; so that in his view considerable variability may exist in the physical characters of the same race.

^{page 745 note *} Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, 1879.

^{page 745 note †} See an excellent description of the locality and people by Mr John Simpson in the Nautical Magazine, vol. xxiii. p. 639, 1854. A fifth specimen from the same locality was dolichocephalic, with a length-breadth index 72·7. It is included in the eighteen crania referred to in the text.

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XXVIII.—Contributions to the Craniology of the People of the Empire of India. Part I. The Hill Tribes of the North-East Frontier and the People of Burma

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