Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 11.djvu/152

122 visited Java, nothing is known upon the subject by the present inhabitants. However versed in the working of all sorts of metals, the natives do not at present know the art of cutting or grinding stones equal in hardness to quartz, much less of forming from them such sharp-edged and polished implements. Hence they must belong to an early period; and, if some of them appear fresh and in perfect preservation, this is because they are wrought in a kind of stone which is very little subject to injury or decay. It is difficult to decide whether the finer kinds of stone may not have been manufactured at a period, when the construction of similar implements in metal was already known, and even for some time after. This is the more probable, since metal might not as yet have answered all purposes.

Dr. Junghuhn, a former resident in Java, communicated to me the very plausible conjecture, entertained by many of the principal inhabitants, that many wedges, made of the harder and more precious kinds of stone, and belonging to the second and third classes assumed by us, were used for polishing metal and smoothing the paper made from the bark of trees or the leaves of the lontar, on which the priests and the learned were in the habit of writing. It appears, when put to the test, that these implements are peculiarly adapted for such uses, and that, if they were made expressly for this purpose, no better form or fitter material could have been adopted. Dr. Junghuhn has for many years employed a wedge of this sort for smoothing the surface of his paper, whenever he had to execute minute drawings. If we assume such a use for these stones, and if we farther assume, as not improbable, that the same objects may also have served as ornaments, or rather as insignia of rank and dignity, it will be more easily explained why they occur of so large a size as that mentioned above, which, considering its slight thickness, appears unfit to be employed as a weapon or instrument of any kind, since it would be subject to fracture on exposure to any appreciable force.

Hitherto these objects have been found only, or at least principally, in the West of Java; and here there are no vestiges of temples, whereas, so far as is known, they are not found in the east, which abounds in gorgeous stone edifices and colossal statues. All the wedges, which the museum possesses, or of which information has been received, have