Page:The Indian Antiquary Vol 2.djvu/406

 366 THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY. slightly fenced, and the approaches guarded at difficult points by palisading, loop-holed and strengthened by heavy stones, and on command¬ ing view-points there are out-looks. The conser¬ vancy is admirable, and the houses, though smoke-begrimed from having their fire-places inside, are clean. Each house usually has its own enclosed patch of fenced kitchen-garden to one side, and, though not built perfectly symmetrical, they are ranged to form streets. In the middle of the town is a large house used as a town-hall. The frame-work of a house is of wood for the posts and beams, and bamboo for the roof; the floor is raised a few feet above the ground, and is laid with bamboo split and beaten flat, the walls being of the same material, woven in a large che¬ quer pattern with very neat effect; the roof is a thatch of grass-and palm leaves. The average dimensions arc 30 by 12 (Poiboi’s was 40 yards long), of which the first third is left open ; a ramp of logs leads up to them, and on one side of the ramp is a platform for sitting out in fine weather; under the eaves are the fowl-houses, and hung over the house-front are the skull and horns of animals captured in the chase. The interior, which is closed by a neatly-made sliding door, is usually undivided; in some a half-partition por¬ tions off a part as a granary; a door at the back leads to a small platform behind. In the middle of one side an open fireplace is made of slabs of stone, above which hangs a frame for smoking meat and fish, and beyond it is usually a raised place for sleeping on. In the open front of tho house is the pig-trough and the mortar for cleaning rice—a work done by the women daily. This rice, which is of large white grain and very nutritious, forms their principal food, and is grown by dry cultivation on cleared spots on the hillsides. Their method of agriculture is—having selected a patch of jungle and marked it by putting arrows in tho split stumps of small trees round it, to fell and bum it when dry just before the rains, and, aoattering the ashes, to dibble in the grain with dhaos,deserting the spot after three years when the soil is worked out. The crop cut at its proper season is threshed and stored on the ground till the end of the harvest, when it is carried in by the women in largo baskets slung by a band across the forehead, their mode of carrying all burthews. Be¬ tides the rice they raise maize, a sort of yam, sweet potatoes, beans of several sorts, ginger, tobacco, pot-herbs, gourds, squashes, cotton, plantains, and plants giving a dark-blue dye, and they domesticate pigs, goats, dogs, fowls, and pigeons, all for food; milk they never touch, and the metna, which they allow to roam half-wild, is kept only for its flesh and horns, the latter being made, for one thing, into [December, 1873. powder and priming flasks. Sugar is a thing they do not seem to care about, but they liked our rum, and themselves prepare a liquor from rice which has a pleasant taste, and is drunk, well dilut¬ ed, by suction through reeds from the jar in which it is made. We called it hill-beer. Their name for it is “ ju.” They manufacture everything necessary to their simple mode of living—cooking and liquor pots, wooden platters, baskets, salt, saltpetre, cotton cloth, dhaos, and axes. The earthenware is mould¬ ed. The baskets are of every shape and size, from the store basket, which will hold 50 maunds, to the little thing which holds the woman’s needles and thread: they are woven of shreds of bamboo with great neatness. Gourds and bamboos are used for water. Their apparatus for cleaning, carding, spinning, and weaving the cotton is similar to that in use in Bengal. The cloth i3 very strong and close- grained, in breadths of three feet, unbleached, with a narrow blue border, or dyed entirely blue. Some of the cloth used by them, resembling a dark tartan, is said to come from Manipur. Salt they manufacture from the ashes of bamboo leaves, and saltpetre from cowdung urinated on. Their forges are not in any way remarkable, a pair of large bamboo cylinders being the bellows : but they turn out remarkably good arms, working up the iron which they get from elsewhere to suit their own tastes as to shape. The axes are of that peculiar construction used among most of these tribes—a flat-ended peg tied in a socket in a bamboo handle. There are no archmological remains, excepting the rough slabs, with rough outlines of figures cut on them, which cover old graves; and there are no roads, communication being by footpaths, which in the more populated parts are broad and easy. I had almost forgotten to mention the women, but we saw so little of them ; they are pleasant, round, flat-faced creatures, continually smoking, and lively among themselves; their dress is a Bcanty blue kilt, and cloth thrown over the should¬ ers, with the head usually uncovered, and the hair loose or neatly braided. They wear no ornaments. They vary in colour, some being quite fair with rosy cheeks. Their children are carried on their backs. The products of the country are India-rubber, wax, and ivory, usually bartered for salt. The traders are mostly Manipuris.—Report of the Topo¬ graph. Sui-vey of India, 1871-72. . ON PROP. HOERNLE’S THEORY OF THE GENITIVE POSTPOSITIONS. Sir,—The question of the origin of the genitive postpositions in the modern vernaculars of India