History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period v1.c10.20

v1.c10.20

The recent discoveries in the Mayurbhañja State are of very great interest, as the implements discovered are "shouldered." Neoliths are generally divided into two classes: (1) unpolished and (2) polished. "Shouldered" axes or adzes belong to the latter class, but they represent a special sub-division of polished Neoliths. The shouldered implements were first described by Prof. Hem Chandra Das Gupta, M.A., F.G.S., of the Presidency College, Calcutta, who remarked: "The occurrance of these two implements of the Burmese type, in areas through which the wave of Khasia immigration very likely passed, before the race found its present hilly home, is of extreme interest and is quite in conformity with the view so long held regarding a relationship between the Khasia of Assam and some of the older tribes of Burma, which has been based chiefly on linguistic grounds."¹ This observation of Prof. Hem Chandra Das Gupta is quite in accordance with the classification of Austric languages by Peder W. Schimdt, according to whom there are two groups of Kolian languages in India in the first of which should be included Sāntāli, Muṇḍā, etc., but in the second group are to be placed Khāsia and Nicobarese and certain languages of Burma and Further India. Indian Neoliths are thus capable of being associated with certain language complexes; the earlier or the Kolian group with polished and non-polished but unshouldered axes and adzes, and the second or the Khasia-Nicobarese group with the shouldered axes and adzes. This association further proves that the Austric immigrants came in two main waves, the first of which spread as far north as Kashmir, the Himalayan Valleys and the water-sheds of the Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra as far south as the southern-most extremity of the Indian Peninsula, but not to the south of Kāverī.¹ The second wave was mainly confined to North-eastern India, Burma and the Malay Peninsula. Coggin Brown says :—