Evidence in the shape of remains of smelting places and slags of iron, ornaments, implements and vessels made of copper, foundations of extraordinarily large but comparatively thin bricks, remains of pottery and burial urns, is gradually accumulating, and would seem to bear out the Munda tradition of the previous occupation of a large portion, if not the whole, of the Ranchi district by an ancient people who made and used copper and subsequently iron, and who had evolved a comparatively much higher culture than the Mundas who claim to have ousted them.

II. A Find of Ancient Bronze Articles in the Ranchi District.

By Sarat Chandra Roy, M.A.

OBJECTS of stone, copper and iron are not the only relics of earlier human culture found in the Chōta Nagpur Division. Some ancient bronze articles have been recently unearthed in the Ranchi District. This remarkable find consists of one large copper handi, a number of bronze bells, besides a few bowls and plates made of bronze.

A client of mine of the name of Ramai Orãon and his son Etwa Orãon while levelling a plot of upland in village Bahea, about thirteen miles to the east of Ranchi, found these articles at a depth of a foot or so below the surface. The plates and bowls were found in an earthen jar (ghara) and the other articles were found embedded in the ground about three feet away from the former. The illustration on the opposite page shows the big copper handi, one bronze bowl and two bronze bells.

The field on which they were found forms part of a large plot of upland, measuring about three acres, which slopes towards the south into a hill-stream locally called Chaṇḍi-gāṛha. The land was up till recently covered over with jungle mostly of sāl trees, and the solitary trunk of an old sal tree is still left to mark the spot, towards the south-west of the field, where the bronze articles were found. Sal jungles still form the northern and eastern boundaries of the land. I had excavations made in the field but nothing whatsoever could be found except some small bits of old potsherds and a few lumps of gulthā or earth burnt red which might not improbably have been fragments of an oven or smelting-place for metal. To the north-west of the land a cultivator of the name of Tota Orāon, while clearing the jungle and digging the earth with a view to

convert the land into a cultivable field, dug out an earthenware ghara containing human bones and closed up with an earthen bowl in the manner in which cinerary urns attributed to the Asurs of Munda tradition are closed up. The man had thrown away the ghara as useless and it got smashed into pieces. But the site occupied by the ghaṛā could still be made out, when I visited the place, by the gap of the shape of a ghaṛā left in the soil by the urn. I had a portion of this plot of land dug up but no more cinerary urns could be found.

The only other thing I secured in this village that is of some interest from the point of view of prehistoric archæology, is a stone celt of a rather unusual type. This appears to be a flake chipped into shape and probably used either as a child's knife or for ceremonial purposes. It is an unusually thin triangular celt made of schistose rock, measuring only two inches in length, one inch wide at the edge and half an inch at the butt end. One of the faces is perfectly flat but bevelled slightly to form the blade, which is rounded. The other face is distinctly convex with a ridge at the middle running from butt to edge and from this ridge the chipped convex face slopes towards each side.

Mr. Coggin-Brown, to whom some of the bronze articles were sent for examination, writes:

"I have carefully examined the metal articles sent under cover of your letter dated the 22nd June 1916 and have come to the conclusion that they probably belong to the historical period. At any rate I have never seen any Indian Copper Age remains like them. The metal used in casting the bells and the large bowl seems to be an alloy-a bronze of some kind, but this can only be settled by the chemical analysis of a fragment from them. They are beautiful objects of their kind and are probably of considerable interest from the historical point of view. I would suggest their examination by some member of the Archæological Survey before they are stored in your Museum. If the large bowl is bronze it suggests a resemblance with some of the bronze remains of South Indian cemeteries, but the age of these