Use of human skulls and bones in Tibet

Use of Human Skulls and Bones
in Tibet

BY

BERTHOLD LAUFER
Curator of Anthropology

FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

CHICAGO
1923

CEREMONIAL BONE APRON. TIBET.

GIFT OF ARTHUR B. JONES, 1922.

Field Museum of Natural History

DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY
Chicago, 1923

Leaflet Number 10

Use of Human Skulls and Bones
in Tibet

Among the many customs of Tibet none has at-
tracted wider attention than the use of human skulls
and other bones both for practical purposes and in
religious ceremonies. Weird stories to this effect
were brought to the notice of the occidental world by
mediaeval travellers who visited Cathay or the court
of the Great Khan during the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries. In the Tibetan collections (Hall 32, West
Gallery) obtained by the Blackstone Expedition in
1908-10 may be viewed (Case 70) bowls consisting
of a human cranium, from which libations of liquor
in honor of the gods are poured out on the altars of
the Lama temples. Some of these skull-bowls are
elaborately mounted and decorated, lined with brass
or gilded copper and covered with a convex, oval lid
that is finely chased and surmounted by a knob in the
shape of a thunderbolt (Sanskrit vajra, Tibetan
dorje), the symbol of Indra which is in constant use
in nearly all Lamaist ceremonies. The skull itself
rests on a triangular stand, cut out with a design of
flames, at each corner of which is a human head.
These settings are frequently very costly, being in
gold or silver, and studded with turquois and coral.

In the case (68) showing musical instruments
which are used for worship in the Lama temples are
on view small tambourines made of two human skull-
caps cemented together by means of a wooden disk.

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These drums are shaken while reciting prayers, to
mark the intervals between different incantations.
There are trumpets made of human thigh-bones, the
bones of criminals or those who have died a violent
death being preferred for this purpose. These trump-
ets are consecrated by the priests with elaborate in-
cantations and ceremonies. In the course of this
ritual the officiating priest bites off a portion of the
bone-skin; otherwise the blast of the trumpet would
not be sufficiently powerful to summon, or to terrify
the demons. On one side the trumpet has two aper-
tures styled "nostrils of the horse." This is a myth-
ical horse believed to carry the faithful after their
death into Paradise; and the sound of this trumpet
reminds the people of the neighing of this horse.

A most interesting addition was recently made
to this group of objects by the exhibition (in Case 74)
of a very valuable bone apron composed of forty-one
large plaques exquisitely carved from supposedly hu-
man femora and connected by double chains of round
or square bone beads. Such aprons are used by magi-
cians in the Lama temples during the performance of
mystic, sacred ceremonies accompanied by shaman-
istic dances, chiefly for the purpose of propitiating evil
spirits and exorcising devils. The plaques are deco-
rated with figures of Qivaitic and Tantric deities, some
of which are represented in dancing postures.

At the outset, these relics of an age of savagery
and a barbarous cult leave no small surprise in a land
whose faith is avowedly Buddhistic, and whose people
have made such signal advances in literature, poetry,
painting, sculpture, and art industries. Buddha was an
apostle of peace and universal love, averse to blood-
shed, and forbidding the taking of human and animal
life. He repudiated all outward ceremonies and offer-
ings, preaching salvation through the efforts of the

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Use of Human Skulls and Bones in Tibet 3

mind and the perfection of the heart. But there is
room for many extremes in both nations and indivi-
duals.

Friar Odoric of Pordenone, who travelled from
1316 to 1330, dwells at some length on the burial
customs of the Tibetans, and tells the story of how
the corpses are cut to pieces by the priests and de-
voured by eagles and vultures coming down from the
mountains; then all the company shout aloud, saying,
"Behold, the man is a saint! For the angels of God
come and carry him to Paradise." And in this way
the son deems himself to be honored in no small
degree, seeing that his father is borne off in this
creditable manner by the angels. And so he takes
his father's head, and straightway cooks it and eats
it ; and of the skull he makes a goblet, from which he
and all of the family always drink devoutly to the
memory of the deceased father. And they say that
by acting in this way they show their great respect
for their father. It must be added, however, that this
account is not based on personal observation, but on
hearsay. William of Rubruk, a Flemish Franciscan,
who visited the court of the Mongol Khan in 1253,
mentions the same Tibetan practice and admits that
he received his information from an eye-witness. The
peculiar burial customs were a characteristic trait of
the Tibetans by which their neighbors were deeply
struck, and the story of this ceremonial freely cir-
culated among the Mongols who were doubtless in-
clined to exaggerate also some of its features.

This Tibetan custom reveals a striking parallel
to a record of Herodotus. In his account of Scythia,
Herodotus (iv, 23) speaks among many other nations
also of the Issedonians, who are located east of the
Bald-Heads and were the farthest nation of which the
Greek historian had any knowledge. "The Issedon-

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ians," Herodotus relates, "have the following customs.
When a man's father dies, all the near relatives bring
sheep to the house; these are sacrificed, and their
flesh cut into pieces, while at the same time the de-
ceased man's body undergoes the like treatment. The
two kinds of flesh are mixed together, and the whole
is served at a banquet. The head of the dead man is
dealt with in another way; it is stripped bare,
cleansed, and set in gold. It then becomes an orna-
ment on which they pride themselves, and is brought
out year by year at the great festival which is ob-
served by sons in honor of their father's death. In
other respects the Issedonians are reputed to be ob-
servers of justice, and their women have equal author-
ity with the men." Some scholars have assumed that
the Issedonians represent a tribe akin to the present-
day Tibetans or could even be their ancestors. Be
this as it may, the coincidence of the fact of skull-
worship among the two tribes would not constitute
sufficient evidence for this theory, as the same or
similar practice is encountered among widely different
peoples.

The preceding case presents a peculiar form of
ancestral worship, the son being intent on preserving
the most enduring part of his father's body as a con-
stant reminder, and drinking from his skull in his
memory on the day of his anniversary. This, without
any doubt, has been an indigenous practice in Tibet
of considerable antiquity. Aside from this we meet
in that country the use of human bones for purposes
which move along an entirely diverse line of thought.

The Jesuit Father Andrada, who visited western
Tibet in 1625, observed that the Lamas, when engaged
in prayer, were in the habit of sounding trumpets
made of metal or the bones of the dead, and that the
bones of human legs and arms served for making

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Use of Human Skulls and Bones in Tibet 5

these instruments. "They also have rosaries consist-
ing of beads made from human skulls," he writes.
"When I inquired why they employed bones for such
purposes, the Lama who was a brother of the king,
replied, 'The people, at the hearing of such trumpets,
cannot fail to be mindful of death. For the same
reason we avail ourselves of the bones of the dead
for rosary beads. Finally, in order to be still more
imbued with this melancholy and- sad remembrance,
we drink from a cranium." According to the same
Lama, the idea of death, no less than prayers, con-
tributes to restrain our passions and to regulate our
conduct. "These cups of the dead," he remarked, "pre-
vent the people from becoming too much addicted to
worldly pleasures, which are uncertain and fugitive,
so that the drink develops into a spiritual antidote for
passions and vices." This manner of reasoning is not
Tibetan, but is decidedly Buddhistic and, as every-
thing else pertaining to Buddhism, has filtered into
Tibetan thought from India.

At the present time, as far as observations reach,
it is not known that Tibetans preserve the skulls of
deceased relatives as drinking vessels, although it may
still happen that bones of relatives are kept in houses
from motjves of religious piety. There are ascetics,
however, who make use of human skulls as eating
bowls, in the same manner as they make beads for
rosaries out of bits of bones. But this custom bears
no relation to the ancient family cult of skulls which,
as we have seen, presents a form of ancestral worship.
The leaning of the Buddhist hermit toward skulls
moves along quite a different line, and is prompted
by customs adopted by the Tibetans with the Qivaitic
worship from India. In this debased form of religion
we find in Tibet numerous terrifying deities who wear
wreaths of human skulls as necklaces, are clad with

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human skins, or hold a bowl consisting of a cranium
filled with blood. Such a bowl, for instance, is seen
in the hand of Padmasambhava, who is still worship-
ped as the founder of Buddhism in Tibet (eighth cen-
tury A.D.), and who besides the doctrine of Buddha
introduced a system of wild magic and devil-dances
connected with incantations and exorcisms (see image
of Padmasamhava in Case 71, second shelf, east end) .

In India, skulls were chiefly used by the Aghori
or Augar, a Qivaitic sect of Fakirs and religious mendi-
cants, which has now dwindled down to a very few
members. They used human calvaria as bowls for
eating and drinking. This was done as a part of
their practice of self-abasement, and was associated
with the cannibalistic habits permitted and encouraged
by those ascetics.

The Chinese pilgrim Hiian Tsang, who visited
India in the seventh century, mentions "naked as-
cetics and others who cover themselves with ashes, and
some who make chaplets of bone which they wear
as crowns on their heads."

Amitabha, the Buddha of Endless Light (also
called Amitayus, "Endless Life"), who presides over
the Paradise in the west (Sukhavati), where every
one of his devout adherents yearns to be reborn, was
originally a deity of purely Buddhistic character, be-
ing represented with a bowl holding a sort of nectar
which confers immortality upon his devotees. In
course of time, this bowl was replaced by a cranium,
and it became customary to offer the god a cranium
with an invocation of divine blessing for the donor;
thus, another custom came into vogue, to utilize human
crania as receptacles for the wine or other liquid
offered to the temple-statues of the gods. For the
purpose of selecting proper skulls, the Lamas have
developed a system of craniology which imparts in-

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Use of Human Skulls and Bones in Tibet 7

struction as to the distinctive symptoms of good and
bad skulls and the way to obtain prosperity when once
the characteristics of a skull have been determined.
It is essential that a skull designed for an offering
to the gods should be that of a person known to have
been profoundly religious, or to have possessed other
high qualifications, such as rank, nobility, wisdom, or
learning. Failing such a skull, others may serve as
substitutes, and elaborate rules have been laid down
to determine those suitable for sacrificial bowls or as
offerings to the gods. Skulls of women and children
born out of wedlock are unsuitable for sacred pur-
poses. Among the very best are skulls of a clear
white color like a brilliant shell, or of a glistening
yellow like gold, or like a jewel without unevenness,
or of equal thickness and of small cubic capacity, or
with a shaiTD ridge stretching far into the interior
like a bird's beak or a tiger's claw, or hard and heavy
as stone, or smooth to the touch and polished, or with
no line on it save clearly defined sutures. These and
similar instructions are contained in a small Tibetan
book, which teaches the method of discriminating be-
tween good and bad skulls and how, by offering a skull
(Sanskrit kapdla) to Amitabha, prosperity and world-
ly goods may be secured. This lore is not Tibetan,
but has emanated from mediaeval India. The back-
ground of the treatise in question is Indian: the Indi-
an caste-system is in evidence, for the skulls of
Kshatriyas, Brahmans, and Vaigyas are good, while
those of common people and Chandalas are bad. There
are indications from which a good skull may be told
in a live person: if he has soft and smooth hair of
lustrous black, if his forehead is broad and his eye-
brows thick, if on his forehead there is a mark, if
he has most teeth in his upper jaw, if the tip of his
tongue can touch his nose (this is a peculiarity

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8 Field Museum of Natural History

possessed in even a greater degree by all Buddhas), if
his voice is high-pitched and his complexion as fresh
as that of a youth, if in walking he throws his left hand
and left foot out first.

The ceremony of offering a skull to Amitabha is
a complex and elaborate procedure, accompanied by
a fixed ritual and many offerings of food arranged
on the altar in a prescribed order. A thunderbolt
wrapped around with strings of various colors is
placed inside of the skull, the underlying idea being
that a colored light will radiate from the heart of the
officiating Lama, and conducted by the strings bind-
ing the thunderbolt will penetrate into the light
emanating from the heart of the Buddha of Endless
Light (Amitabha) whose statue is assumed to be
alive. Through this optical contact and spiritual
union, the god's soul will be aroused and communicate
to the Lama innumerable blessings. From their united
hearts will proceed a light which will remove the sor-
rows of the poor and fulfill all their wishes, and from
the extreme end of this light will pour down a rain of
jewels which will replenish all the regions of the world
and the devotee's own abode. Holding the strings
wrapped around the thunderbolt and raising the skull
with both hands to his head, the officiating Lama
proceeds to recite a prayer, the beginning of which
is thus: "Descending from the wide expanse of
heaven, Amitabha who art wise, who art the lord of
wealth, whose body is as voluminous as the sun, who
art full of precious sayings, thou with ornaments and
garments of jewels, grant me thy blessing! Mighty
one, grant me might! Bless me, thou powerful one!
Thou glorious one, grant me blessings! Lord of life,
give me life! Lord of riches, give me wealth, confer
on me in endless amount all desirable worldly bless-
ings !" Having thus implored the divine blessings, the

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Use of Human Skulls and Bones in Tibet 9

countenances of the gods in the temple-hall will show
their pleasure by melting into light, which reaches to
the heart of Amitabha and to the skull to be offered.
The Lama then realizes that all his wishes have been
fulfilled, and after an offering to the guardian and
local deities, will wrap up the skull in silk coverings
and hide it away in the store-house of the temple. The
skull must be carefully concealed, and no one must be
allowed to touch it ; for in this case it would lose some
of the qualities which it possesses, and the owner's
luck would be impaired or perhaps even utterly de-
stroyed.

A peculiar case has been recorded by the late
W. W. Rockhill (Land of the Lamas, p. 273). In an
uprising instigated by the Lamas in 1887 against the
Catholic missionaries along the borders of eastern
Tibet, the bones of Father Brieux killed in 1881 were
taken from his grave, and his skull was made into a
drinking-cup.

Whereas the use of enemies* skulls is extinct in
Tibet, the idea itself is slumbering in the pictures and
statues of Lamaist deities. A special class of these
have been singled out to act as defenders of the faith
and to destroy all enemies of the Buddhist religion.
The main attribute of these militant demons is a
wreath of human skulls surmounted by a thunderbolt.
These skulls are naturally supposed to have been
captured from enemies; they accordingly represent
trophies and simultaneously convey a warning to
others to avoid the same fate. Numerous examples of
this kind may be seen in Tibetan paintings and statu-
ary (cf. also the masks employed in the Tibetan
mystery-plays. Hall I). In Case 80, at the north end
of Hall 32, are on view several Tibetan sculptures on
stone slabs. One of these, carved in black slate, rep-
resents a Dakini, a female sprite akin to our witches,

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who holds in her left hand a skull-bowl filled ^vith
human blood ; she has lifted the cover from the bowl,
which she carries in her right hand. Her necklace
consists of a row of human skulls.

In the Vinaya, the ancient code of monastic dis-
cipline of the Buddhists, monks are forbidden using
skulls as alms-bowis, as was then customary among
devil-worshipping sects.

The customs of a people may be better understood
and evaluated by checking and correlating them with
similar or identical usages of other nations.

The typical skull-bowl drinkers in times of antiqui-
ty were the ancient Scythians, Iranian tribes of
roaming horsemen inhabiting southern Russia. Like
the Malayans and other peoples, the equestrian Scythi-
ans, as described by Herodotus (iv, 64), were head-
hunters. The Scythian soldier drank the blood of
the first man he overcame in battle. The heads of all
slain enemies were cut off and triumphantly carried
to the king; in this case only was he entitled to a
share of the booty, whereas he forfeited all claim, did
he not produce a head. The scalps were likewise
captured and suspended from the horse's bridle; the
more scalps a man was able to show, the more highly
he was esteemed. Cloaks were made by many from
a number of scalps sewed together. The skulls of
their most hated enemies were turned into drinking-
cups, the outside being covered with leather, the in-
side being lined with gold by the rich. They did the
same with the skulls of their own kith and kin if they
had been at feud with them and vanquished them in
the king's presence. When strangers of any account
came to visit them, they handed these skulls around,
the host telling how these were his relations who made
war upon him, and how he defeated them; all this
was regarded as proof of bravery. The practice of

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Use of Human Skulls and Bones in Tibet 11

the Scythians in capturing and preserving the skulls
of slain enemies was doubtless inspired by the widely
prevalent belief in the transference of the powers of
the deceased to the victor, who, in accordance with
this conception, was enabled to add the skill, prowess
and courage of his dead enemy to his own.

Livy relates that the Boii, a Celtic tribe in upper
Italy, in 216 B.C., carried the head of the Roman con-
sul Lucius Posthumius into their most venerated sanc-
tuary and, according to their custom, adorned the
cranium with gold; it was used as a sacred vessel in
offering libations on the occasion of festivals, and
served as a drinking-cup to the priest and overseers
of the temple.

Paulus Diaconus, in his History of the Lango-
bards, writes that Albion, king of the Langobards,
used the skull of Kunimund, king of the Gepids, as
a drinking-cup, after defeating him in battle in a.d.
566 and taking his daughter, Rosmunda, for his wife.
On the occasion of a merry banquet at Verona he
ordered wine to be served to the queen in this bowl
and enjoined her to drink gleefully with her father.
This brutal act led to the king's assassination in 573
by an agent of his wife. In the mediaeval poetry of
the Germanic peoples (Edda) there are several allu-
sions to the use of cranial drinking-cups.

Krumus, prince of the Bulgars, defeated in three
campaigns the Byzantine emperor Nikephoros, who
was slain in A.D. 811. The Bulgar had a fine, silver-
lined drinking-cup made from his enemy's cranium.
In A.D. 972 the Russian grand-duke, Svatoslav, suc-
cumbed in a battle against a Turkish tribe, the
Pecheneg. It is recorded in the Russian chronicle of
Nestor that Kurya, the ruler of the Pecheneg, had
Svatoslav's skull prepared as a goblet trimmed with
gold.

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The fact that this was an ancient Turkish usage
becomes evident also from the Chinese annals which
have the following incident on record. When the
ruler of the Hiung-nu (Huns) , Lao-shang, who reigned
from 175 to 160 B.C., had defeated the king of the
Ta Yue-chi (Indo-Scythians), he made a drinking-cup
out of the latter's cranium. At a somewhat later
date, when two Chinese envoys were sent to the
Hiung-nu to conclude a treaty, they drank blood with
the Turkish chiefs out of the same skull-bowl, in order
to solemnize their vows. The sacrificial animal in this
case was a white horse. Blood, as is well known, was
of great significance with many peoples in affirming
sacred agreements and keeping faith. According to
the philosopher Huai-nan-tse, the ancient Chinese
in such cases rubbed their lips with blood, while the
inhabitants of Yiie (in southern China) made an in-
cision in their arms.

The ceremonial use of human crania, conse-
quently, must have been widely diffused in ancient
times among Tibetan, Turkish, Scythian (that is,
Iranian), Slavic, Celtic, and Germanic tribes. The
custom is not restricted to the Old World, however;
there are examples to be found among the natives of
America as well.

Oviedo relates in his "Historia General y Natural
de las Indias" that the Inca king Atabalida possessed
a precious drinking-vessel made from his brother's
skull. Along its edge it was mounted with gold, the
skin with the smooth and black hair having been re-
tained. The king would drink from this bowl on the
occasion of festivals, and is was regarded as one of his
greatest treasures and most highly esteemed. Why it
was just the skull of his brother is not explained by the
Spanish chronicler ; nor is, as far as I know, any other
instance of such a practice on record from ancient

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Use of Human Skulls and Bones in Tibet 13

Peru. Molina, in his "Historia de Chile" (1795),
states with reference to the Araucanians that, after
torturing their captives to death, they made war flutes
out of their bones and used the skulls for drinking-
vessels.

M. Dobrizhoffer, who worked as a missionary
among the Abipones of Paraguay in the eighteenth
century, gives the following account: "As soon as
the Abipones see any one fall in battle under their
hands, their first care is to cut off the head of the
dying man, which they perform with such celerity
that they would win the palm from the most experi-
enced anatomists. They lay the knife not to the
throat, but to the back of the neck, with a sure and
speedy blow. When they were destitute of iron, a
shell, the jaw of the palometa, a split reed, or a stone
carefully sharpened, served them for a knife. Now
with a very small knife they can lop off a man's head,
like that of a poppy, more dexterously than European
executioners can with an axe. Long use and daily
practice give the savages this dexterity. For they
cut off the heads of all the enemies they kill, and
bring them home tied to their saddles or girths by
the hair. When apprehension of approaching hostil-
ities obliges them to remove to places of greater
security, they strip the heads of the skin, cutting it
from ear to ear beneath the nose, and dexterously
pulling it off along with the hair. The skin thus
drawn from the skull, and stuffed with grass, after
being dried a little in the air, looks like a wig and
is preserved as a trophy. That Abipon who has most
of these skins at home, excels the rest in military
renown. The skull too is sometimes kept to be used
as a cup at their festive drinking-parties. Though you
cannot fail to execrate the barbarity of the Abipones,
in cutting off and flaying the heads of their enemies,

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yet I think you will judge these ignorant savages
worthy of a little excuse, on reflecting that they do
it from the example of their ancestors, and that of
very many nations throughout the world, which,
whenever they have an opportunity of venting their
rage upon their enemies, seem to cast away all sense
of humanity, and to think that the victors have a right
to practice any outrage upon the vanquished. Innu-
merable are the forms of cruelty which the other sav-
ages throughout America exercise towards their slain
and captive enemies."

G. F. Angas (Savage Life and Scenes in Austral-
ia, London, 1847) writes that the natives around Lake
Albert and the adjoining portions of the Coorong in
Australia used the skulls of their friends as drinking-
vessels. After detaching the lower jaw, they fastened
a bundle of bulrush fibre to them, and carried them,
whenever they travelled, filled with water; always
putting in a twist of dry grass to prevent the contents
from upsetting. In another passage of his book he
speaks of a girl who carried a human skull in her
hand ; it was her mother's skull, and from it she drank
her daily draught of water.

It is assumed by some archaeologists also that
skulls were used as drinking-bowls by prehistoric man
during the palaeolithic and neolithic periods of Europe,
merely for practical purposes. There was a time
when primitive man did not yet understand how to
fashion clay into pots and to bake clay into a hardened
mass. Wherever nature offered gourds or calabashes
or shells, he took advantage of such means ; or vessels
for holding and carrying water were made, as, for in-
stance, by the aborigines of Australia, of the gnarls
of trees, the bark covering the gnarls, or of a portion
of the limb of a tree, or finally of animal-skins. Cer-
tain it seems that prehistoric man availed himself of

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Use of Human Skulls and Bones in Tibet 15

human crania for scooping and drinking water. Such
brain-pans wrought symmetrically by means of stone
chisels have been discovered in the pile-dwellings of
Switzerland, as well as in the Magdalenian and Solut-
rean stations of the French palseolithicon.

It would be erroneous to believe that this "bar-
barous" practice was limited to prehistoric times and
the "savage" tribes of ancient Europe, Asia, America,
and Australia. Like so many other pagan customs, it
has persisted until recently among Christian, civilized
nations. Even within the pale of Christianity, the
skulls of saints have been preserved and worshipped.
The village of Ebersberg east of Munich, Bavaria, for
instance, boasts of possessing for a thousand years
the skull of St. Sebastian. It is kept in a special
chapel erected in 1670 ; there, a silver bust of the saint
which hides the relic is placed on an altar. On his
name-day, the 20th of January, pilgrimages were
made to this chapel, and the pilgrims received conse-
crated wine from the saint's skull, believing they would
be cured from any disease. This is but one example
out of many; it was an ancient usage of the church
to have the faithful drink out of bowls which formerly
were in the possession of saints, and particularly out
of their skulls. The same ancient belief in the magical
power of bones is seen in the veneration of bodily
relics of martyrs and saints. One of the earliest and
best known examples is that of Lucilla of Carthage,
who habitually kissed a martyr's bone before partak-
ing of the Eucharist.

In Buddhism the worship of relics plays alike
a conspicuous role. Particularly the teeth of the
Buddha and an excrescence or protuberance of his
skull-bone are prominent as objects of adoration
among its devotees. The high skull-bone was regarded
as one of the characteristic signs of beauty of a Bud-

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dha, and a relic of this kind is described as early as
the fifth century by the Chinese pilgrim Fa Hien on
his visit to the city Hidda in north-western India. It
was kept in a shrine covered with gold-leaf and the
seven precious jewels, and was jealously guarded by
eight prominent men. The king made offerings of
flowers and incense to the bone. Such bones were also
shown in other temples, e. g., in a temple at Fuchow,
China. Hiian Tsang even mentions Buddha's skull
as being kept in a temple of India and enclosed in a
precious casket; he says it was in shape like a lotus-
leaf and yellowish-white in color.

Finally, there is a visible survival of the ancient
custom still preserved in our language. German kopf
("head") corresponds to English cup (Anglo-Saxon
cuppe), both being derived from Latin cuppa ("cup").
In Italian, coppa means a "cup;" but in Provencal,
the same word in the form cobs means a "skull." Latin
testa refers to a pottery vessel or sherd, as well as to
the brain-pan and head. In Provengal, testa signifies
a "nut-shell;" in Spanish, testa denotes "head" and
"bottom of a barrel." In Sanskrit, kapdla means both
a "skull" and a "bowl." This correlation is still extant
in many other Indo-European languages.

B. Laufeb.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

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