71 NOTES TO LECTURE I 30. Pottery in the Neolithic Age was dull coloured and rough surfaced and had but little decoration, whereas the pot of the true Iron Age was distinguished by rich colours and by highly polished surfaces. Typical pottery of the Iron and later Ages has been discovered in Narsipur Sungam and French rocks in Mysore, in Malyam in Bellary and Patpad in Kurnool district. India was not the only country in which a Bronze Age did not precede the Iron Age, for, according to J. E. Wocel, the Slavonic peoples missed the Bronze Age and passed straight on from the Neolithic Age to the smelting of iron. China is also said not to have known a Bronze Age. (Bruce Foote, Indian Pre-Historic and Proto-Historic Antiquities, p. 25). Neolithic remains side by side with the relics of the early Iron Age are found in large quantities in Anantapur, Cuddapah, Kurnool and other districts (see for example the Cuddapah District Gazetteer, pp. 8-20). In the Shevaroy hills, in the district of Tinnevelly, the Ceded Districts, Hyderabad and Baroda, we meet with plenty of neolithic pottery. Bruce Foote mentions 127 places where he discovered pre-historic pottery. 56 places yielded neolithic type, two of the transitional formation between the Neolithic and Iron Ages, 60 Iron Age types and the rest specimens of the later Iron Age. 31. Attention should be concentrated on a view that the cremation was primarily a Vedic rite but even after it was introduced into Southern India, the other methods were also practised. Another method, the exposure of the body has thus been commented upon : "Atharvana Samhita, XVIII, 2-34 mentions among the Pitss invoked in the Pindapibryajña (offering of balls of rice to the Manes), the Paroptas (those
