I may remark that several of the characters are like the runic _m_. It has been suggested that they have a resemblance to old Chinese. A second suggestion was that they might be drawings of the insignia of rank carried by certain priests; a third idea was that they were phallic; a fourth that they were rough representations of men and animals, the runic m being a bird; and a fifth that they were the handicraft of some gentleman desirous of imposing upon the credulity of wandering archæologists.
I myself am inclined to think that they were the work of the peoples who have left so many traces of themselves in the shape of kitchen middens and various implements in this locality. In this case they may be Aino.
Another illustration from Japan is presented in Pl. LII.
Mr. Rivett-Carnac, in Archæologic Notes on Ancient Sculpturings on Rocks in Kumaon, India (_a_), gives a description of the glyphs copied in Fig. 146:
[Illustration: FIG. 146.--Petroglyphs at Chandeshwar, India.]
At a point about two miles and a half south of Dwara-Hath, and twelve miles north of the military station of Ranikhet in Kumaon, the bridle-road leading from the plains through Naini Tal and Ranikhet to Baijnath, and thence on to the celebrated shrine of Bidranath, is carried through a narrow gorge at the mouth of which is a temple sacred to Mahadeo, ... which is locally known by the name of Chandeshwar.
About two hundred yards south of the temple, toward the middle of the defile, rises a rock at an angle of forty-five degrees presenting a surface upon which, in a space measuring fourteen feet in height by twelve in breadth, more than two hundred cups are sculptured. They vary from an inch and a half to six inches in diameter and from half an inch to an inch in depth, and are arranged in groups composed of approximately parallel rows.
The cups are mostly of the simple types and only exceptionally surrounded by single rings or connected by grooves.
N. S. Shtukin (_a_) referring to certain picture-writings on the cliffs of the Yenesei river, in the Quarterly Isvestia of the Imperial Geographical Society for 1882, says: “These are figured, but are not particularly remarkable, except as being the work of invaders from the far south, perhaps Persians. Camels and pheasants are among the animals represented.”