Himalayan Journals — Volume 1: Or, Notes of a Naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the Khasia Mountains, etc.Hooker, Joseph Dalton
History
Himalayan Journals — Volume 1: Or, Notes of a Naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the Khasia Mountains, etc.
Hooker, Joseph Dalton
Himalaya Mountains -- Description and travel; Natural history -- Himalaya Mountains
It is curious to observe that these mountains do not appear to have
afforded refuge to the Tamulian* [The Tamulians are the Coles,
Dangas, etc., of the mountains of Central India and the peninsula,
who retired to mountain fastnesses, on the invasion of their country
by the Indo-Germanic conquerors, who are now represented by the
Hindoos.] aborigines of India proper; all the Himalayan tribes of
Sikkim being markedly Mongolian in origin. It does not, however,
follow that they are all of Tibetan extraction; perhaps, indeed, none
but the Moormis are so. The Mechi of the Terai is decidedly
Indo-Chinese, and of the same stock as the savage races of Assam, the
north-east and east frontier of Bengal, Arracan, Burmah, etc. Both
Lepchas and Limboos had, before the introduction of Lama Boodhism
from Tibet, many features in common with the natives of Arracan,
especially in their creed, sacrifices, faith in omens, worship of
many spirits, absence of idols, and of the doctrine of
metempsychosis. Some of their customs, too, are the same; the form of
their houses and of some of their implements, their striped garments,
their constant and, dexterous use of the bamboo for all utensils,
their practice of night-attacks in war, of using poisoned arrows only
in the chase, and that of planting "crow-feet" of sharp bamboo stakes
along the paths an enemy is expected to follow. Such are but a few
out of many points of resemblance, most of which struck me when
reading Lieutenant Phayre's account of Arracan,* ["Journal of the
Asiatic Society of Bengal."] and when travelling in the districts of
Khasia and Cachar.
The laws affecting the distribution of plants, and the lower animals,
materially influence the migrations of man also; and as the botany,
zoology, and climate of the Malayan and Siamese peninsula advance far
westwards into India, along the foot of the Himalaya, so do also the
varieties of the human race. These features are most conspicuously
displayed in the natives of Assam, on both sides of the Burrampooter,
as far as the great bend of that river, beyond which they gradually
disappear; and none of the Himalayan tribes east of that point
practise the bloody and brutal rites in war that prevail amongst the
Cookies, Khasias, Garrows, and other Indo-Chinese tribes of the
mountain forests of Assam, Eastern Bengal, and the Malay peninsula.
I have not alluded to that evidence of the extraction of the Sikkim
races, which is to be derived from their languages, and from which we
may hope for a clue to their origin; the subject is at present under
discussion, and involved in much obscurity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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