There are Brahmans in the hills north of the Panjab, in the extreme N.W. of India, occupying both the valley of Kashmir and the hills imme diately to the west and south of it. Kashmir itself is a Brahman country, — all its people, though long since converted to Mahomedan ism, having been of the Brahmanical race. The educated class there, who maintained their own tenets and are still very numerous, are known as pandits, and form quite an aristocracy. They are all educated, are exceedingly clever, and are an excessive and somewhat oppressive bureaucracy, which has ruled Kashmir under every successive government, and has sent out colonies to seek their livelihood in Northern India. The features of the Kashmir Brahmans proclaim them to be one of the highest and purest races in the world. They are of quite high Aryan type, very fair, handsome,•with chiselled features. In many the nose is high and slightly aquiline, but not Jewish ; but in others the nose is straight. Their brow is a little more raised and their nose more arched than in the Greek statues. The ordinary Kash miri has a strong athletic figure, but none of them are martial; and the Brahmans in these respects correspond,—they rule by the brain and pen. They have a greater refinement and regu larity of feature than the Afghans and others of a rougher type, with, however, a less manly-looking physique, a colour less ruddy, and more induced to a somewhat sallow fairness. The Kashmir Brahmans eat meat, and are excluded by the In dian Brahmans alike from the five Gaur and from the five Dravid, and form a separate Brahmani cal class, being more secular than the priestly Brah mans of Hindustan and the Dekhan, than whom they are altogether looser in their observances.
Kashmiri pandits are known all over N. India as a very clever and energetic race of office-seekers ; as a body, they excel in acuteness the same number of any other race with whom they come in contact. Almost all the secular pandits use the Persian character freely. They are perfectly versatile, and, serving abroad, will mount a horse, gird on a sword, and assume at a push a semi-military air.
The lower classes of Kashmir have long since been converted to Mahomedanism, but they seem to be ethnologically identical with the Brahmans ; and tradition asserts that they are of the same race.—Campbell. The Brahmans of Kashmir are regarded by those of Bengal as of an inferior order, and the agricultural Brahmans on the Saraswati banks are similarly regarded. Brah mans are numerous in Kamaon and Garhwal, where education is more advanced and the Nagri character used. People of Brahmanical origin, approximating to the Panjabi, but in language', habits, manners, and dress quite different from the Kashmiri, dwell in the hills between Kashmir and the Panjab, but they have abandoned the Hindu religion, and are now partly Sikhs and in part Mal'medal's. Their language is a dialect of the Panjabi. They are good soldiers. Mr. Camp bell thinks that the Bralnnaus of the frontier hills are oven handsomer than the Kashmiri, the people in general of these bills being tho hand somest of the human race. &tuba dwell in the
hill frontier beyond the Jhelum. They are of Brahmanical origin, but now profess Mahome danism. On the eastern side of the Jhelum the hills are shared with other races by a numerous tribe of Sikhs, converts from Brahmanism. Their Brahman ancestors became converts to the Sikh religion before it became a political power, and entirely threw off their Hinduism. They are very useful soldiers and servants. There are some Brahmans at the foot of the N.W. Himalaya. They are not found beyond the Indus, but are pretty numerous in part of the Rawal Pindi district. South of the Salt Range, in the plains, the Rajput and Jat occupy the country. But there are villages of agricultural Brahmans in the fertile plains under the hills in the districts of Sealkote, Goordaspur, and in the valleys of the broken country between Hushearpur and Kangra, and in parts of the Umballa district and the adjoining Simla hills. They are not numerous near the source of the Saraswati ; but lower down its course, in the somewhat desolate countries of Marwar • and Jeysulmir, where the lands are moist, the Brahmans are still numerous, and are good cultivators, and dairw to have occu pied the country before the Jats and Rajputs became dominant.
In Central India, the town of Palli seems to be a Brahmanical centre. The Marwari or Saraswati Brahmans form a considerable portion of the most industrious of the cultivators in Ma1wa. The Saraswati Brahmans seem to have kept much to the tenets of their forefathers. They are called in the south, Kashastale Brahmans. The oldest of the Brahmanical race are the people of the upper hills in the western Himalayas, who date from a time anterior to Hinduism. The Kashmiri were a civilised and literary Brahmanieal people, not yet fully Hindu. The Saraswati Brah mans were the earliest, most simple, and pure Hindus of Vedic faith ; and those of the Ganges and the rest of India are in various phases of modern Hinduism. There are ten classes of Saraswati Brahmans, who are supposed to come from the N.W. of India.
In the Panjab, Sind, and countries about the Saraswati, having been superseded by other races, there are few Brahmans, except in the eastern part of those tracts, where they are industrious cultivators, and claim to be the ancient occupants of the country.
Ilinelustan.—The main of the Brahmans is that part of Hindustan lying the Vindhya on the one side, and the .Himalaya on the north, from the longitude of Kamm and Lucknow to near the frontiers of Bengal, with a large segment of more especially Rajput country cut out of the centre of this tract. The Brahmans of Hinaustan are generally good-sized, and, on the whole, well-looking men, with good features, not particularly fair. They are not of the high Aryan type. The greater number are quite illi terate. The priests and pandits have never adopted the Persian writing character. They are not very clever, have little social poaltion, but servo humbly as soldiers and servants about courts and jails.