Races. — The habitable parts of the range are occupied by Mongoloid races, and to a small extent by tribes of Aryan descent ; and many of the tribes are supposed to have occupied their present localities before the 4th or the 7th centuries A.D. A sparse Aryan population lies scattered among the valleys.
The Bhot area is bounded on the south by India and Kashmir, on the north by Chinese Tartar', and on the west by Little Bokhara and hafiristan. Amongst them may be men tioned the Mahomedan Bhot of Baltistan or Little Tibet, of Rongdo, Skardo, Parkuta, and Khartakshi, of Shigar, Chorbad, etc. ; (2) the Buddhist Bhot of Ladakh, Hungrung and Kana war, the Bhot of the Chinese empire, the Tibetans of Rudok, Garo, Goga, etc., of Lhasea and Tishu Lumbu, the Si-Fan, the Lhopa of Bhutan, the Tak, the Bhot of Garhwal, Karaaon, and Nepal; the Chepang, and probably the Rhondur, the Chak, the Drok, the Bor, the Kole ; and (3) in the further east are the Koeh'h, the Dhitnal, the western Bodo of Sikkim ; and (4) still farther are the Bhutan frontier, and still farther are the eastern Bodo or Boro of Assam and Cachar, the Garo, the Khassya, and the Mikir. To the central region are similarly confined, each in their own province, from west to east, the Dunghar (west of Nepal), the Dardu, the Gakar, the Bamba, the Kakka, the Dogma, the Kanet, the Garhwali, the Kohli, the Kas or Khasia (in Nepal), the Magar, the Gurung, the Kusunda, the Chepang, the Sunwar, the Newar, the Murmi or Tamar, the Khombo or Kiranti, the Yakha, the Limbu or Yak-thumba, the Lepcha or Deunjongmaro (in Sikkim), the Lhopa (in Bhutan), the Dafla (east of Bhutan), the Abor and Bor, the Mill, and the Mishmi. The Cis - Himalayan Bhotia (called Palusen, Rongbo, Serpa, Kath - Bliotia, etc.), extend along the whole line of the ghats, and with the name have retained unchanged the lingual and physical characteristics, and even the manners, customs, and dress, of their transnivean brethren. The passes through the Snowy Range are occupied by the Bhoti, who have a monopoly of the trade across the Himalaya, are carriers, loading the goods on the backs of sheep. Most of the traders of the snow valleys have some members of their families residing at Daba or Gyani, on the Nana khar lake.
The men of all races in the hills are short and of poor physique ; they look worn, and get deep-lined on the face at a comparatively early age. The young women are often extremely pretty, those living in the higher and colder villages having, at 15 or 16, a complexion as fair as many Spaniards or Italians, and with very regular features. But they grow darker as
they advance in years, and become very plain. As a general description of the Mongoloid tribes there, the head and face is very broad, usually widest between the cheek-bones, sometimes as wide between the angles of the jaws ; forehead broad, but low and somewhat receding ; chin defective ; mouth large and salient, but the teeth vertical, and the lips not tumid ; gums thickened; eyes wide apart and oblique ; nose long, pyra midal ; hair of head copious and straight ; of the face and body deficient ; stature low, but muscular and stroner ; character phlegmatic, good humoured, cheerful, and tractable. Polyandry yet exists partially, but is disappearing. Female chastity is little heeded before marriage. Crime rare, and they are truthful. They sacrifice, and are little Hinduized. Their craftsmen are stranger helot races, located amongst them from time im memorial, as smiths, carpenters, =Tiers, potters. The Newar alone have any literature, and that wholly exotic.
To the lower range, again, and to similarly malarious sites of the middle region, are exclus ively confined the Koch'h, Bodo, Dhimal (Sikkim and east of it), the Kichak, Pallas, Hayu, Than; Dhenwar, Kumba, Bhramu, Dahi or Dari, Kuswar, the Bhotia (in Nepal), the Boksa (in Kamaon), the Khatir, the Awan, the Janjoh, the Chib, and the Bahoa (west of Kamaon to the Indus).
The Khas, Magar, Gurung, Newar, Murmi, Lepcha, and Bodpa, etc., are dominant un broken tribes. The broken tribes are all the Awalia, the Chepang, Kusunda, and Hayu, and there are tribes of helot craftsmen, blacksmiths, carpenters, curriers, etc., who are regarded as unclean. The unbroken tribes are the more recent immigrants from the north ; their languages are of the simpler Turanian type, whereas those of the broken tribes are of the complex or pro nomenalized type, and the phenomena of ethno logy in the Himalaya warrant the conclusions that they were peopled by successive swarms from the great Turanian hive, and that its tribes are still traceably akin alike to the Altaic branch of the north, and to the Dravidian of the south. The Khas, the Kanet, the Dogra, and several other tribes of the Western Himalaya, are clearly of mixed breed, descended from Tartar mothers and Aryan fathers.