VI.] THE SOUTHERN MONGOLS. 177 



radiating in all directions from the central cradleland about the 

 Upper Brahmaputra (San-po) valley westwards into Kashmir, 

 eastwards into China, southwards down the Himalayan slopes to 

 the Gangetic plains, south-eastwards to Indo-China. In some 

 places they have come into contact with other races and disap- 

 peared either by total extinction or by absorption (India, Hindu- 

 Kush), or else preserved their type while accepting the speech, 

 religion, and culture of later intruders. Such are the Garhwali, 

 and many groups in Nepal, especially the dominant Gurkhas 

 (Khas 1 ), of whom there are twelve branches, all Aryanised and 

 since the i2th century speaking the Parbattia Bhasha, a Prakrit 

 or vulgar Sanskrit tongue current amongst an extremely mixed 

 population of about 2,000,000. 



In other directions the migrations took place in remote pre- 

 historic times, the primitive proto-Tibetan groups becoming more 

 and more specialised as they receded farther and farther from the 

 cradleland into Mongolia, Siberia, China, Farther India, and 

 Malaysia. This is at least how I understand the peopling of a 

 great part of the eastern hemisphere by an original nucleus of 

 Mongolic type first differentiated from a pleistocene precursor on 

 the Tibetan tableland. 



Strangely contradictory estimates have been formed of the 

 temperament and mental characters of the Bod-pa, some, such as 

 that of Turner', no doubt too favourable, while 

 others err perhaps in the opposite direction. Thus m jnt mpera " 

 Desgodins, who nevertheless knew them well, de- 

 scribes the cultured Tibetan of the south as " a slave towards the 

 great, a despot towards the weak, knavish or treacherous according 

 to circumstances, always on the look-out to defraud, and lying 

 impudently to attain his end," and much more to the same effect 3 . 



1 Not to be confused with the Khas, as the wild tribes of the Lao country 

 (Siam) are collectively called. Capt. Eden Vansittart thinks in Nepal the term 

 is an abbreviation of Kshatriya, or else means "fallen." This authority tells 

 us that, although the Khas are true Gurkhas, it is not the Khas who enlist in 

 our Gurkha regiments, but chiefly the Magars and Gurungs, who are of purer 

 Bhotiya race and less completely Hinduized (" The Tribes, Clans, and Castes 

 of Nepal," in Jonrn. As. Soc. Bengal, LXIII. i, No. 4). 



- Embassy to the Court of the Teshoo Lama, pp. 350 sq. 



3 " Voila je crois, le vrai Tibetain des pays cultives du sud, qui se regarde 

 K. 12 



