284 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



to the Altai uplands, and east to Manchuria and Korea, where a 

 strong Caucasic strain still persists. De Ujfalvy's long-heads 

 would thus be, not the proto-Mongols who were always round- 

 headed, but the long-headed neolithic pre-Mongol race expelled 

 by them from Mongolia. 



That this region has been their true home since the first 

 migrations from the south there can be no doubt. 



Ethnical and 



Administra- Here land and people stand in the closest relation 



tive Divisions. . . 1-1 



one to the other ; here every conspicuous physical 

 feature recalls some popular memory ; every rugged crest is 

 associated with the name of some national hero, every lake or 

 stream is still worshipped or held in awe as a local deity, or else 

 the abode of the ancestral shades. Here also the Mongols 

 proper form two main divisions, Sharra in the east and Kalmuk 

 in the west, while a third group, the somewhat mixed Buryats, 

 have long been settled in the Siberian provinces of Irkutsk and 

 Trans-Baikalia. Under the Chinese semi-military administration 

 all except the Buryats, who are Russian subjects, are constituted 

 since the iyth century in 41 Aimaks (large tribal groups or 

 principalities with hereditary khans) and 226 Koshungs, "Banners," 

 that is, smaller groups whose chiefs are dependent on the khans 

 of their respective Airnaks, who are themselves directly responsible 

 to the imperial government. Sub joined is a table of these ad- 

 ministrative divisions, which present a curious but effective com- 

 bination of the tribal and political systems, analogous to the 

 arrangement in Pondoland and some other districts in Cape 

 Colony, where the hereditary tribal chief assumes the functions of 

 a responsible British magistrate. 



Tribal or Territorial Aimaks Koshungs 



Divisions (Principalities) (Banners) 



Khalkas 4 86 



Inner Mongolia with Ordos 25 51 



Chakars i 



Ala-Shan i 3 



Koko-nor and Tsaidam 5 29 



Zungaria 4 32 



Uriankhai i 17 



41 226 



