to the Ethnological Society of London. 59 



the soil or by pasturage, have, in their immediate neigh- 

 bourhood, hordes of outcasts or refugees who hover on their 

 borders, and live by depredation, or on the precarious produce 

 of the chase, or the spontaneous fruits of the earth, roaming 

 through forest and desert places. The Bushmen are thus 

 the outcasts of the Hottentots ; and Dr Smith has clearly 

 proved that this is the real origin of the Bushman race. 

 Many tribes of Kafirs have also hordes of outcasts answering 

 to the Bushmen in their vicinity, who rob and plunder strangers, 

 and wander in pursuit of an uncertain livelihood. The Fin- 

 goes, who were subject to the Kosah Kafirs, appear to have 

 been a tribe of this description. Civilised nations, like those 

 of Europe, imprison or put to death unruly people, who cannot 

 be kept in subjection to the laws of society, or they transport 

 them beyond seas ; a greater number transport themselves 

 to the colonies and elsewhere. But in countries such as those 

 to which I have alluded, there is no similar resource. The 

 outcasts from among the Hindoos take to the hills ; and thus 

 they have greatly augmented, though they have perhaps not 

 in the first instance, given rise, to the hordes of Bhils and 

 Goands, and other mountain tribes. Where no distinct lan- 

 guage can be found in use among the people, which is said 

 to be the case in some extensive mountain-districts, it is per- 

 haps most probable that they are chiefly the descendants of 

 refugees. No complete or sufficient series of inquiries has 

 yet been set on foot, with a view to the comparison of the 

 languages of the mountain-tribes with the idioms of the civi- 

 lised nations of India, though some attempts have lately been 

 made, which prove the necessity of this investigation before 

 we shall be entitled to draw any positive conclusions as to the 

 relation between different tribes. The results will probably 

 be different in the various parts of India. The idiom of the 

 Tudas in the Nilgherry hills has been partially studied. It 

 is said to display indications of affinity to the Tamulian. 

 It would appear from a very curious paper in the Journal of 

 the Geographical Society of Bombay, for 1846, by Mr Brad- 

 ley, that the language of the Ghonds of the Guavil hills, has 

 many words common to it and the idiom of the Orang Benua, 

 who are supposed to be the aboriginal inhabitants of the Ma- 



