282 An Account of GiirJiwal, [Sess. 



infantry, with some irregular troops, drove out the Goorkhas, 

 to the great delight of the inhabitants. The East India Com- 

 pany kept to itself the greater part of Gurhwal, including the 

 old capital, but restored the ^yestern part of the country to 

 the representative of the old royal family. The evil days 

 of the Goorkha government are still well remembered in 

 Gurhwal. The common phrase for oppression is " Goorkha 

 rule " ; and when a man thinks himself injured, he generally 

 says, " Have the days of the Goorkhas returned, that I should 

 be so treated ? " The natives are of mixed origin, partly 

 Hindoo, partly Thibetan — the Hindoo element predominating 

 in the south and centre, the Thibetan in the extreme north. 

 There may also be an infusion of Mongol blood, but there is 

 not, I think, much. 



The language is almost everywhere Indian, Thibetan being 

 only spoken in a few villages on the northern frontier. The 

 dialect of Hindi spoken is called Nepauli, or more usually 

 Hill language, and is a well-marked dialect of the great 

 Aryan language, which is spoken across Northern India from 

 sea to sea. Curiously enough, the words used in the hills are 

 for the most part those of "Western India, while the pronunci- 

 ation is distinctly that of Bengali, as spoken near Calcutta. 

 This is a strong argument in favour of regarding Hindi, Pun- 

 jabi, Bengali, and the hill language, as being in reality only 

 four dialects, not four languages. The only one, of the five 

 daughters of Sanscrit, which has diverged so much from the 

 others as to be entitled to be considered a distinct language, 

 is Maharatti, the language of the south, though most people 

 consider Bengali also to be a distinct language. 



There are no towns in Gurhwal. The two largest places 

 are the villages of Sreenugger, with 562 inhabited houses, 

 and Joshimut, with 119 inhabited houses. 



Sreenugger, the old capital, built on the banks of the great 

 river, is a ruined city, chiefly remarkable for the four-storied 

 stone palace of the old Rajas, built in 1358, the stone walls of 

 which are curiously carved with Hindoo mythological subjects. 

 Sreenugger has still, however, a traditional reputation as a seat 

 of learning, and Dya iSTand Shastri, one of the greatest of 

 modern Hindoo thinkers, spent some years here studying 

 Sanscrit. Poetry also is cultivated. When I was in the 



