1900.] Annual Address. 49 



who were the Yu-echi and why should they be supposed to be connected 

 with the Jats and Rajputs ? To answer the question fully would 

 require a volume but some brief answer is necessary to explain the 

 proposals of the Association. According to Chinese authorities quoted 

 by De Guignes,' shortly after the building of the Great Wall of China 

 a people called Tne-chi wei-e expelled about 200 B.C. by the Hiungnu 

 or Huns fiom their original settlements on the East of Lake Lob and 

 driven westward. On their march they separated into two bands, 

 the smaller of which made its way into Tibet, while the larger body took 

 possession of the country between the Jaxartes and Oxus, where they 

 are shown by Klaproth as settled in '?>1 B.C. Klaproth* says they 

 were of the same race as the Khiang, whom he describes as the 

 aborigines of China. From Transoxiana the Yu-echi are said to have 

 spread to Khwarism and Bokhara, and thence to the country on the Indus, 

 where Tamerlane on his arrival in 1398 "recognised his old antagonists 

 in their distant colony."^ Here they were in power for several centuries, 

 and were known to the classical geographers as Getse. Mr. Keane* 

 supposes that the Yu-echi were a people of Turki stock who entered 

 India as conquerors, bringing with them a number of Bactrian peasants 

 from the Kabul Valley. The Yu-echi, he thinks, are now represented 

 by the Rajputs, Avhile their followers were the ancestors of the Jats. 

 The historical evidence does not seem very tangible, but if it is true 

 that the Yu-echi were identical with the Khiang, and that their features 

 were distinctive enough for Tamerlane, himself a Tartar, to recognise 

 them, they probably were of Mongolian stock, and might, even now, 

 retain some trace of Mongolian characteristics. If so, the method of 

 measurement first used by Mr. Oldfield Thomas on a collection of 

 Torres Straits skulls and introduced into India by me, with Sir William 

 Flower's approval, for the purpose of dealing with the Mongoloid 

 tribes of the Eastern Himalayas, may be trusted to bring out any trace 

 of Mongolian blood that survives among the Jats. If no such trace is 

 found, we may perhaps conclude that the theory of their Scythian 

 origin rests on one of those verbal mystifications which have played 

 so large a part in ethnology. 



Lastly the Association ask for a series of photopraphs of typical 

 individuals of the various races, and, if it should be practicable, of 

 views of archaic industries, etc. This sounds at first sight a very exten- 

 sive project, and so it would be if carried out de novo in the manner 



1 Histoire dea Huns, ii., 42. 



2 Klaproth, Tableaux Historiques de VAsie, p. 13. 



8 De Guignes Academic des Inscriptions, vol. xxv., p. 32, 

 * Man Past and Present, p. 323. 



