The Ethnology of India. T 
Cashmeeree Bramins. The real cause of all these stories, I take to be 
this. The Hindoos, as Hindoos and from an orthodox Hindoo point 
of view, did not attain their highest religious, literary, and political 
development, till they were settled in the plains of India ; consequently 
the early Bramins of the valleys of the Himalayas are not considered 
nearly so orthodox, so sacred, or in the Hindoo scale so high,*as the 
more famous Bramins of the plains. And the Rajpoots of the Pun- 
jab and the adjoining hills, are not so high in the scale of strict 
Rajpoot orthodoxy as the Solar and Lunar races of Ajoodea. 
Hence it is that the races, really earlier and purer, think it necessary 
to claim descent from those who, in our pcint of view, are really very 
inferior. 
Again, most tribes which have been for many centuries converted 
to Mahommedanism, set up some origin founded on the traditions and 
literature of the dominant Mahommedan races. They are generally 
descended from Soleiman or Nooshervan, or something of that kind. 
Jewish names and traditions are particularly in vogue among the 
Mahommedans (Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, and many others known to 
us, are their most common names, in the form of Ibraheem, Yacoob, 
Yoosoof, &c. &c.) and it has been pointed out, that the Affghan asser- 
tion of Jewish descent loses most of its significance, when we find 
how many other tribes have stories of the same kind. I have not been 
able to ascertain whether the ‘ Soleiman’s Throne” met with in so 
many places is to be specially referred to the Jewish Solomon, or 
whether the term is merely the ‘‘ Suleh-man”’ or wise man of the Hast. 
At any rate I believe that most of the pretended Mahommedan 
genealogies are in brief ‘ bosh.’ 
Ido not mean that popular traditions are to be neglected, on the 
contrary, I think that they often lead us far towards the truth ; but I say 
that we must use caution and discrimination, to sift the wheat from 
the merest chaff. 
I should add that I believe that the claim of aboriginal and other 
tribes to Rajpoot and such like origin, is not always without some 
foundation in fact. The Rajpoots seem, like the Normans, to have 
frequently found their way in small numbers among inferior races, and 
there amalgamating and intermarrying with them, to have acquired. 
by force of character a leadership over them, and to have considerably 
