The Ethnology of India. 51 
pooter as it sweeps round from Assam into Bengal, the extreme 
western portion of the range which separates Sylhet, &c. from 
Assam. More to the east are the Cossya hills, to the west those of 
the Garrows. While all the tribes of the eastern hills are Indo- 
Chinese, I am inclined to suspect that the Garrows alone are Indian 
Aborigines, more or less mixed it may be. They seem to be quite 
distinct and different from the other tribes of the neighbourhood, and 
several officers, to whom I have talked, agree in thinking them more 
in the style of Coles and Bheels than of Indo-Chinese. I have not 
found any very exact description of them, but gather that they are 
small and dark, savage and troublesome. That they should belong 
to the Aboriginal races of India, is primd facie by no means impro- 
bable, seeing that their hill country is, as the crow flies, scarcely more 
than 150 miles distant from that of the Santals and Rajmehalees, as 
may be seen by a glance at any map. There is a kind of straight 
between the eastern and western hills through which the Ganges and 
Berhampooter run before expanding in the broader Delta of Southern 
Bengal. 
The little that is known of the language of the Garrows has not 
sufficed to connect them with any of the Aboriginal tribes mentioned 
by me, but it also seems to show that it is radically different from 
the surrounding Indo-Chinese dialects. It seems especially desirable 
to know something more of the Garrows and their language. 
Ihave kept to the last the Bhooyas or Bhooians, because they 
seem to belong to bothsides of Bengal, to West Bengal and Orissa on 
one side, and to Assam on the other. J have not met with any de- 
tailed account of their position in Assam, but I imagine that there 
can be no better authority than Col. Dalton who intimately knows 
both Provinces, and he, while describing them in the western hills, 
distinctly states that they were once the dominant race in Assam. 
It is always necessary to be cautious in dealing with names of this 
sound, since, as I have already mentioned, ‘ Bhoomea’ means ‘ man of 
the soil,’ and I believe that the word earth or soil also takes the form 
Bui. The Bhooyas have no immediate connection (that is looking 
only to the name) with either the Bhumiz or the Boyars. But 
Col. Dalton no doubt looks farther than this; and indeed he goes on 
to notice a considerable connection between Assam and the west both 
