The Ethnology of Indra. 57 
is more varied and their necessities greater, they do in various places 
and under various circumstances turn their hands to very many odd 
jobs as it were. Throughout Hindustan they have almost entirely 
lost that function of Clerks and Bureaucrats of the community 
which they still retain toa great extent in other parts of India; and 
it will be as members of the ordinary agricultural populations that I 
shall most deal with them. 
Beginning from the north, we first meet with the Bramins in that 
quarter to which all their traditions point, within the hills north of 
the Punjab. The first Indians encountered by a traveller from 
Central Asia would be these Bramins of this extreme North-West 
corner, occupying both the valley of Kashmir and the hills imme- 
diately to the west and south-west of it. 
Kashmir is a Bramin country. The lower classes have long been 
converted to Mahommedanism, but they seem to be ethnologically 
identical with the Bramins, and tradition also asserts that they are 
of the same race. At the present day no other Hindu easte save 
the Bramin is known, nor is there any trace (so far as I could find) 
that there ever was any other in the country. The Bramin popula- 
tion is numerous, but it would seem as if, while the illiterate 
multitude adopted the religion of the ruling power, the better edu- 
cated and superior class maintained their own tenets; and at this day 
the Bramins (or Pandits, as they are usually called) form quite a sort 
of aristocracy. They are almost all educated and exceedingly clever, 
and so, being to a great degree above manual labour, they are an 
excessive and somewhat oppressive Bureaucracy, which not only has 
ruled Kashmir under every successive government, but sends out 
colonies to seek a livelihood throughout Northern India. The Kash- 
mir Bramins are quite High-Arian in the type of their features, very 
fair and handsome, with high chiselled features, and no trace of 
intermixture of the blood of any lower race. It may be partly race 
and partly occupation, but they have certainly a greater refinement 
and regularity of feature than the Affghans and others of a rougher 
type; with, however, a less manly-looking physique and a colour less 
ruddy and more inclining to a somewhat sallow fairness. The high 
nose, slightly aquiline, but by no means what we call Jewish or. 
Nut-cracker, is a common type. Raise a little the brow of a Greek 
