68 The Ethnology of India. 
the Bengalee, both in some of the popular terminations, in the verb 
‘to be,’ and in other particulars. I had before learned that there was 
a peculiarity of this kind in the Hindee spoken in the high 
country immediately south of Bahar, but there I supposed it to be a 
mere intermixture of the not distant Bengalee. The existence, 
however, of Bengalee affinities in the patois of Kumaon would 
seem to suggest the question whether these are not the remains of a 
form of Arian speech older that the modern Hindee, spoken perhaps 
before Rajpoots and Jats came on the scene, and then driven forward 
to Bengal in one direction, into the hills in another. I have not 
myself any acquaintance with Bengalee, but it would be interesting 
to enquire ifit has any affinities with the older forms of speech in 
Kashmir and the north-western hills, or again with the Maratta 
and western dialects. 
To get an idea of the Bengalee formation, I asked a friend the 
other day a single word, the pronoun ‘he’ and the genitive ‘ of him,’ 
which he gave me ‘Se’ and ‘ Taha’ or ‘ Tah.’ At this present writing, 
by way of experiment, I have just turned up these same words in Mr. 
Edgeworth’s small Kashmir Grammar and find ‘he,’ ‘ Su ;’ ‘of him’ 
‘Teh. The ‘Se’ is a very old Arian form, found in the Kaffir hills, 
which disappears in Hindee and reappears in Bengalee; but the genitive 
‘ Teh’ in Cashmiree, ‘ Tah’ in Bengalee, seems a singular and hardly 
accidental coincidence. 
To return, this brings me to the Bengalee Bramins. They all 
assert a northern origin as a historical fact, and I believe that there 
is no doubt of it. Still their nationality is altogether Bengalee, 
and as the Bengalees differ from all other Indians, these Bramins 
also differ much in language, dress, habits, and general style from the 
Hindustanee Bramins. 
In appearance they are certainly fairer, larger, and altogether 
Aryans of a higher type than the mass of the Bengalees. There is 
much more difference, I think, between Bramins and the mass in 
Bengal than in Hindustan, Some of them are fine looking men both 
in size and feature. They regain here too, some (though not all) 
of the aristocratic and bureaucratic position which they have lost 
in Hindustan. They have little competition from Rajpoots and 
rough northern tribes, and might have it pretty much their own way, 
