The Ethnology of India. 115 
The great seat of the Bunneahs seems to be in the west, and most of 
them point to a western origin, or rather, speaking from a Hindustanee 
point of view, [ should say south-western, not to the Punjab, but to 
Rajpootana and the Bombay country. There are a great many sub- 
divisions among them, and my impression is that the different divisions 
do not intermarry as do those of Jats and Rajpoots. There may 
therefore be ethnological distinctions among them, but I do not 
know that it is so. The most famous of them are the Marwarees ; 
and that is the name of the country, and not of the sect, intimating 
their habitat in Rajpootana. The red-turbaned gentlemen so conspi- 
cuous in the Calcutta Opium marts and Bombay share-markets are 
generally Marwarees. In Hindustan the highest class of Bunneahs 
are called ‘ Aggerwals,’ and there are several other sects. The 
Bunneahs professing the Jain religion are called Srawaks, and under 
that name they seem to have been famous in very old times, even in 
parts of Central India which are now comparatively barbarous. In 
Hindustan, Hindu Boras are a sect of money-lenders and traders and, 
T imagine, Bunneahs. I believe the name is the same as that of the 
Mahommedan ‘ Borahs’ of the Bombay side; but the latter, with 
some peculiar Mahommedan tenets, have probably got some traces of 
transmarine blood, and I shall reserve them for the category of ‘ Bor- 
derers.’ Towards the south of Hindustan I have heard of a sect of 
inferior Bunneahs called ‘ Jashwals’ who, unlike the race generally, 
are lax Hindus and even permit their widows to remarry. 
So far as I can make out, the proper Banees are not thoroughly and 
completely domiciled in Bengal proper, and to the want of that 
element (or of anything equal to it) I attribute the absence of enter- 
prise and practical achievement, which seems to be remarkable among 
the Bengallee, notwithstanding the great value acquired by the land 
under the permanent settlement, and the accumulation of wealth 
during a hundred years of peace. In Calcutta most of the considerable 
trade and banking business and all the Hindu speculation is done by 
up-country Marwarees and other Bunneahs, not by Bengallees. In the 
Bengal districts, though a good many Banee colonists are settled 
in towns and considerable places, the money-lending and shopkeeping 
business seems to be in great part in the hands of a variety of other 
élasses. Bramins do, I believe, a good deal of money-lending, and the 
