Aphil, 1848. LEPCHAS, CHARACTERISTICS OF. 127 



Sikkim and Nepal from Dorjiling, I shall give a sketch of 

 the different peoples and races composing the heterogeneous 

 population of Sikkim and the neighbouring mountains. 



The Lepcha is the aboriginal inhabitant of Sikkim, and 

 the prominent character in Dorjiling, where he undertakes 

 all sorts of out-door employment. The race to which he 

 belongs is a very singular one ; markedly Mongolian in 

 features, and a good deal too, by imitation, in habit ; still 

 he differs from his Tibetan prototype, though not so 

 decidedly as from the Nepalese and Bhotanese, between 

 whom he is hemmed into a narrow tract of mountain 

 country, barely 60 miles in breadth. The Lepchas possess 

 a tradition of the flood, during which a couple escaped to 

 the top of a mountain (Tendon g) near Dorjiling. The 

 earliest traditions which they have of their history date 

 no further back than some three hundred years, when they 

 describe themselves as having been long-haired, half-clad 

 savages. At about that period they were visited by 

 Tibetans, who introduced Boodh worship, the platting of 

 their hair into pig-tails, and very many of their own 

 customs. Their physiognomy is however so Tibetan in its 

 character, that it cannot be supposed that this was their 

 earliest intercourse with the trans-nivean races : whether 

 they may have wandered from beyond the snows before the 

 spread of Boodhism and its civilisation, or whether they 

 are a cross between the Tamulian of India and the 

 Tibetan, has not been decided. Their language, though 

 radically identical with Tibetan, diners from it in many 

 important particulars. They, or at least some of their 

 tribes, call themselves Rong, and Arratt, and their country 

 Dijong : they once possessed a great part of East Nepal, 

 as far west as the Tambur river, and at a still earlier 

 period they penetrated as far west as the Arun river. 



