April, 1818. SIKKIM, TRIBES IN. 141 



Himalayan tribes east of that point practise the bloody and 

 brutal rites in Avar that prevail amongst the Looties, 

 Khasias, Garrows, and other Indo-Chinese tribes of the 

 mountain forests of Assam, Eastern Bengal, and the Malay 

 peninsula. 



I have not alluded to that evidence of the extraction 

 of the Sikkim races, which is to be derived from their 

 languages, and from which we may hope for a clue to their 

 origin ; the subject is at present under discussion, and 

 involved in much obscurity. 



That six or seven different tribes, without any feudal 

 system or coercive head, with different languages and cus- 

 toms, should dwell in close proximity and in peace and 

 unity, within the confined territory of Sikkim, even for a 

 limited period, is an anomaly ; the more especially when 

 it is considered that except for a tincture of the Boodhist 

 religion among some few of the people, they are all but 

 savages, as low in the scale of intellect as the New Zealander 

 or the Tahitian, and beneath those races in ingenuity and 

 skill as craftsmen. Wars have been waged amongst them, but 

 they were neither sanguinary nor destructive, and the fact 

 remains no less remarkable, that at the period of our occu- 

 pying Dorjiling, friendship and unanimity existed amongst 

 all these tribes ; from the Tibetan at 14,000 feet, to the 

 Mechi of the plains ; under a sovereign whose temporal 

 power was wholly unsupported by even the semblance of 

 arms, and whose spiritual supremacy was acknowledged by 

 very few. 



