1840.] A cursory Notice of Nayakote. 1121 



changing grain for rock salt with the Bhoteahs, both Cis and Trans- 

 Himalayan, dyeing the honae-spun cloths of the neighbouring hill tribes 

 with the madder supplied by them and the indigo of Tirhoot, and 

 tinkering, and pedlaring, and huckstering, for the assembly collected 

 at this petty sort of fair. 



It has been already observed, that the inhabitants of Nayakote con- 

 sist of several peculiar races, besides the ordinary Parbattiah tribes, 

 and the Mewars. Both the latter have been described elsewhere, I 

 shall therefore confine myself in this place to a short notice of the for- 

 mer, or Denwar Darre, Manjhi, Brannoo, and Kumhal. These tribes 

 are exceedingly ignorant, and moreover are disposed to use the little 

 wit they have in cunning evasion of all inquiry into their origin and 

 history, affecting to be hill men, employing the Parbattiah language, 

 and pretending to have forgotten their father-land and speech. In their 

 dark-hued skin, slender forms, oval faces, elevated features, and pecu- 

 liar dialect, barbarous patios as the last now is — may be traced, how- 

 ever, the indisputable signs of a southern origin. These men certainly 

 do not belong to the Tartaric stock of the mountaineers of Nepal, 

 but either to the ordinary stock of the Indian population (Indo-Ger- 

 manic) or to some of those fragmentous branches of it which still here 

 and there represent a preceding aboriginal race, as the Hos, Mundas, 

 Gonds, Bhils across the Ganges, and the Tharus of the Nepalese Tarai. 

 Between the last mentioned and the Denwars in particular, a distinct 

 affinity may be traced ; but to verify and illustrate this affinity through 

 Tharoo helps, is as little feasible, as to do it through Denwar ones ; 

 and I shall only therefore venture to say at present, that whether the 

 Tharoos of the Tarai, and the Denwars and their compeer cultivators 

 of Nayakote, and of other similiar low and malarious valleys witliin 

 the hills (for in many others they are found), belong to the aborigi- 

 nal or to the ordinary stock of Indian population, they are closely 

 connected among themselves, separate from the Tartar breed of the 

 highland races, and, in the hills emigrants from the plains of north 

 Behar several generations back. 



The Manjhis, Kumhals, Bramoos, Denwars, and Darrees inhabit with 

 impunity the lowest and hottest valleys of Nepal, just as the Tharoos 

 do the Tarai ; and the Mundas and Oorans of Chota Nagpore, both as 

 recent servants and settlers, merely in the case of the lust two, who are 



