1844.] and on Gerard's Account of Kundwar. 195 



Kashuk or Kushuk means I believe the all-knowing, and is a name 

 usually given to pious Lamas ; it may be equivalent to your holiness, 

 in which sense however, Moorcroft hardly uses it. Lotcha has a simi- 

 lar meaning. One of the Lotcha, as mentioned by Gerard is com- 

 monly called Kushuk; he is the one finally decided upon as the true 

 Lotchawa, but the other person continues to have respect paid to him 

 by the villagers. The true Lotchawa never rose to the rank of 

 Gelong ; but he nevertheless became the reader or household priest of 

 one of the eight dappans, or military commanders of Lassa; and who 

 was engaged in the war with the Sikhs in 1841-42. Afterwards, the 

 Lotchawa married, and in consequence lost in reality all his efficacy, 

 although still considered as the vesture of a divinity. While I was 

 in Hangrang, he also committed adultery; but so great is the supersti- 

 tion of the people, that these lapses did not greatly reduce his sanctity 

 in their eyes ; and I have seen strangers prostrate themselves before 

 him, touch the earth with their foreheads, and crave his blessing, 

 which he bestowed by putting his hand on their uncovered heads. 



This same word (Kushuk) appears in Turner, (Embassy, 232-459, 

 &c), but it is correctly a title and not a proper name. 



Religion — Deotas or Local Gods. — The temples of the deotas are 

 magnificent and adorned with a profusion of costly ornaments. There 

 are two or three in every village; each god has generally three distinct 

 houses, one for himself and the third in which he is placed on grand 

 festivals. — Gerard, at p. 85-6. 



Deotas, or spirits of the hills, are worshipped every where along the 

 Sutlej. These districts fall more particularly within the sphere of my 

 enquiries, but they are no doubt more extensively reverenced ; and in 

 the southern Himalayas, the local divinities seem to have been includ- 

 ed by the Brahmins in their Pantheon, and changed into Devi, one of 

 the forms of the wife of Siva. This adoption of various superstitions 

 and deifications by an organized and ambitious priesthood has also 

 taken place in India, (see particularly Elphinstone's Hist. I, 179 ;) but 

 in a portion of Kunawar, the many and equal gods of the first inha- 

 bitants, still maintain their ancient but limited sway, not much affect- 

 ed by Buddhism on one side, or Brahminism on the other. 



The people, however, have the idea of one great god, or rather per- 

 haps of several divinities, to whom the deotas are subordinate; and 



2 G 



