1849.] A Brief Note on Indian Ethnology. 245 



and it is therefore a great object to reduce it in the complex terms 

 without mutilation, and also to give the essentials of grammar with the 

 utmost simplicity and conciseness ; and for aid to these ends I shall be 

 thankful, though no pains have been spared to render the whole paper 

 as it now stands, worthy of the Society's acceptance and a fitting model 

 for future research. Of the three separate people* treated of (the Koch, 

 the Bddo, and the Dhimal), I have given physical delineations of the 

 Bodo only, because the faintly yet distinctly marked type of the Mongoli- 

 anf family is similar in all three, but best expressed (so to speak) in the 

 Bddo features and form. I am not unaware that a great deal has been 

 already done in the line of research which I have now, not taken up, % 

 but resumed, and if I have not adopted and followed up the method of 

 investigation of any of the many able men who have, with reference to 

 my present attempt, preceded me in this field, it is not because I am 

 insensible of the value of those labours, but because their diversity is 

 quite opposed to every idea of system, where system is most needful, 

 and that the best system : wherefore the corrections of the Society 

 are solicited for my own work prior to its dissemination (as a model) 

 for being filled up by various co-operators either within the limits as- 

 signed to myself (if such aid can be had), or elsewhere and beyond 

 those limits. B. H. Hodgson. 



Darjeeling, June, 1846. 



Note. — The great Scythic stem of the human race is divided into three primary- 

 branches, or the Tangus, the Mongol, and the Turk. The first investigators of 

 this subject urgently insisted on the radical diversity of these three races : but 

 the most recent inquirers more incline to unitise them. Certainly there is a 



* I distinguish by language, and assume that wherever there is a broad spoken 

 diversity of tongue unintelligible to neighbours, there is distinct people. The value 

 of these spoken diversities will be hereafter determined as one general result of the 

 inquiry on foot. 



f Mongolian ? potius Scythic. — See the appended note on the subject. 



t When I went to England in 1844, I possessed vocabularies of all the Ian- 

 guages and dialects of Nepal : but these, with many other valuable papers, were 

 lost owing to circumstances I need not dwell on. I have recovered some frag- 

 ments, and am reconstructing the vocabularies of these dialects upon the plan above 

 delineated. 



