246 A Brief Note on Indian Ethnology. [March, 



strong and obvious character of physical (if not also of lingual) sameness 

 throughout the Scythic race ; and it is remarkable that this peculiar character 

 belongs also to all the Aborigines of India, who may be at tmce known, from 

 the Cavery and Vigaru to the C6si and Bhagarati,* by their quasi-scythic phy- 

 siognomy, so decidedly opposed to the Caucasian countenance of the Aiians 

 of India, or the Hindus. I apprehend that there will be found among the 

 Aborigines of India a like lingual sameness, and that very extended and very 

 accurate investigation will consequently alone suffice to test the real nature and 

 import of the double sameness, physical and lingual. That all the Aborigines of 

 India are Northmen of the Scythic stem, seems decidedly and justly inferrible from 

 their physical characteristics. But, inasmuch as that prodigious stem is every 

 where found beyond the whole Northern and Eastern boundary of India, not merely 

 from Attok to the Brahmaputra, where these rivers cut through the Himalaya, 

 but from that point of the latter river all the way to the sea ; and inasmuch as 

 there are familiar and trite Ghats or passes over the Himalaya throughout its 

 course along the entire confines of India from Kashmir to the Brahma Kund, it 

 follows of necessity that very careful and ample investigation will alone enable us 

 to decide upon the question of the unity or diversity of the Aborigines of India, in 

 other words to decide upon the questions, whether they owe their confessed Scy- 

 thic physiognomy to the Tangus, the Mongol or the Turk branch of the Tartars 

 or Scythians, and whether they immigrated from beyond the Himalaya (" the hive 

 of all nations") at one period and at one point, or at several periods and at as 

 many points. Between Gilgit and Chittagong there are 100 passes over the Hima- 

 laya and its south-eastern continuation to the Bengal Bay ; while for the time 

 of passage, there are ages upon ages before the dawn of legend and of chronicle. 



I incline to the opinion that the Aborigines of the sub -Himalayas, as far east as 

 the Dhansri of Assam, belong to the Tibetanf stock, and east of that river to the 

 Chinese stock — except the Gar6s and other tribes occupying that portion of the 

 Hills lying between Assam and Sylhet ; and that the aborigines of the tarai and 

 forest skirting the entire sub-Himalayas, inclusive of the greater part of the marginal 

 circuit of the Assam Valley, belong, like those last mentioned, to the Tamulian stock 

 of aborigines of the plains of India generally. But what is this Tamulian stock ? 

 what the Tibetan stock ? and what the Chinese ? and to which of the three grand 

 and well known branches of the Scythic tree (Tangus, Mongol, Turk) do the Ta- 

 mulians,' 4 the Tibetans and the Chinese^ belong ? — I have now said enough to enforce 

 caution and stimulate curiosity, and I pause. 



* Alpine feeder of the Ganges, not its Bengal defluent. So Alpine Cosi. 



t Notices of the Languages and Literature of Nepal. 



% The Tartars of China are Mantchurian Tangus. I allude to the Chinese proper. 



