456 On the Kirdnti tribe of the Central Himalaya. 



and lastly that, after these effects have been produced in the 

 course of numberless ages, it must always be unsafe to dogmatise 

 upon physiological or philological grounds only respecting the 

 special relations and characteristics of any given tribe without 

 abiding advertence to the general relations and characteristics of 

 such tribe, and to the proof of both that may be had by carefully 

 seeking out and weighing all the available evidence, whether 

 physiological or philological, moral or traditional. 



The evidence of any reflux towards the north of the great tide 

 of Turanian population flowing wave after wave over India through 

 the numberless passes of the Himalaya, and also perhaps round the 

 Western and Eastern extremities of the chain, is faint, seeming to be 

 confined to the Newar tribe of Nepal Proper, who have a tradition 

 of their return to Nepal after having reached so far south as Mala- 

 bar. Nor are there wanting coincidences of arbitrary customs, of 

 the shape and use of agricultural and other implements and of words 

 and grammatical forms to countenance and uphold that tradition, 

 as I have already adverted to in my paper on the Nilgirians. 



united to a very dark skin are conspicuous and his lips are very thick and his eye 

 good, and his hair crisply curled, but not at all woolly. 



