1855.] Notes on Northern Cachar. 599 



receives a commission of 2 annas on each rupee collected, or 12| 

 per cent. The gross revenue of the district does not exceed E3. 

 8,500, and from this the commission has to be deducted. The 

 revenue of the late Toolaram's country, recently annexed and included 

 in the above, is about Es. 1,800, out of which the surviving members 

 of his family, who still reside at Mohoodunga, are pensioned to the 

 extent of Es. 1,000. The expense of administration, including the 

 pay of the troops, &c. must exceed the receipts by about twenty 

 times. 



Having described, in rather a cursory and unconnected manner 

 it must be confessed, the general character and state of the country, 

 I next proceed to notice the inhabitants. No where is there a more 

 extended field for the researches of the ethnologist than in North 

 Cachar and its immediate neighbourhood, and the field still remains 

 open, for I am not aware of any published account, wherein an 

 attempt has been made to establish the cause of the astounding 

 fact that at the present moment in the* small portion of the world 

 comprised in the valleys of the Barhampooter and Soorma, together 

 with a few adjacent hills, there exist upwards of twenty distinct 

 tribes, each speaking a language unintelligible to the other, and 

 distinguished by manners and customs in which there is little in 

 common, and yet it is plainly perceptible, from the cast of the 

 countenance alone, marked as it is by the prominence of certain 

 features, that most of these tribes have, at some time or other, been 

 members of one and the same family. 



Some cause, within a much more recent date, as mighty as that 

 of Babel, must surely have produced such a superfluity of tongues 

 and races. It is not for me, however, to attempt to divine such 

 cause. I will merely endeavour, by recounting the experience I 

 have had of the people of the district, to place material in the hands 

 of those who, from their knowledge of the science, are better able 

 to undertake the task, and bring it to a satisfactory issue. I have 

 mentioned that North Cachar contains about 30,000 souls, and is 

 divided amongst six different tribes. These tribes I will reduce to four 

 distinct nations, which, for the most part, are subdivided and sub- 

 subdivided into numerous clans and families, which remain apart 

 from one another. 



4 K 



