Tlie Ethnology of India. 51 



pooter as it sweeps round from Assam into Bengal, the extreme 

 western portion of the range which separates Sylhet, &c. from 

 Assam. More to the east are the Cossya hills, to the west those of 

 the Garrows. While all the tribes of the eastern hills are Indo- 

 Chinese, I am inclined to suspect that the Garrows alone are Indian 

 Aborigines, more or less mixed it may be. They seem to be quite 

 distinct and different from the other tribes of the neighbourhood, and 

 several officers, to whom I have talked, agree in thinking them more 

 in the style of Coles and B heels than of Indo-Chinese. I have not 

 found any very exact description of them, but gather that they are 

 small and dark, savage and troublesome. That they should belong 

 to the Aboriginal races of India, is prima facie by no means impro- 

 bable, seeing that their hill country is, as the crow flies, scarcely more 

 than 150 miles distant from that of the Santals and Rajmehalees, as 

 may be seen by a glance at any map. There is a kind of straight 

 between the eastern and western hills through which the Ganges and 

 Berhampooter run before expanding in the broader Delta of Southern 

 Bengal. 



The little that is known of the language of the Garrows has not 

 sufficed to connect them with any of the Aboriginal tribes mentioned 

 by nie, but it also seems to show that it is radically different from 

 the surrounding Indo-Chinese dialects. It seems especially desirable 

 to know something more of the Garrows and their language. 



I have kept to the last the Bhooyas or Bhooians, because they 

 seem to belong to both sides of Bengal, to West Bengal and Orissa on 

 one side, and to Assam on the other. I have not met with any de^ 

 tailed account of their position in Assam, but I imagine that there 

 can be no better authority than Col. Dalton who intimately knows 

 both Provinces, and he, while describing them in the Western hills, 

 distinctly states that they were once the dominant race in Assam. 

 It is always necessary to be cautious in dealing with names of this 

 sound, since, as I have already mentioned, ' Bhoomea' means : man of 

 the soil, '.and I believe that the word earth or soil also takes the form 

 Bui. The Bhooyas have no immediate connection (that is looking 

 only to the name) with either the Bhumiz or the Boyars. But 

 Col. Dalton no doubt looks farther than this ; and indeed he goes on 

 to notice a considerable connection between Assam and the west both 



