Th Ethnology of India. 57 



Is more varied and their necessities greater, they do in various places 

 and under various circumstances turn their hands to very many odd 

 jobs as it were. Throughout Hindustan they have almost entirely 

 lost that function of Clerks and Bureaucrats of the community 

 which they still retain to a great extent in other parts of India ; and 

 it will be as members of the ordinary agricultural populations that I 

 shall most deal with them. 



Beginning from the north, we first meet with the Bramins in that 

 quarter to which all their traditions point, within the hills north of 

 the Punjab. The first Indians encountered by a traveller from 

 Central Asia would be these Bramins of this extreme North- West 

 corner, occupying both the valley of Kashmir and the hills imme- 

 diately to the west and south-west of it. 



Kashmir is a Bramin country. The lower classes have long been 

 converted to Mahomniedanism, but they seem to be ethnologically 

 identical with the Bramins, and tradition also asserts that they are 

 of the same race. At the present day no oilier Hindu caste save 

 the Bramin is known, nor is there any trace (so far as I could find) 

 that there ever was any other in the country. The Bramin popula- 

 tion is numerous, but it would seem as if, while the illiterate 

 multitude adopted the religion of the ruling power, the better edu- 

 cated and superior class maintained their own tenets ; and at this day 

 the Bramins (or Pandits, as they arc usually called) form quite a sort 

 of aristocracy. They are almost all educated and exceedingly clever, 

 and so, being to a great, degree above manual labour, they are an 

 excessive and somewhat oppressive Bureaucracy, which not only has 

 ruled Kashmir under every successive government, but sends out 

 colonies to seek a livelihood throughout Northern India. The Kash- 

 mir Bramins are quite High-Arian in the type of their features, very 

 fair and handsome, with high chiselled features, and no trace of 

 intermixture of the blood of any lower race. It may be partly race 

 and partly occupation, but they have certainly a greater refinement 

 and regularity of feature than the Affghans and others of a rougher 

 type ; with, however, a less manly-looking physique and a colour less 

 ruddy and more inclining to a somewhat, sallow fairness. The high 

 nose, slightly aquiline, but by no means what we call Jewish or 

 Nut cracker, is a common type. Raise a little the brow of a Greek 



