The Ethnology of India. 67 



Besides serving as soldiers, they may be found among the lower 

 hangers-on of courts, jails, &c, as process servers, guards over 

 prisoners, and so on, but little in anything higher. As I have said, 

 they turn their hands to many miscellaneous occupations not peculiar 

 to any one else, and of course occasionally rise. 



Sir H. Elliott calls the bastard Bramins of Benares and Bahar 

 * BhaonJiars 1 and seems to consider them a branch of the Sarwarea or 

 Transgogra Bramins. Again he speaks of them (quoting from the 

 ' Harivansa') as Military Bramins descendants of Kasya Princes, and 

 here he seems- to connect the term Kasya with Kashee, the Hindoo 

 name for Benares. I do not know the derivation of Kashee, or whether 

 it is connected with Kashupya. 



Bramins are numerous in Kumaon and Gurwhal. The great tribe 

 of those Provinces are however " Khassias" who now claim to be 

 Rajpoots, but whose title to that character is more than doubtful. 

 Education is, I think, more general here than in the plains, and 

 the Nagaree or ordinary Sanscrit character is always used. Again 

 the Goorkhas, the dominant tribe in Nepal, are properly called ' Khas, 1 

 whence Gor-khas. They are certainly for the most part of Arian 

 and Hindoo origin, and pretend to be Rajpoots ; but, according to 

 Mr. Hodgson, they are really bastard Bramins, the offspring of a 

 cross between Bramin immigrants and the people of the hills. Both 

 the Khassias of Kumaon and the Khas of Nepal assert that they are 

 comparatively recent immigrants from the plains, but this is probably 

 in a great degree connected with their claim to the blue blood of the 

 Rajpoots of the plains. The latter by no means acknowledge the 

 connection. The circumstance that a bastard Bramin race is dominant 

 in the plains immediately under the Central parts of Nepal gives 

 much colour to Mr. Hodgson's account of a similar race in the hills. 

 May it not be that the Rajpoots have never got so far east in the 

 hills, and that the hill country was occupied by pre-Rajpoot Bramins ? 

 May it be that the names Kashee, Khassia, and Khas, point to a time 

 when the Bramins were known as Khasas or Kashmeerees, just as 

 English colonists are known as Anglo-Saxons ? 



Mr. B. Colvin, long Deputy Commissioner of Almorah, tells me a 

 curious circumstance, viz. that in Kumaon, although the hill dialect 

 is in the main Hindee, it has some curious grammatical affinities to 



