The Ethnology of India. 105 



Dhaiigurs and Aheers are nearly the same. It would be well to 

 know more on the point. 



In Hindustan sheep and goat herds, < Gaclerias,' form a separate and 

 very inferior caste and profession. They have no villages of their 

 own, but tend sheep in the villages in which they reside. 



In Bengal Proper and Orissa, the Aheers are succeeded by the 

 G wallas, whom I have already incidentally noticed as very different 

 in their style, manners and occupations. ' Gwalla' is not a tribal 

 name, but merely means a cowkceper (from the old Sanscritic word, 

 go, a cow), so that the name does not necessarily imply any tribal 

 connection with the G wallas of the south and elsewhere. The 

 Gwallas (as I have before noticed) arc, with their congeners the 

 fSfttgopes,' by far the most numerous Hindu caste in Bengal; and as 

 Bengal is not much of a grazing country, they constitute a large 

 proportion of the cultivators, besides carrying palanquins, acting as 

 domestic servants, and following some other avocations. In the jail 

 returns they are about 13 per cent, of the non-Mahommedans, that 

 is, of Hindus and Aborigines of all sorts taken together ; and as 

 Aheers prevail in Behar, it is probable that in Bengal and Orissa the 

 Gwallas amount to fully 20 per cent. 



There are no democratic villages in Bengal ; indeed village commu- 

 nities in the proper sense, with anything like a municipal constitution 

 of any kind, can hardly be said to exist ; the Province is in that 

 respect peculiar. Consequently it is unnecessary to add that the 

 Gwallas are not in regular communities. They are scattered about the 

 country. I believe that they have frequently acquired rights in the 

 land and attained to respectable positions. They seem to be a quiet, 

 decent set of people. 



I am not well versed in the manners and customs of the Bengallees, 

 and there seems to be a great want of information on the subject, 

 which I trust may be supplied. 



I have before hazarded a conjecture whether the Bengallee Gwallas 

 may not have been formed on the basis of the Aboriginal Bhooyas. 



Of the fine cultivators or gardeners, the most important are — 

 The Mallies, 

 to whom I have alluded as apparently allied to the Koormees, and 

 who are not only the humble gardeners to whom Europeans ordinarily 



