The Ethnology of India. 107 



The Lodhas I have already mentioned as connected with and of the 

 same character as the Koonbees, though they are strictly speaking 

 distinct from them. 



The remaining classes of Northern India, whose proper profession is 

 cultivation or gardening, have not generally, to my knowledge, villages 

 of their own. There are, however, scattered through most villages in 

 Hindustan many industrious Kachees and Koerees and Morows (tobacco 

 cultivators) and Kumbohs, and some (though not many) who have no 

 other caste name than that of ' Kisan' or cultivator. The farther we 

 go down in the scale, the greater seems to be the infusion of aboriginal 

 blood, the shorter is the stature, the darker the skin, and the more low- 

 Arian the features ; but in none of these decent castes of Hindustan do 

 the features or the complexion and hair assume at all an aboriginal type. 



In Bengal the names of castes are different, and there very many of 

 the cultivators, the majority I believe in all Eastern Bengal, are 

 Mahommedans, whose original caste and ethnological history I am 

 at present unable to discover. Among Hindus, the most numerous 

 castes after Gwallas, Bramins, and Kaists, are Bagdees (who are I am 

 told of an inferior and aboriginal type), and a decent class of cultiva- 

 tors called Kyburtos. I am as yet altogether puzzled about the 

 ethnology of the mass of Bengal ryots. Most of them, though dark, 

 look Arian, but some are very dark, and have a decided tendency to a 

 thickness of lip, and to some features either Aboriginal or Indo- 

 Chinese. I am half inclined to think that there are two types among 

 them. Some of them seem to have a great tendency to curly hair, 

 and to a cast of features which I should be disposed to attribute to 

 the influence of the black woolly-headed Aborigines, who may have 

 stretched across from the Rajmahal to the G-arrow hills. Others, 

 especially the Ooryahs, with the Bhooyas of those parts and some of 

 the Bengalees, seem rather to have straight hair with high cheek 

 bones and complexions not very dark, which might suggest an Indo- 

 Chinese element stretching from Burmah across the Soonderbuns. 

 But I have acknowledged that I do not understand Bengal, and I 

 hope that others will throw more light on it. 



The inferior Helot classes, who generally, all over Northern India, 

 cultivate to a considerable extent, either on their own account, or as 

 the servants of others, I leave for another division of my subject 



