The Ethnolbgy of India. 115 



The great seat of the Bunneahs seems to be in the west, and most of 

 them point to a western origin, or rather, speaking from a Hindustanee 

 point of view, 1 should say south-western, not to the Punjab, but to 

 Rajpootana and the Bomba}' country. There are a great many sub- 

 divisions among them, and my impression is that the different divisions 

 do not intermarry as do those of Jats and Rajpoots. There may 

 therefore be ethnological distinctions among them, but I do not 

 know that it is so. The most famous of them are the Marwarees ; 

 and that is the name of the country, and not of the sect, intimating 

 their habitat in Rajpootana. The red-turbaned gentlemen so conspi- 

 cuous in the Calcutta Opium marts and Bombay share-markets are 

 generally Marwarees. In Hindustan the highest class of Bunneahs 

 are called ' Aggerwals,' and there are several other sects. The 

 Bunneahs professing the Jain religion are called Srawaks, and under 

 that name they seem to have been famous in very old times, even in 

 parts of Central India which are now comparatively barbarous. In 

 Hindustan, Hindu Boras are a sect of money-lenders and traders and f 

 I imagine, Bunneahs. I believe the name is the same as that of the 

 Mahommedan * Borahs' of the Bombay side ; but the latter, with 

 some peculiar Mahommedan tenets, have probably got some traces of 

 transmarine blood, and I shall reserve them for the category of ' Bor- 

 derers.' Towards the south of Hindustan I have heard of a sect of 

 Inferior Bunneahs called ' Jashwals' who, unlike the race generally, 

 are lax Hindus and even permit their widows to remarry. 



So far as I can make .out, the proper Banees are not thoroughly and 

 completely domiciled in Bengal proper, and to the want of that 

 element (or of anything equal to it) I attribute the absence of enter- 

 prise and practical achievement, which seems to be remarkable among 

 the Bengallee, notwithstanding the great value acquired by the land 

 under the permanent settlement, and the accumulation of wealth 

 during a hundred years of peace. In Calcutta most of the considerable 

 trade and banking business and all the Hindu speculation is done by 

 up-country Marwarees and other Bunneahs, not by Bengallees. In the 

 Bengal districts, though a good many Banee colonists are settled 

 in towns and considerable places, the money-lending and shopkeeping 

 business seems to be in great part in the hands of a variety of other 

 classes. Bramins do, I believe, a good deal of money-lending, and the 



