224 E. Vansittart— Tribes, OJans, ancJ Castes of Nepal. [No. 4, 
As these tribes have submitted to the ceremonial law of purity and 
to Brahman supremacy, they have been adopted as Hindus; but they 
have been denied the sacred thread, and take rank as a doubtful order 
below the Ksatriya. and above the Yai^ya and Sudra grades. The off¬ 
spring of aKlias male and a Magar or Gurung mother is a titular Khas, 
but a real Magar or Gurung ; the descendants fall into the rank of the 
mother, retaining only the patronymic. 
Magars and Gurungs are excluded from political employ and high 
military commands, and have less community of interest and sympathy 
with the Government than the Khas ; but they are still very loyal, and, 
like all Parbatiyas, very national in their feelings. In the Gurung and 
Magar corps the officers, up to Captains, are Gurungs and Magars. The 
Gurungs lent themselves less early and heartily to Brahmauical influ¬ 
ences ; they have retained to a much greater extent than the Khas tribe, 
their national peculiarities of language, physiognomy, and, in a less 
degree, of habits. In stature the Gurungs are generally larger and 
more powerful than either the Magar or Khas. 
The language of the Magar differs from that of the Gurung only as 
remote-dialects of one great tongue, the type of which is the language 
of Tibet. Their physiognomies have peculiarities proper to each, but 
with the general Calmuk caste and character in both. The Gurungs 
are less generally, and more recently, redeemed from Lamaism and pri¬ 
mitive impurity than the Magars, and are considered much below them 
in point of caste. Gurungs eat buffalo meat and village pig also. 
Magars eat neither the one nor the other; but though both Magars 
and Gurungs still retain their own vernacular tongues, Tartar faces and 
careless manners, yet from constant intercourse with, and military ser¬ 
vice under, the predominant Khas, they have acquired the Khas lan¬ 
guage, though not to the exclusion of their own, and adopted Khas 
habits and sentiments with, however, several reservations. Both Mag¬ 
ars and Gurungs are Hindus, only because it is the fashion; they have 
gone with the times, and consequently their Hinduism is not very 
strict. 1 
The Magars and Gurungs have already been referred to as being of 
the Tartar race; they, in Nepal, follow agricultural pursuits; they are 
square-built, sturdy men, with fine, muscular, and large chest and limb 
development, low in stature, and with little or no hair on face or body, 
and with fair complexions. They are a merry-hearted race, eat animal 
1 After the Nepal War of 1816, Sir D. Ochterlony expressed an opinion, confi¬ 
dentially to Lord Hastings, that “ the Company’s sepoys, then Hindustanis, could 
never be brought to resist the shock of these energetic mountaineers on their own 
grounds.” 
