32 
R. B. Shaw— Stray Arians in Tibet. 
[No. 1, 
Besides these there is a lower caste consisting, in the village of Dah, 
of only five families. They were originally blacksmiths, it is said, but no 
longer carry on the ancestral calling. They are called Iiuzmet (Tib.) 
or Gargyut .* Their women are not allowed to approach the cooking- 
hearths of the higher caste, nor are the Iiuzmet men, excepting after a 
purification similar to that of the Hushen on going into the houses of the 
priests. The higher castes will not eat what is cooked by them. 
Reversing the custom of the Hindus in the matter of marriage, the 
lower caste may take wives from the higher, but not vice-versa (except in 
the case of the priests who, I gather, can marry Hushen women). Proba¬ 
bly as a consequence of this, a married daughter is never allowed to re¬ 
enter the house of her parents and may not touch anything belonging to 
them. After three generations of marriages with the higher caste, the 
progeny are admitted into it. While at Dah, I was questioning a party of 
Brokpas, and one of them, an old man who, though sitting rather apart, 
had been very forward in answering my questions, became silent and hung 
down his head when I began inquiries into the caste-system. It appeared 
that he was a Iiuzmet or low-caste-man. But presently he brightened up 
and said : “ True, I am now a Iiuzmet, but in three generations I can be¬ 
come Hushen .” This thought seemed to console the old man, much to the 
amusement of the others. 
Polyandry is the rule in Dah-Hanu. As the Brokpas do not inter¬ 
marry with the neighbouring Tibetans, it would seem that the question of its 
possible cause or effect in a disproportion of the sexes could be well studied 
in this confined area. I had not leisure or opportunity to obtain exact 
statistics, but if there were any notable excess of either sex in such small 
communities, where there is no monasticism to speak of, it could hardly 
escape notice by the more intelligent among them. I repeatedly put the 
question: “ Why do several brothers take only one wife between them ?” 
The answer given me was : “ Because the land is not sufficient to provide 
food for the families of the several brothers, if they each took a wife.” 
Again I asked : “ If an equal number of boys and girls are born in your 
village, as you say ; and each family of two or three (or more) brothers takes 
only one girl to wife between them, where are the other girls P Do they 
* These castes seem roughly to answer to three out of the four castes prevalent 
among the main body of the Dards : viz., 1st, Shin ; 2nd, YashJcun (these two castes 
trade, cultivate land, or keep sheep) ; 3rd, Kraniin (? derived from Krum= work) (are 
weavers, carpenters, blacksmiths, artisans in fact) ; 4th, Dom (are musicians and do low 
drudgery ; this caste seems absent from the Dah-Hanu division of Dards). [See Leit- 
ner’s Dardistan, Yol. I, Part 3, p. 48, 2nd note, and Drew’s Jummoo and Kashmir, 
p. 426.] 
