1878.] 
R,. B. Shaw— Stray Arians in Tibet. 
33 
marry into the villages of the neighbouring Tibetans ?” They answer, No. 
“ Are there many unmarried women in your villages ?” They reply that, 
on the contrary, they often find it difficult to procure wives. It would 
seem therefore that there must either be a great defect in the number of 
births of females, or an equal excess in their deaths while young. I could 
not hear of female infanticide and do not believe that it is practised, as, if 
it were, it must be known to the Kashmir officials. 
It is not only in marriage that they keep themselves apart from their 
neighbours. They will not eat with the Tibetan Buddhists or Musalmans 
or other outsiders, nor will they allow these to come near their cooking 
places. The caste prejudice seems to originate on the side of the Brokpa, 
for their neighbours often eat in their houses, only separate dishes are given 
them which are afterwards purified with burning juniper. No Brokpa 
will eat in the house or from the dishes of a Tibetan; nor will he eat fish 
or birds or (of course) cow’s flesh. Formerly, if they had been among the 
Tibetans, they would purify themselves with the smoke of the “ shukpa” 
before entering their own houses again. 
The tribe is subdivided into several groups of villages. 1st. Those in 
the Hanu side valley (whose inhabitants have exchanged their own lan¬ 
guage for Tibetan, being situated on the main road between Skardo and 
Ladak.) 2nd. The Bah group, consisting of Baldes, Phindur, Byema, 
Sani, Dundir, and Bah villages. 3rd. The Garkhon group, consisting of 
Garkkon, Barchik (large village on west of Indus), Sanacha (ditto), Urdas, 
Gragra (up side-stream on east), and Watsara. These are all the Buddhist 
villages. The people of each group consider themselves to be one commu¬ 
nity. The Bah people reckon from seven ancestors who first colonised 
their villages and of whom they give the names : viz., LalusJio (from whom 
the Lhabdaks or priests spring) ; Zone, Dalcre, Gochaghe (these three are 
the ancestors of the Tushen caste) ; Duse , Gabilre, and TuJcshure (these are 
the fathers of the Ttuzmet caste). The land of Bah is still divided according 
to these families, though some of it has changed hands. In this fact we may 
perhaps see a trace of the early Arian joint family holding, passing into 
the stage of individual proprietorship. Each man knows his own ancestry 
(real or imaginary), and each field is known as belonging to the patrimony 
of one of the seven fathers of the tribe, though it may now be in the hands 
of a descendant of one of the others. The remaining groups of villages have 
similar traditions. The Bah people say that their ancestors, when they 
first came, lived by hunting, not by agriculture. One of their mighty hun¬ 
ters dropped his bow (called in their language Dah) on the hill-side. It 
became a water channel which fertilized the fields of what afterwards be¬ 
came a village. One of their Chiefs found certain seeds growing wild which 
he sowed near the water-course. These seeds proved to be those of wheat 
E 
