3 G 
[No. 1, 
II. B. Shaw— Stray Arians in Tibet. 
accept Islam, even if they did not bring it with them from their home. A 
non-descript paganism (which was probably the religion of the early Dards) 
does not easily resist the encroachments of one of the great dogmatic reli¬ 
gions when thrown into unprotected contact with it. 
Did the Dah-Hanu Droltpas come by the same route as their later bre¬ 
thren, or did they come, as some of them say, up the valleys of the Indus 
and Shayok ? In the latter case, it would be very strange if a migration 
of Dards, with the whole upper course of the Indus before them, should 
have stopped and located themselves precisely at that point on its course 
where a subsequent migration of their kindred, starting from the same 
point but coming by a different route (latterly at right angles to theirs), 
happens, some centuries after, to have struck the Indus. It seems more 
probable that the line of the later migration marks that of the earlier one ; 
and that the ancestors of Dah-Hanu people took the route via Astor, Deo- 
sai, the Dras river, and Kargil, (a route facilitated by the nature of the 
country in that direction). Crossing by a low Pass into the Indus Valley, 
they were there arrested by the more difficult mountains on the east of 
that river. They probably found this district uninhabited ; for though 
the valley of the Indus, both below and above was, and is, occupied by 
Tibetan States (Baltistan or Little Tibet, and Ladak) ; yet so difficult is the 
gorge of the Upper Indus in this intermediate portion, that all traffic from 
Skardo (Baltistan) directed towards Ladak, is diverted round by the paral¬ 
lel Shayok Valley, only crossing back into that of the Indus by the Hanu 
Pass, beyond Dah. 
Both the Dah-Hanu people and the Dard communities (above men¬ 
tioned) settled on or about the Dras river, are called by their Tibetan neigh¬ 
bours j Brolt-pa (often pronounced Dolt-pa with a disregard to the spelling 
peculiar to Tibetans and Englishmen). Droit means a “ mountain pas¬ 
ture” or “ alp”. The reference may be to the pastures to which they in 
summer take their sheep (as do also their Tibetan neighbours however) or 
to the fact of their having settled on grounds which were formerly pastures. 
But the term Drolt-pa, or Highlander, seems more likely to have been ap¬ 
plied (as Mr. Drew suggests) to a tribe seen to arrive across the high 
mountains and descending into the Indus Valley, than to a people coming 
up that valley from its lower portion, and who have not, since their arrival, 
taken to a life in the high mountains in any greater degree than their 
neighbours. 
A few words of notice are required for the Dras Dards of the later 
immigration just mentioned. Their connection with their parent stock 
is very close, and betokens a comparatively recent separation. They say 
that their ancestors came from Darel ; and their settlements extend 
far up the course of the streams leading down from the uninhabitable pla¬ 
teau of Deosa'i, which alone separates them from Dardistan proper. 
