37 
1878.] E. B. Shaw —Stray Arians in Tibet. 
The furthest settlements of these people at the embouchure of the 
Dras river into the Indus, approach very closely to, without mixing with, 
those of their unrecognised kinsmen of the Dah-Hanu Division. I have 
collected a few of their grammatical rules and have made a very short com¬ 
parative table of some of the most ordinary words in the two dialects, by 
which it will he seen that they are really only different forms of the same 
mode of speech. These later Dards, as far as Dras, are intermingled with 
Musalman Tibetans or Baltis. At Dras the former are Sunnis in religion 
while the latter are Shi’ahs, hut lower down near the Indus both are Shi’ahs. 
The Dards of the Dras district keep themselves quite separate, both as 
regards marriage and eating, from the Baltis with whom they are inter¬ 
mingled in the same villages, and show also some slight traces of that ab¬ 
horrence of the cow which is so marked among the Dah-Hanu people, and 
which is also prevalent in greater or less intensity among many of the other 
Dards in their own home. To carry the linguistic inquiry a little fur¬ 
ther hack, a comparison with Dr. Leitner’s account of the Astori form of the 
Dard language will show that the speech of the Dras JBrokjpas is almost 
identical with that of the people of Astor or Hazora who are one of the 
chief branches of the Dard race in Dardistan, only divided by the river 
Indus from Gilgit. We have therefore a continuous chain of communi¬ 
ties leading from Dardistan proper to the settlements on the Upper Indus 
at Dah-Hanu. The small gap that does exist in point of language and 
dress between these latter and the most advanced (geographically) of their 
brethren, would seem to indicate a lapse of time occurring between two suc¬ 
cessive migrations. The foremost may be in all probability considered the 
earlier, and in either case they profess the religion of their environment. 
Thus we have here the furthest extension in this particular direction, 
of an Indo-Arian migration, a kind of side-eddy from the great stream. 
As when one of our Indian rivers is filled by the melting snows, if a sud¬ 
den increase of the flood comes down, one may see the waters, dammed up 
as it were by the too slowly moving masses in front, trickle oft to one side 
in the endeavour to find a speedier exit. But soon, the temporary increase 
abating or the circumstances of the ground proving unfavourable, this side 
channel ceases to flow onward and stagnates to a pool, leaving the traces of 
its abortive course as far back as the point of divergence. So it would 
seem that long after the successive floods of Indo-Arians had poured over 
the long water-parting of the Hindu-Kush, the latest or the most easterly 
wave (the Dard one) expanding in its turn after a vast lapse of time, but 
finding the southward way blocked in front of it by the earlier comers, 
sent oft side-currents to the south-eastward. These were but puny streams, 
wanting moreover sufficient vis a ter go to carry them onwards when they 
found themselves amid a foreign element and progressing towards a higher 
