none of the other tribes in the neighbourhood can speak a word of it. A Toto, on the other hand, possesses in a marked degree the 'slavish gift' of acquiring tongues, for he speaks the Bhutia, Mech, and Koch dialects of Bengali with equal facility.

They are tied hand and foot in subjection to their terrible deity Taleshur. In their belief not only will he inflict the penalty of instant death on every Toto who deserts his native home, but a similar doom is threatened for the slightest infraction of the traditionary customs of the race, or any modification of their ordinary employments. Unlike all other tribes in the neigh. bourhood, such as Gáros, Bodos, and Koches, the Totos have traditions which point plainly to retrogression from a higher position in the scale of nations. One tradition is, that centuries ago their home was in the Bhutia hills on a high plateau, that they were carried thence by the god Taleshur to their present village, and that owing to a strange accident which befell one of their headmen, they became degraded. He had shot a deer with his bow and arrow, and had cooked and eaten the meat; but the flesh was miraculously changed into beef while he and his followers were preparing it, and the Totos from that day became cow-eaters, an abomination in the eyes of the Meches, and even in their own. From that time they sacrificed bullocks to the god Taleshur. The tradition has, no doubt, on the face of it an Aryan colouring. If, however, the horror of killing the cow which is the foundation for the story, be derived, as I presume it must be, from Aryan sources, it greatly complicates the question of the origin of the Totos

and their relation to Hinduism. They cannot have derived it from Bhutan, for the Bhutias kill and eat cattle and are not ashamed of it. It is possible that they have derived the notion from the Bodos, who do not slaughter cattle, but this is not likely, because their connection with the Bodos is obviously too recent to allow of the fabrication of the tradition given above.

There is, however, important evidence that the Totos were not originally a jungle tribe. It is well known that many of the tribes who have dwelt from immemorial times in the heart of the jungle, notably the Gáros, have a very singular custom of propitiating the deities of the forest, or, as it may be perhaps better expressed, of protecting themselves from their malign influence, by erecting a small bamboo arch at each of the paths which lead into the village, which they decorate with tufts of cotton, and at which they mutter certain charms. All persons who enter or quit the village must do so by walking beneath this arch, and the observance of this custom is one of the most rigid of their superstitions. The Totos have adopted a similar custom, but with this special characteristic that they obtain the services twice a year of Gáro priests or 'deoshis' to perform the worship of 'Aishá, the god of roads, for which they are liberally paid. Thus the pathway arch is clearly not indigenous among the Totos.

Another tradition of more significance exists as to their original home. I learned it from the oldest of their tribe, an ancient priest who had been for years blind, and scarcely ever quitted the precincts of the village. He said the Toto race lived at one time beyond the

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Ganges, and had emigrated thence many centuries ago, lingering for some generations on the banks of the Kásái. This account of their history is not without plausibility. Their language presents several points of similarity to that of the Dhímáls, an almost extinct race, who lived near the Kásái, and the story of their caste degradation may have arisen from the fact that the Aryan settlers from Upper India in pre-historic times, who of course brought with them the ordinances of Manú and his enactments on the subject of cattle slaughter, discovered the Totos, a cow-eating race in the well-watered plains of the Ganges, and drove forth from their homes all whom they did not slaughter in real or assumed horror at the crime. It would be but the story of Naboth's vineyard over again, and many such have happened in the history of race emigration. The greater power expels the less powerful, and the latter are driven farther and farther by the irresistible wave-pressure of the advancing tide into remote and uncoveted wilds. The horror of killing cows is as strong as ever even among the Bengalis of the present day, and, unwarlike as they are, many a bloody tragedy is perpetrated in remote villages, where the Mussulman minority have dared to slaughter a bullock amid a Hindu community.

If this theory (or rather surmise) as to the origin of the Totos be correct, it would amply account for the story of the transformation of the venison into beef. The dim and half-forgotten dispersion of the race in consequence of the Hinda abhorrence of cattle slaughter would have gradually and unconsciously shaped itself into a myth, in which the old custom that had ruined the community was developed into an accident that befell the head of the tribe. The destruction or dispersion of the race by Aryan invaders would, among abo

riginal tribes, be eventually and traditionally ascribed to the direct action of their principal deity, and when the historical fact was forgotten it would tend to assume the form of some such miraculous interference with the laws of nature as the Totos have invented. On the other hand, among races who have never until recently come into contact with Hinduism, and who are feeling its influence for the first time in our own day, such as Meches, Gáros, and Cacháris, no such myths would be found, and none such are needed, for they have no pre-historic traditions of race degradation. I think, then, upon the whole, that the Totos belonged originally to that family of aborigines who lived in the Gangetic valley at the time of the early Aryan invasion. Their actual home may very probably have been the tract of land near the junction of the Ganges and the Kásái river.

The appearance of the Toto is very singular, and unlike any other of the tribes I have mentioned as living in the same neighbourhood. They are as a rule tall, like the Bhutias, but, unlike them, thin and angular. The costume they wear, which is quite unique, is, perhaps, more like that of the Bhutias than any other. They wear a red jacket, fitting closely to the skin, similar to that used by the Gáros, but the cotton garment wound round the waist and covering the leg as far as the knee is of Bhutia pattern. Their most characteristic article of attire is a red open-breasted tunic with wide sleeves, which can either be folded across the breast, or allowed to fall loosely about their person, like the silk robe of a Mussulman of distinction. It differs from the Bhutia upper garment, as the latter is always stitched across the chest so as to form a pouch, in which knives, food, betel nut, and a miscellaneous collection of articles are carried. The colour of the Toto tunic is universally red. The

contour and colour of his costume are so peculiar that a Toto with his spare, angular form, and wide red tunic can be recognised almost as far off as he can be seen. The tout-ensemble is indescribably uncouth and barbaric. The dress of men and women is very similar, and the very ornaments are identical. Both sexes wear blue beads in the ear, with red threads attached and hanging almost to the shoulder, and both an amber necklace. The tribe have so strong a family likeness that it is almost impossible for a stranger to distinguish Totos from each other when apart, unless they differ greatly in age.5 It will strike any observer that their costume would appear to be the relic of times when the Totos were a hill tribe. No sub-Himalayan race, always accustomed to the heat and moisture of the Terai-such as Bodos, Gáros, and Dhímáls, wears nearly so much clothing. The Bodo wears clothes analogous to those of the Hindu, and the Gáro wears a short jacket and very scanty waist cloth. The tunic of the Toto is apparently the remnant of the age anterior to the cow-eating, when they were a mountain people dwelling in a cold climate.

When, however, we compare the features of the Toto with the tribe with whom so far we have found the greatest analogy, the difference is very striking. The Bhutia is stout and ruddy, with round face, well-shaped lips, and good humoured expression, the representative of the highest Mongolian type. The Toto is black, darker even than the Gáro, and much darker than the Mech. His eyes are narrow, and the contour of his head triangular. The nose is very flat, with nostrils wide open, and the lips so full and projecting as almost to sug

gest a Negritic origin. Thus the type of face, apart from the height of the body and the colour, approximates more nearly to the Gáro than any other of the sub-Himalayan tribes, and is the very antipodes of the Bhutia.

The appearance of their village, again, suggests a Bhutia model. Their houses are raised high on bamboos, and underneath the dwelling they keep their cattle, pigs, and fowls. The Gáro houses are

built on a level with the ground, and moreover are arranged in a symmetrical quadrilateral pattern unknown to the Totos. The bamboos decorated with cotton which stand in front of every house, and the high smooth pole formed from the trunk of a lofty tree, which stands in the centre of the village, are customs probably derived from the Gáros, but, unlike that race, the Totos have a large building which is used as a temple, and in it are rude stone representations of the gods of their strange pantheon. Besides this, each member of the tribe has in his house an earthen symbol of Mahákál, and every adult carries round his neck some amulet as a protection against the spirits of the forest in which they dwell. The whole of what I could gather of their mythology and their customs appeared to point to a more elaborate cult in former days, and to a gradual deterioration since they settled in the subHimalayan plains. In olden times, they say, their priests had great power; and although they never possessed letters or a sacred record, they enjoyed direct communication with the deity in the shape of dreams; and thus their god Tale. shur prescribed the charms which protected them, and an elaborate ritual. The succession of the

priests was apparently regulated by inspiration, a theory which is clearly Buddhistic in origin, but in modern times the priesthood is hereditary. Their power is gradually dwindling away, and their dreams have lost their efficacy. The lay population turn to the Gáros for protection against the scourges of their jungle home. In times of cholera, small-pox, or cattle disease, it is the Gáros who are brought in to propitiate the offended deity. And after the ceremonies are over, these alien priests remove the symbols of the gods which they bring with them. These sacrifices are all made to the great Gáro spiritKishi Dee-the Mahadeva of the race. The Toto priests are still believed to retain their influence with the mountain and river gods. Besides Taleshur, to whom cows and pigs are slaughtered once only in the year in the temple above mentioned, they possess another mountain god, called Pudúá, to whom fowls are offered, and the little stream which runs past their doors-the Jorihati river-also receives its appropriate tribute. To the great and rapid Torshá, although only three miles from their home, they dare not pay homage, and the worship of this river is confined to the Meches. There are grounds for believing that almost all their religious observances except the worship of Taleshur and Pudúá, the mountain gods, were derived originally from the tribes with whom they have come into contact since their last migration. We have already seen that the practice of erecting charmed arches to defeat the malignant influences of the forest sprites has been learned from the Gáros. They have also, in all probability, acquired the cult of Mahákál from the Bhutias. The assimilating instinct seems to have been very strong in this race,

but after a deity has been added to their pantheon they frequently innovate on the ceremonies of worship customary among the people from whom they derived him. Thus the Bhutias slaughter cattle and pigs in the presence of the symbol of Mahákál, but the Totos offer him cooked food only, and it is ultimately eaten by the priests. They have also numerous inferior deities, whom it would be tedious to enumerate, and whose origin I cannot explain, each of whom is propitiated with offerings of different animals." They possess rude representations of most of them. Their religious ceremonies are of a more tangible kind than those of either Mech or Gáro, and their pantheon appears stocked with skeleton fabrics of which the flesh has gradually fallen away. The rudiments of tradition which remain are but disjecta membra, and many of them unintelligible to their oldest and wisest men.

They show little trace of the Aryan fastidiousness in matters of food, which is beginning to characterise the Meches. They will eat rice cooked by all other tribes and peoples except the Gáros, although there is a significant limitation of this catholicity in eating and drinking: the 'deoshi' or priest cannot touch the cooked food of any other race but his own. The superior sanctity and exclusiveness of the priesthood are probably relics of Buddhistic influence. They admit that no other tribe will eat their food. They acknowledge themselves inferior to all the other races with whom they come into contact except the Gáros, from whom, strange to say, they derive so much aid in their worship. The outlay entailed by their numerous sacrifices and by the fees which the Gáro priests obtain in return for their frequent services is, in

proportion to their numbers and resources, very costly, comparatively larger in fact than the expenditure of any other sub-Himalayan tribe.

Every adult youth is permitted to marry when he has acquired a house of his own and can afford to

defray the expenses incidental to marriage. The Toto does not purchase his bride with a distinct equivalent in hard cash, as do the Meches. Unlike them also, the interchange of betel and pán leaf forms no part of the ceremony. But, on the other hand, the Toto alone among the frontier tribes treats marriage as a sacrament, the sacrifice of a cow to their principal god Taleshur being absolutely essential to the validity of the marriage. Marriage without purchase is so characteristic of a higher state of civilisation that one is surprised to find it among the Totos. Even the non-Kulin Brahmans of Eastern Bengal are compelled to purchase their wives. It may be that when the tribe was richer and more numerous the marriageable girls were sold, as there is a trace of it in the complimentary gift of one rupee and a cotton garment which a sonin-law makes to his bride's mother. It is with great difficulty that the Totos keep up the sacrifice of the cow. As a rule, a very old and half-starved animal is purchased from the Meches for the occasion. Even this, however, entails an expenditure of seven or eight rupees, and this is by no means the end of the Toto youth's troubles. Before he is allowed to take home his bride he has to feast the whole village with roast pig, cooked rice, and intoxicating drinks. Wedlock among the Totos is universal. Bachelorhood is not allowed, and even the priests, who, under the primitive Buddhistic system were probably celibate, now marry, and their sons inherit the sacred office. They have one custom which is precisely analogous to the Hindu an

naprásan,' or festival at the weaning of a baby. When the child eats rice for the first time, the richer members of the tribe sacrifice a pig or a cow, and the poorer Totos feast their fellow-villagers with rice and 'káwán.'

The orange grove, to which allusion has been made, is the great means of subsistence of the tribe, but it appears likely that this resource may fail them. They complain bitterly that the old orange trees are dying, and the young trees are less productive; and one or two of the older members of the community said that their existence as a race would cease with the decay of their ancient groves. To the enjoyment of these orange trees they appear to have possessed for generations an exclusive and prescriptive right, and with this right the British Government has never interfered. Their only food grain is the 'káwán,' described on a former page, and from this they prepare a liquor by a method which, as in the case of the Meches, is practised only by themselves. They supply themselves with rice for home consumption by the sale of their oranges. Like many other races who have exchanged the nomadic for settled life, they have lost some of the ancient arts by which they supported themselves. The use of the bow and arrow, with which their ancestors shot deer, has long been forgotten, and their only resource for supplying themselves with game is by digging a pit in the paths frequented by the denizens of the forest.

The unit of morality among the Totos is the tribe rather than the individual. They appear almost unable to realise the possibility of a breach of morality being committed with any individual of another tribe, declaring with horror and indignation that such a thing could not possibly occur. They finally stated that if any Toto sinned in this way, he would be