FRASER'S

MAGAZINE.

THE

we are concerned in the following sketch, is on the borderland of British India and Bhutan. This frontier is almost unique in many of its features. It is not only a political landmark, but it is an abrupt ethnical and geographical barrier. With the exception of this strip, almost the entire eastern boundary of British India consists of a broad belt of jungle-the Terai, which stretches from Cashmere between the North-West Provinces and Nepal down to the confines of Sikkim-whereby the transition from the wheat and rice fields to the mountain chain is broken by the intervention of an uninhabited tract of marshy land, covered with gigantic trees, and choked with rank undergrowth. This debatable land is untenan table alike by the dwellers of the plains and the Himalayan

races.

In the tract of country I have to describe the malarious belt of jungle has become lessened to a narrow strip. It breaks off near the point where the Tístá river debouches from the Sikkim hills, and flowing southward was for a long time the limit of British India to the east. East of the Tístá are the Western and Eastern Dwárs, or outlets from the hills, conquered by the Bhutias of the northern uplands several hun. dred years ago from the Koch dynasty, which reigned in Northern Bengal. This tract was ceded to the English Government in 1865

VOL. XIX.-NO. CIX. NEW SERIES.

after the Bhutan War. The Western Dwárs, a plain of rich alluvial land, extend from the Tístá to the Sankos river, the boundary between Bengal proper and Assam, and belong to the new district of Jalpáigurí, forming the non-regu lation portion of that district. The borderland of Bhutan and the Western Dwárs is a low range of hills, the advance guard of the giant mountain fortresses of the Himalayas, and the actual transition between mountain and plain is marked by a narrow belt of jungle, which possesses ethnical and geographical interests of a striking character. Unlike the broad, intractable and hopeless Terai swamp of Nepal and Sikkim, the borderland of Bhutan is inhabited by races who can defy the malarious influences of the jungle, and thrive in a climate which is deadly to all but themselves. They form a stratum of human beings overlapped on the one side by the distinct Mongolian race of the Bhutias, and on the other by the equally distinct aboriginal race of the Koches, whose kingdom in Northern Bengal was powerful for many centuries before the Mussulman conquest.

The geographical peculiarities of the Bhutan marches are equally noteworthy. The hills are broken at irregular intervals by rivers, which, after forcing their way between precipitous walls of rock, flow steadily southward, preserving

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the same relative distances from each other and driving with their powerful current the geological débris of the mountains far into the plains. The rivers to which I allude are, commencing at the Tístá and proceeding eastward, the Dáinha, the Jaldhaka, the Torshá, the Ráidhák and the Sankos. There is an average interval of 20 or 25 miles between each, and for the first 20 or 30 miles after they debouch from the hills, their river bed is well defined, their current very rapid and clear, and the size and shape of the gneiss fragments which strew their channel are sufficient proof of the violence and volume of their waters. Between these streams, the appearance of the country is chaotic. The horizontal patch of jungle which corresponds to the broad Terai of Upper India is cut into 'segments which display the complex nature of the influences at work upon them. The large rivers I have mentioned take their rise, some in the lofty peaks of Bhutan, others in the glaciers of the gigantic snowy range of the Himalayas proper, and others even in the distant table-land of Thibet. The rivulets which fitfully traverse the intermediate regions rise in the lower hills and are dependent for their supply of water upon the local rainfall, and are therefore evanescent. In 'the rains' they possess a formidable amount, but in the cold weather a thin thread of water amid a wilderness of sand and shingle is all that remains of their abundant stream, and in March and April this frequently disappears altogether. More complicated geological influences are at work upon them, which I cannot pretend to explain, owing to which all but the main outlines of the frontier geography is pretty well effaced in a few generations. Large streams disappear entirely, and leave no trace of their former channel; rivers of half a mile in width divide

into tiny streamlets; others lose themselves in freshly formed morasses.

Between the spurs of one portion of the lower hills rise a multitude of little streams which wander in different directions in a confused and apparently inexplicable manner, drying up at one point and reappearing some miles farther south, mingling their currents, and again deviating from each other. Several are said to flow in a circle, and in the rains to form a swamp. In one spot where was a broad and well-defined river bed, all the water I found consisted of a thin stream which flowed underground during the greater part of the day and appeared for half an hour only at sunrise and sunset. In another place the stream was found at varying distances from the camp, sometimes flowing past the tent, and at other times being three miles distant. A comparison of the map which accompanies Turner's Embassy to Thibet with the survey map of 1865, and of the latter with a map indicating the geographical features of the present day, will assuredly bear out this sketch. Since the date of Turner's mission in 1783-4, three streams flowing apparently due south between Buxa and the Torshá have either disappeared or changed their course beyond recognition, and since 1865 a large stream called the 'Gharm,' which used to issue from a beautiful mountain gorge six miles west of Buxa, has left but its stony grave well-nigh covered and choked with the Khair-thorns which spring up with almost magic speed in a deserted bed, with here and there a huge fragment of mica, carried down in bygone years from the mountains above. The 'Gharm,' according to Bhutia tradition, has had a short but romantic history. In old times, so runs the story, there was on the hill-side far above the plains a hot spring, which derived its efficacy for skin diseases from the presence

of one of the numerous rock deities of Bhutan. In process of time, however, the place became unholy, owing to the foul slaughter of horses and dogs upon its margin. It was deserted by its tutelary god, who in anger deprived it of its medicinal powers and poured it forth into the plains. Here, after a course of 300 years, it has deserted its channel apparently for ever.

The flora and fauna of the region present as various and singular features. For miles the only vegetation consists of the wild and desolate thorn-bush (Khair catechu) which covers the ground with a network of thin, prickly brambles. These are found in the sandy, gravelly bed of an abandoned river course. In other places there is a section of virgin forest. These are the higher spots forming the water-shed of the uplands, and are generally intersected by deep, narrow, well-defined channels, where there is perennial water. Here are the huge trees which have outlasted generations of the thorn bushes above described. Among them are varieties of the Ficus Indica, the edible-leaved laurel, and several varieties of the chelauni tribe (Gordonia Chilaunea ?), with their characteristic rough bark patched and streaked with cinnamon and brown. Amid the primeval forest glades are sections of high grass, and of the wild cardamum, the thickest and most impenetrable growth of the frontier jungles. These grassy patches are relieved every now and then by the gigantic silk-cotton tree (Bombax malabaricum) and the Phylas or Butea frondosa. During the spring these are the only flowering trees of the Bhutan frontier forests. The scarlet mass of blossoms which adorn the silk-cotton serves as a beacon for miles, and the still more lovely Butea frondosa covers the ground beneath it with a crimson carpet of dead flowers. The white arms of the silk-cotton tree are always free

from the creepers which half strangle the other giants of the forest. The size and luxuriance of these creepers is one of the most startling features on the frontier. They often acquire a girth larger than that of the original tree, which is lost in the convolutions which the parasite, like a huge boa, has wound round its victim. Sometimes an enormous climber succumbs to the jungle fires of which I shall speak farther on, and slowly drops off, leaving the trunk deeply indented with its spiral coils. Towards April and May the climbers bear a profusion of lilac blossoms, and form sweet - scented arches above the forest tracks. For half the year, during the rains, the wild cardamum and dense forest tracts are the home of innumerable wild elephants and the larger sized rhinoceros. When the jungle fires in late autumn and winter lessen the shelter of these labyrinthine lairs, the animals find their way by steep watercourses and wellwooded ravines, routes inaccessible to men, to the highlands of Bhutan, and do not return to the forests until the spring showers have nursed the tender shoots of grass into a formidable and impenetrable mass above the charred stumps of the last year's growth. A little below the actual edge of the hills are found extensive sál forests (Shorea robusta) with their straight stems and large jagged dark green leaves. The sisu (Dalbergia sissoo), another tree almost as valuable as the sál for commercial purposes, haunts, like the khair, the banks and disused beds of rivers. Its abundant small and well-rounded leaves of bright pea green are one of the ornaments of the lower hills.

The jungle fires, to which I have alluded, are of vital importance in the economy of the frontier. They are the agents for ferti lising the land from which the frontier tribes draw their supplies. But for the action of these fires, the

annual cotton crop, the great staple of the frontier, could not be brought to maturity. They are, moreover, largely operative in lessening the malarious exhalations of the forests. The breadth of the area of dense jungle being less, as pointed out at the commencement, than on the Nepal frontier, and the constant change of the hill currents throughout ages having upon the whole tended to denude the Bhutan marches of large-tree forests, the drying up of the rains leaves large grassy tracts which burn with prodigious rapidity. The flames extend into the sál and sisu forests and destroy the undergrowth there also, and only the thickest cardamum jungle and the impenetrable thicket which shelters. the python remain from year to year unscoured by fires.

The cultivation of cotton in the Bhutan frontier is inseparably associated with one of the most important of the border tribes, the Meches or Bodos, as to whom we possess minute and wonderfully accurate information in the Essay on Koch, Bodo, and Dhimal Tribes, by Mr. B. H. Hodgson, of the Bengal Civil Service. This essay was, however, printed in 1847, and many changes, slight in themselves, but most significant as regards the ultimate destiny of the frontier tribes, have occurred in the thirty years which have elapsed since that date. I shall briefly indicate those changes as they affect the Koches, and the Meches or Bodos, and shall then pass on to the description of a race which inhabits the jungly tract to the west of the Torshá river, and which has never, so far as I am aware, formed the subject of any ethnological paper.

At the period of Mr. Hodgson's essay, it is noteworthy that the Koches still possessed a language sufficiently distinctive to make it worth his while to publish a vocabulary. Even then, however, it will be seen at a glance that more than

three-fourths of the words are pure Bengali. Mr. Hodgson remarks that his vocabulary is that of the converted Koch,' and that he failed to get at the unconverted.' It may be safely said that the unconverted' or aboriginal Koch has at this time ceased to exist in Bengal. Before, however, the Koch had commenced the slow and subtle amalgamation with Hinduism, the possible origin of which I shall suggest farther on, it is clear that the Koches or Páni Koches (i.e. Primitive Koches) possessed characteristics common to all or most of the north-eastern Mongoloid Pre-Aryans. Dr. Buchanan, Civil Judge of Rangpur, towards the end of the last century, and though the earliest, one of our most careful observers, has left records of great value on the population, peoples, dialects and customs of North-Easttern Bengal. Among them we find this description of the Koch:

The primitive, or Páni Koch, live amid the woods, frequently changing their abode in order to cultivate lands enriched by a fallow. They cultivate entirely with the hoe, and more carefully than their [Aryan] neighbours, who use the plough, for they

weed their crops, which the others do not. As they keep hogs and poultry, they are better fed than Hindus, and, as they make a fermented liquor from rice, their diet is more strengthening. . . . Their huts are they raised on posts like the houses of the at least as good [as the Bengalis], nor are Indo-Chinese-at least, not generally so. Their only arms are spears, but they use iron-shod implements of agriculture, which swine, goats, sheep, deer, buffaloes, rhinothe Bengalese often do not. They eat ceros, fowls, and ducks-not beef, nor dogs, nor cats, nor frogs, nor snakes. They eat no tame animal without offering it to God [the gods], and consider that he who is least restrained is most exalted-allowing the Gáros to be their superiors because the Gáros may eat beef.... This tribe has no letters, but a sort of priesthood called Déoshi, who marry and work like other people. . . . Their chief gods are

Rishi and his wife Jágó.

These extracts from Buchanan's work on Rangpur are quoted by Mr. B. Hodgson (p. 146), and Mr. Hodgson's confession of failure