to obtain a single specimen of the 'unconverted Koch,' in order to ascertain the primitive language of the race, is a sufficient proof of the immense strides made by this race, even at that date, in their approximation to Hinduism. Considering the long period required for the disappearance of a language brought into competition with a more powerful one, and for the absorption or annihilation of the prime characteristics of an unlettered people, I confess I am compelled to regard Buchanan's account of the Koches as not derived from personal observation. If he really met with Bengal Koches in their semi-civilised state during his residence at Rangpur, it is unfortunate that he has not preserved anything of their vocabulary. If, however, Dr. Buchanan's account be intended as a description of a people almost extinct as a separate race, even then what we are required to believe is quite sufficiently marvellous, that is to say the entire disappearance of the original tongue of a population numbering in Mr. Hodgson's time something like a million souls. Most of the two or three score presumably real Koch words, and by this I mean words which are neither Bengali nor obvious corruptions of Bengali, which appear in Mr. Hodgson's Koch vocabulary are unintelligible to Koches of the present day. Towards the west the very term of Koch is looked upon as an insult. This is the region near the Tístá where the Bengalis of Rangpur have long tilled the fertile valley of the Mahánadí and the Tístá, and where the amalgamation with the Koches has been most complete. Far to

the east, however, where roads scarcely existed, and the Meches and Gáros were the predominating element in the population, I found two or three Koch families who still lived near what may have been the primitive haunts of their race, and had seen little or nothing of Bengalis. Among these at an ancient crossing On the rapid Ráidhák river was an old Koch ferryman, who had many tales to tell of Bhutia raids and Bhutia forced labour long before our peaceful reign set in. His dialect excited the laughter of some of the bystanders of the same blood indeed as the ferryman, but whose grandfathers had emigrated to more stirring regions, where old habits and ancient modes of speech became rapidly uncrystallised by contact with the insinuating influences of Aryanism. No doubt the old ferryman looked with contempt on these degenerate Koches, who failed to understand his uncouth patois. Nevertheless the happiest efforts in Bengali of the Rájbansís of Northern Bengal would be as much an unknown tongue to the Bengali of Nadiyá or Bardwán, as the ferryman's idiom appeared to be to his countrymen of the west; both were but varying developments of an antique type, or rather approximations towards a new model. One or two of the ferryman's sentences I preserved as literary curiosities; and though far indeed from being the original language, I yet failed, after a tolerably long and extensive acquaintance with the districts where the Rájbansís are found, to obtain any idiomatic specimens of so archaic a type.'

I saw much of the Koches or

Rájbansís of the Western Dwárs, and whether from intermarriage with the Aryan inhabitants of the south ern and western districts, or from general improvement in type, I failed to detect much of the large cheek bones, dumpiness, and broadness and flatness of face,' insisted upon by Hodgson as allying the Koch with the Bodos and other 'Tamulian races,' and distinguishing them from the Aryan. On the contrary, I found the Rájbansí squatters of the Western Dwárs much more nearly allied in appearance with the Hindu cultiva tors of Rangpur and Dinajpur, the two nearest districts, than the latter with the average rustic of Nadiya or the twenty-four Parganás. In religion they are purely Hindus, the only point in which they are still on a par even with Bágdís and Kohibarttos and other Hinduised aborigines who are now classed within the pale, is their retention of fowls as an article of diet. These are only, however, openly and avowedly eaten by the lowest class. The educated and well-to-do Rájbansí eats his fowl stealthily very much as a Brahman of Calcutta whose caste scruples contain only the precept, 'Thou shalt not be found out,' gets his friend's cook to send him a fowl cutlet or curry, which can be passed off as the orthodox dish of goat's flesh. The burlesques and farces which are nightly played to large audiences on Calcutta boards are full of such incidents with their attendant discoveries, and the Davus and Sosia of Terence and Plautus again inveigle weakminded old men and sneer at a dying faith before a sceptical and admiring audience. So it is in Jalpaiguri and Kuch Behar, except that the Rájbansís are at the other end of the social scale, and

are entering on their apprenticeship to Hinduism, while the others are tearing up their indentures and manufacturing, as men will do, beliefs for themselves. Modern Rájbansís would scout Rishi and Jágó, the uncouth deities whom Dr. Buchanan unearthed for the tribe as their principal divinities, and would undoubtedly declare with truth they had never heard of them. There is a temple to Mahadeva (the temple of Julpesh, one of the most interesting antiquities of the Jalpaiguri District) certainly many hundred years old in the midst of the old Koch dominions, erected by a pious scion of one of the most ancient and formerly powerful Koch families, that of the Rájá Jalpaiguri. The epoch of Rishi and Jágó must therefore be pre-historic.

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They have still one indication of their Hinduism being new, or rather of its having come into existence since they ceased to be a separate kingdom. They have no subdivisions of caste. The people are all Rájbansí' or 'of the King's race.' The king himself, who once owned wide sway among the tribes of Northern Bengal, and who still possesses a quasi-independent state, is but 'of the king's race.' In time the inevitable subdivisions will commence, and the higher ranks either be admitted into a great class within the Hindu pale, or form for themselves a new designation less strongly indicative of their origin. This one taint as it were remains to them in common with the savage and lawless barbarians who roam the Lower Assam and Cachar hills, the Lusháis and the Nagas. The Rájbansís were once as these are now. They are probably of the same family, but, as Walter Bagehot teaches, the stationary rather than the progressive is the usual lot of peoples.

Islam has made her converts, as well as Bráhmanism, among this race, but her shibboleth is simple, and enjoyment of her privileges requires no initiation beyond a change of name, the 'Kalima,' and circumcision. Brahmanism, on the other hand, only concedes her priest, her splendid ceremonies, her elaborate ritual, and her recondite formula when generations of an ordeal the precise nature of which it is impossible to determine have elapsed. Long before the point where adoption of the main elements of Hinduism and the Hindu phase of mind have at last secured recognition and the right of priesthood, it is easy to see how the well-stored pantheon with its wondrous figures and marvellous legends would sweep from the convert's mind the simple, rude and unidealised gods of the savage. It is thus, no doubt, that the nomad bands of which the non-Aryan tribes of Northern Bengal consist first imbibe Hinduism. The Bengali cultivators near whom they have their temporary home have many tales to tell of Rávana and Sita and the battles of the Mahabharat and the sorrows of Drampadi. Nearly every village has its story-teller or its reader, and their stories are ever of the gods, and their readers are but readers of the 'Adípaibho,' the favourite and most effectual lesson of the Mahábharat. Thus each cultivator who takes his family and his yoke of oxen into the wilds, to earn his hard subsistence, and thus comes in contact with the primitive dwellers in the jungle, drives in the first wedge by which Hinduism cleaves its way among them. First, a resemblance is seen between Shiva in his gloomiest form and the angriest and most dreaded of their own deities, often an embodiment of the conception of death or pain. As Mahadeva is one of the titles of Shiva, the name 'Mahákal' or 'great death' is adopted. From this the transition to Mahadeva'

itself is easy, and the Rubicon is passed. Thus, among races in many of whom, as the Koches and the Bodos, the imaginative faculty is strong, when once they have allowed their mind to dwell on one of the many-named deities of the Hiudu pantheon endowed with rich stores of fantastic and heroic myth, the younger members of the tribe easily abandon their own faith, or mere semblance of a faith, without tradition, with deities whose names unconnected with myth or story, and almost devoid of attribute, are but mumbled twice or thrice a year by the old deoshi or priest of the village. It is giving up the child's daub unrecognisable without the name beneath it, for a living and moving panorama of vivid objects. There is nothing life-like, scarcely anything tangible in the conceptions of deity among the north-eastern aborigines. Panic brought them faith, each and all. An inundation, an attack of small-pox, or a disease among their orange groves, has for its offspring a new deity. They are but the spawn of disease and death, which release their hold when the emergency that called them into being has passed, the whelps that creep in and out of Error's womb. By these steps, no doubt, the Koches abandoned their unloved creed and adopted the religion of the Aryans, though they still occupy a somewhat uncertain stand-point and are but in the outer court of the temple.

One curious and ludicrous anomaly is to be found in their nomenclature, which illustrates the effect of a race adopting a new religion as an after graft upon an old one; there exists an extraordinary confusion in their use of Mahomedan and Hindu proper names. These are of course utterly distinct. They differ in sound, in meaning, in language, and in form of construction. The one infers the subjective relation of the indi

vidual to some member of the Hindu pantheon, or to the Hindu religious teachers, or to their sacred books; the other indicates the objective position of a Mussulman to his maker, and fully half have reference to the mercy of God as shown in the act of creation. It is singular, therefore, to hear in a Jalpaiguri village a Hindu Rájbansí addressing his child as Abdul Kerim, and his Mussulman neighbours loudly vociferating for Shekh Ram Chunder. Their wedding garment' is, at least among the lower classes, but a parti-coloured robe.

It would be beyond the purpose of the present paper to indicate minutely, even if I were able to do so, the actual steps by which a race of 'out-castes' arrives at its eventual niche in the framework of Hindu society. The gradual conquest of social position, the emancipation from the position of 'Mlacchas' or outsiders, unrecognised by the Hindu community, into Helotism, and from that of Helotism into a graded rank within the area of recognised castes, and finally the merging into a caste from whose hands Brahmans can drink water (a lot reserved but for few peoples), are social studies of great interest which require much space and deep research. I have, however, said enough to show the powerful agencies at work among the frontier tribes, who are being gradually brought into contact with Brahmanism, and the certainty that all would be ultimately subjugated which came within its influence.

I pass on to another of the frontier races with whom we are more immediately concerned, the Meches or, as they call themselves, Bodos. These people have been very fully described in Mr. Hodgson's work. Since he wrote, however, the race has made considerable progress. Roughly speaking, about one-third of the Meches of the Western Dwárs have given up their nomadic life on the marches of Bhu

tan, and now cultivate small estates which they hold from Government, paying for them a yearly revenue on a progressive lease, and steadily bringing into cultivation large areas of waste land. These settlers have adopted in some respects the habits of Bengalis. They have discarded the cultivation of cotton, the product by means of which the Bodos have for centuries supplied their simple needs; they purchase their clothes instead of having them woven by their women from the home-grown cotton, and the very fashion of wearing their jackets and dhútés is becoming rapidly modified by their new surroundings. In religion their worship of Báthó has long given place to Sivaism, and Sivaism again, the gloomiest form of the Hindu faith, to the worship of Krishna with its joyous festivals and mirthful gatherings. No one who has witnessed, as I have done, a Mech village dance could doubt what form of Hinduism would be ultimately adopted by this pleasure-loving race. In the culture of sacred plants, the cactus is being supplanted by the 'tulsi,' and even in speech the patois of Northern Bengal is superseding the Mech. Although none have yet forgotten their own language, many have become ashamed to speak it. With regard to marriage, the last custom to undergo change, here and there a wealthy Bodo has married the daughter of one of his Rájbansí herdsmen. Notwithstanding all this, they are still many generations from what is no doubt their ultimate destiny, absorption among the Hindu community.

The remainder of the race, so far as concerns the section which inhabit the Western Dwárs, have played and are still playing an important part in frontier social life. Their homesteads are found throughout the whole of the tract of country at the foot of the Bhutan hills, whose characteristics I attempted to describe at the begin

ning of this paper. The village sites are selected entirely with a view to facility for the growth of cotton. They are generally in the very depth of the forest, and the villagers have often miles to go for water. In personal appearance, the Meches are the most pleasing of the frontier tribes. In complexion, a light brown, with bright expressive eyes, round well-formed face, lips full and good-humoured, and long hair gathered carefully into a knot behind. Their tout-ensemble is decidedly effeminate; indeed a young woman can scarcely be distinguished from a youth except by the dress. Even in earlier days, when they used the bow and arrow against the wild beasts of the forest, they were never warriors, and they give way rather than fight. As a counterpoise to their lack of courage, violent crime is unknown among them, and offences against property are almost equally rare. A Mech convict is unknown or almost unknown in our gaols. Their only Mongolian characteristics are high cheekbones and noses fuller and flatter than are found among Hindus. Their women are decidedly prepossessing, and are characterised by innate modesty rather than the outward decorum of Hindu women. The latter, who drape their faces at sight of a stranger, would be scandalised to see Mech girls join the boys of the village in the dance which forms their national pastime; but although I often witnessed it, I never found the fun degenerate into licence or indelicacy.

Nothing appears to disturb their extraordinary good temper and cheerfulness. The longest march under the hottest sun, the heaviest load amid drenching rain, appear to affect their happiness not a whit. They are the very beau idéal of sunny enjoyment of life. The greatest good fortune I can wish anyone who has a long journey to make through the jungles of the north-eastern frontier is what I

myself enjoyed throughout three months of camping in the marches of Bhutan, the services of one or two Mech attendants. How often I have been indebted to their unerring sagacity in finding the way amid what appeared a hopeless labyrinth of thorn bushes, or across still wilder cardamum brakes which overtopped the tallest elephant, I can scarcely say, but a Mech appears never to such advantage in the jungles as when everyone else has given up hope. Never for more than a minute did a cloud of dismay appear on the face of my Mech attendant, even under the most chilling and unlooked-for disaster; a moment later the thought of some happy expedient would recall his usual air of sunny

contentment.

Their village government is complete. Wherever they go they have with them a headman who transacts all their business, and priests of different grades, some for minor religious ceremonies and others for the worship of their principal gods. Their industrial life is almost entirely absorbed in the cotton tillage by which they live. In the cold weather, they roam over the jungles to find land suitable for cultivation. To an eye untrained to judge of the capabilities of soil even when covered with jungle, and to a foot unaccustomed to traverse the densest growths of vegetation, this would be an impossible task; but the selection of land for their staple is made by them with an instinct that never errs. The first step is to burn the jungle down. From the top of one of the lower hills the burning jungle in January and February is a magnificent spectacle. The horizon seems ablaze with fires. For miles and miles on every side masses of forest trees, of cardamum and of cane, are aflame. The long grass on both sides of a broad stream is on fire to the very water's edge, which gleams clear and bright