This is British, and, as it extends as far north as the Himalayas, it may contain monosyllabic languages, and tribes speaking them. It may present also instances of intermixture like those which we have already found in Behar—the line of demarcation being equally difficult and undefined. Difficult and undefined it really is—because, although it is an easy matter to take a portion of the Sirmor, Gurhwal, or Kumaon population, and say, "this is Hindú because both language and creed make it so," it is by no means so easy to prove that the blood, pedigree, or descent is Hindú also. To repeat an illustration already in use—many such populations may be Hindú only as the Cornishmen are English.
Now the populations of the Tibetan stock to the west of Nepâl, so little known in detail, must be illustrated by means of our knowledge of the tribes of Nepâl and Tibet most closely related to them—by those of Nepâl on the east, and those of Tibet on the north.[131]
For neither of these areas are there any very minute data. For the aborigines of eastern and central Nepâl, we have plenty of information. They are tribes speaking monosyllabic languages, and tribes in different degrees of intercourse with the Hindús; being by name—1. The Magars. 2. The Gurungs. 3. The Jariyas. 4. The Newars. 5. The Murmis. 6. The Kirata. 7. The Limbu; and 8. The Lepchas, common to the eastern boundary of Nepâl, to the western part of Butan, and to Sikkim. This, however, will not bring us far west enough for the Kumaon frontier; indeed, for the forests of Nepâl west of the Great Valley, we have the notice of one family only—the Chepang. For this, as for so much more, we are indebted to Mr. Hodgson. It falls into three tribes; the Chepang proper, the Kusunda, and the Haju. Its language (known to us by a vocabulary) is monosyllabic; its physical conformation, that of the unmodified Indian.
So much for analogy. In the way of direct information we simply know that the Pariahs, or outcasts, of Kumaon[33] are called Doms. These have darker skins and curlier hair than the Hindús. Are these enslaved and partially amalgamated[132] aborigines? Probably. Nay more; in the eastern part of the province, amidst the forests at the foot of the Himalayas, a community of about twenty families, pertinaciously adheres to the customs of their ancestors, resembles the Doms in looks, and is called Rawat or Raji. Though I have seen no specimen of their language, I have little doubt as to the Rawat of Kumaon being the equivalents to the Chepang of Nepâl.
From Konawur we have three monosyllabic vocabularies, the Sumchu, the Theburskud, and the Milchan; but the exact amount to which the Tibetan and the Hindú populations indent each other along the western Himalayas is more than I can give.
Here end the monosyllabic tongues spoken in British India. But they fringe the Himalayas throughout, and occur in the country of Gholab Singh, as well as in the independent rajahships between the Sutlege and Cashmeer. My latest researches have carried them even further westward than Little Tibet; as far as the Kohistan, or mountain country, of Cabul—the Der, Lughmani, Tirhai, and other languages, known, wholly or chiefly, through the vocabularies of Lieutenant Leach, being essentially monosyllabic in structure, and definitely connected with the tongues of Tibet, and Nepâl in respect to their vocables.[133]
But this is episodical to the subject—a subject still requiring the notice of a very important phenomenon.
Polyandria[34] is a term in ethnology, even as it is in botany. Its meaning, however, is different. Etymologically, it denotes a form of polygamy. Polygamy, however, being restricted to that particular form of marriage which consists in a multiplicity of wives, polyandria expresses the reverse, viz., the plurality of husbands.
At the first glance, the word polyandria looks like a learned name for a common thing; and suggests the inquiry as to how it differs from simple promiscuity of intercourse; or, at least, how far the Tibetan wife differs from the fair frail one who was always constant to the 85th regiment. The answer is not easy. Still it is certain that some difference exists—if not in form, at least, in its effects. One of these, in certain countries where polyandria prevails, is the law of succession to property. This follows the female line, rather than the male.
Again—the marriage of the widow with the surviving brother of her husband, is polyandria under another form.