The Moormis are the only other native tribe
remaining in any numbers in Sikkim, except the
Tibetans of the loftier mountains (whom I shall
mention at a future period), and the Mechis of the
pestilential Terai, the forests of which they never
leave. The Moormis are a scattered people, of Tibetan
origin, and called “ Nishung,” from being composed of
two branches, respectively from the districts of Nimo
and Shung, both on the road between Sikkim and
Lhassa. They are now most numerous in central and
eastern Nepal, and are a pastoral and agricultural
people, inhabiting elevations of 4000 to 6000 feet, and
living in stone houses, thatched with grass. They are
a large, powerful, and active race, grave, very plain in
features, with little hair on the face. Both their
language and religion are purely Tibetan.
The Magras, a tribe now confined to Nepal west of
the Arun, are aborigines of Sikkim, whence they were
driven by the Lepchas westward into the country of
the Limboos, and by these latter further west still.
They are said to have been savages, and not of Tibetan
origin, and are now converted to Hindooism.
I t is curious to observe that these mountains do not
appear to have afforded refuge to the Tamulian*
aborigines of India proper: all the Himalayan tribes
of Sikkim being markedly Mongolian in origin. I t
does not, however, follow that they are all of Tibetan
* The Tamulians are the Coles, Dangas, &c., of the mountains of Central
India and the peninsula, who retired to mountain fastnesses, on the invasion
of their country by the Indo-Germanic conquerors, who are now represented
by the Hindoos.
extraction ", perhaps, indeed, none but the Moormis are
so- The Mechi of the Terai is decidedly Indo-Chinese,
and of the same stock as the savage races of Assam,
the north-east and east frontier of Bengal, Arracan,
Burmah, &c.
The laws affecting the distribution of plants, and
the lower animals, materially influence the migrations
of man also ; and as the botany, zoology, and climate
of the Malayan and Siamese peninsula advance far
westwards into India, along the foot of the Himalaya,
so do also the varieties of the human race. These
features are most conspicuously displayed in the natives
of Assam, on both sides of the Burrampooter, as far as
the great bend of that river, beyond which they
gradually disappear; and none of the Himalayan tribes
west of that point practise the bloody and brutal rites
in war that prevail amongst the Cookies, Khasias,
Garrows, and other Indo-Chinese tribes of the
mountain forests of Assam, Eastern Bengal, and the
Malay peninsula.
That six or seven different tribes, without any
feudal system or coercive head, with different languages
and customs, should dwell in close proximity and in
peace and unity, within the confined territory of
Sikkim, even for a limited period, is an anomaly; the
more especially when it is considered that with the
exception of a tincture of the Boodhist religion among
some few of the people, they are all but savages, as
low in the scale of intellect as the New Zealander or
the Tahitian, and beneath those races in ingenuity
and skill as craftsmen. Wars have been waged