Some families only among this rude insulated people sire
qualified to perform the priestly office. . So widely spread is
the impression on the minds of men, that certain individuals
must be the mediators between their fellow mortals and the
unseen powers which their consciences and necessities iin-
pell them to worship. In every Cohatagiri there is a
cemetery where they deposit the bones of their relatives/
which they collect after burning the bodies. On a day
appointed, once in a year, they go, preceded by music, to
the place of burning and collect ;the bones, and each family
carries those of their relative to the interment, wrapped in a
cloth. On the next morning thetmanes of the deceased are
honoured with a sacrifice of buffaloes.
The tribes of barbarous people already enumerated mayibe
considered as belonging to the Dekhan.. I shall now proceed
to collect some notices of similar races in northern
Hindustan. These are found in mountainous tracts towards
the east, in which direction it is most likely that the aborigines
of the Indian plains would be driven by a people
entering, as did most probably the Hindoos, from the westj
Paragraph 4.—Mountaineers in the Eastern parts of
Hindustan.
The mountainous country towards the northern part of
the province of Bengal, near Rajamahal :and Boglipfir, is
inhabited by an uncivilised race, who appear to be quite
distinct from the Hindoos. Beyond Bengal to the eastward,
and beyond the Brahmaputra, where itr makes its great
westward bend, are mountains inhabited by the barbarous
Garro and Oossya tribes, and further towards the south, in
the mountains of Tipperah, to the northward of Chittagong,
are the barbarians termed Kukis or Lunctas. All these
tribes bear indications of resemblance to the nations found
in the same quarter but further " to the eastward, who will
be enumerated in a following section ; but as the people-of
Rajamahal belong to Hindustan, I have determined to insert
the description of them in this place.
The mountaineers or Paharias near Rajamahal live by
agriculture and the produce of the chase : they have many
superstitious observances^ which are unlike those of the
Hindoos.- Bedo Gossack is their chief divinity, and they
*be‘Meve"-in -ihis. superintending providence, and in a moral
government of the world, which; if the accounts given of
therrPare correct; is on much purer*principles than those of
either Hindoos or:;M@iliii|fe All kindss-of^immorality are
punished in a future existence, and the chastisement is in
many cases to he-horn agaihjf lame, blind* or impotent.
The have no Brahmans-jfnT-'castes, but are governed by
demaunos, who are prophets? or priests, and obtain that
office byscertain rites, init iat ion. Theyshold periodical
festivals, and sacrifice, animals to inferior divinities, such as
Pow IGossaik, the. god of the good1, Davary Gossaik, the
protector of families, Kali Gossaik, the Ceres -of these
mountaineers, who is worshipped > by> cultivators at the
seasdh of growing eorn. The livedo&gRlages oh the mountains,
,.afid' are governed bys-their own chiefs, having a regular
administration of justice among them,, according to the
aneient Hindu institution of a Punchayet; ‘or jury of five old-
men in every village. They have a language of their own,
which- is»*quite distinct from the diale#$g< of th e Hindoos.
There ^.re some few words in&the short vocabulary given as a
specimen of this language which.-resemble words in the
idioms of wild farihis beyond the Brahmaputra, and it is
very probable that it may hereafter be proved to be a memw
ber of the same class of languages.
The natives of the Rajamahal Hills are ofishorhsttature, but
stout and well-proportioned5.. A man six feet high would* be
a phenomenon; there are manyjftei# than four feet ten
inches, and perhaps more under five- feet three inches than
above that measure. “ It may not however be far from the
truth to assert that to be the medium height of the men. A
flat nose seems the most characteristic feature, but it is not
so flat a r that of the Cafirs of-Africa, nor are their lips so
thick, though generally thicker than those of the inhabitants
of the plains.” if I shall not pretend;” continues the author
of this account, “ to say whether they are aborigines or not;