National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

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feature in the Bashahr State ; for it marks the ancient boundary between Bashahr and Tibet. In fact, the West Tibetan Empire reached as far as Wangtu up to 1650 A. D., when the Satluj valley from Wangtu to Namgya was made over to Bashahr. Although Tibetan is not yet spoken for several marches up the Satluj, the former Tibetan influence makes itself felt in the frequency of personal Tibetan names. We could not escape making this observation, because we had to jot down on our vouchers the names of all

the coolies in our employ.

We are now outside the area of the Pahari dialects of the Satluj valley and have entered that of the Kanàwari language. This language was noticed as early as 1817 by

Gerard, who published a vocabulary of it.' Mr. Diack macle a beginning in the study of its grammar ; but the true nature of this language was not recognised, until the Rev. J. Bruske, of the Moravian Mission, began to study the language thoroughly and made a translation of the gospel of St. Mark into it. It was then recognised, as pointed out by Dr. Sten Konow,2 that the grammar of this language shows close affinities to Mundári (spoken in Chota Nagpur), and that in very early times in these mountain valleys an amalgamation must have taken place between Mundâ aboriginal tribes and Tibetans. Within the fifty miles of road between Chini and Poo, one meets with several more languages of probably a similar type which have not yet been properly studied, although notes on them can be found in various books of travel. The study of the folklore literature of the Kanawari language has been taken up by Mr. H. A. Rose, who is also compiling a dictionary of this language. Mr. Rose's collection contains historical as well as lyrical pieces. With regard to the former it is strange to note that they all refer to very modern times only. In the course of our journey we heard a song about the Kyahar castle, but it also contained the name of a very modern personage, that of the Tika, Sahib of Bashahr, who died a few years ago, One of the most interesting

of Mr. Bruske's collection is the song on Mr. Minniken, forest officer of Bashahr. This officer is praised in this song as the ideal master of the woods who gives the petitioner as much wood as he wants to get. As regards metre and parallelism, these songs are of the same character as the Tibetan songs.

The result of the blending of the Munda and Tibetan population with a super-

ficial sprinkling of Indian Aryans is not at all bad, and many of our coolie women were of very attractive appearance. I must add a few words with regard to the latter. Among the population of these mountain valleys the cooly caste is not very numerous, and for this reason the villagers, also those of good caste, have to take up cooly work. This kind of forced labour is felt as humiliating by most of the people, and for this reason the male population will not participate in it. They press it on the women of their families, and (lo not see that they disgrace themselves even more by this arrangement. Our transport therefore was for the greater part of our journey to Poo the work of women carriers, This has its great advantages, as has been observed also by other travellers, for these women are pleasant to deal with, they never grumble, and do their utmost to please the

S. B., Vol. XI, part I, 1842, pp. 479, ff. Linguistic Survey, Vol. III, part I. 2 Imperial Gazetteer of India, New Edition. Oxford 1907. Vol. I, pp, 306 ff.