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

instincts, and its concomitant indifference to the chastity of their women. And finally, he
is struck by their complete freedom from all those caste-prejudices and restrictions which form
so important a character of the system of society in India, and finds them omnivorous, in
point of indifference as to meats and drinks ; cosmopolitan, as regards citizenship, and care-
lessly tolerant in matters of religious sentiment, if not of doctrinal ascendancy.

For the sake of description, the inhabitants of the country may be classed under the heads
of urban and rural, and between the two, in the western divisions at least, to which my
remarks will be now confined, there is a marked difference ; as there is between the two great
divisions of the rural population itself.

As regards the urban population, I will not attempt to describe in detail the several typical
forms of its race representatives, nor the hybrid gradations and half-caste varieties produced by
their indiscriminate intermixture. To convey a tolerably correct notion of the heterogenous
elements that have combined to produce the homogeneous whole of the city population, it will be
sufficient here to indicate the principal tribes of the two typical forms of man—the Mongolian
and the Caucasian—which meet and commingle in these centres of life and activity. Thus of
the former stock we find the Manjhu, the Moghol or Mongol, the Kalmák, the Kirghiz, the
Noghay, the Kapchak, and the Uzbak. All of whom are designated Tartar, together with the
Kara Khitay, the Khitay, and the Tungani, who are excluded from that category, though of
the same stock. Of the latter typical form we find the Tajik of Hindu Kush, represented by
the Wakhi, Badakhshi, Shighni, &c., the Kashmiri, the Kabuli, and the Punjabi, all of whom
are included in the appellation Aryan, together with the Syad and the Arab, who are not so
included.

In these several tribes the typical form is most aberrant only in the Uzbak of
the one stock, and in the Syad of the other, owing to their more thorough inter-
mixture, the first with a Tajik element, and the other with a Moghol element. The remaining
tribes of each original stock, having maintained a more or less complete isolation in their
native homes, possess a proportionately perfect typical resemblance to the parent form. The
hybrid offspring between a male and female of the opposite stocks, between Mogholian and
Caucasian, is called Arghun, and always takes after the superior stock, whether the Caucasian
parent be male or female. This is exemplified as fully in the exterior form of body and cast
of features as in the superior development of the intellectual faculty and improved standard of
morality. Frequently the Arghun in physiognomy and growth of beard is not to be
distinguished from the pure Aryan, whilst in stature and bulk of body he certainly equals,
if he does not excel, the average of the superior stock. His quick intelligence, fertility in
resource, and ready organization are acknowledged in the fact of his often rising to the most
important offices under Government, and in the character he bears as a shrewd man of
business, successful manager, and good accountant. But as rule his better qualities are
suppressed by the nature of the society in which his lot is cast, and his inferior social status
has made him cautious and crafty, and gained him an unenviable character for treachery,
at least, in the lower ranks of the class.

The half-caste offspring between different cognate tribes of the Mogholian stock differ little
from the typical form of the original race, except in the very varied modifications of the family
type ; and their tendency is to degenerate in intellectual as well as moral and physical qualities.
To this mixed class belong those nondescript, ill-favoured creatures who compose the rabble of
the streets ; untutored in mind, dissolute in habits, and tattered in garments, veritable street
Arabs, ready at every corner to hold a horse, carry a bundle, or run a message ; and equally ready,
too, to pick a pocket, filch a steak, or rob a baker's board. Many of them are hawkers about the
streets of meat pies, pastry, biscuits, and sweetmeats, which they trundle about on hand-barrows,
just as their counterparts do in London ; or they hang about the more frequented thorough-
fares with a tray of buns and cakes, supported against the stomach in front by a sling round
the neck. Some go about with a knife-grinder's cart exactly similar to those seen in any
English town, and accompany it with a cry that twangs familiar to the English ear ; others
carry flat baskets of cucumber, melon, &c., on their heads, and cry them in the streets as
the cadger does in the London by-ways. But whatever their occupation they all have the