dst 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 Nepal.

From Konawur we have three monosyllabic vocabularies, the Sumchu, the
Theburskud, and the Milchan; but the exact amount to which the Tibetan
and the Hindu 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 Nepal in respect to their vocables.

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.

What the exact polyandria of Tibet is, is uncertain. I am not prepared
to deny its existence even in so extreme a form as that