On the Transition Between the Tibetan and Indian Families in Respect to Conformation
British Association — Birmingham 1849
The remarks of Mr. Hodgson on the Kooch, Bodo, and Dhimal, along with some of Dr. Bird’s on the monosyllabic affinities of the Tamulian languages have an important bearing on this question. So have the accounts of the Chepang and Garo tribes. The phenomena are those of transition.
We have a practical instance of this in the doctrine laid down by Mr. Hodgson in his valuable monograph. In this, he makes the Bodo a Tamulian i. e. a member of the same family with the hill-tribes of India and the Dekhan; meaning thereby the aborigines of India, contrasted with the populations to which he ascribes the Sanskrit language and the Hindu physiognomy. In the Tamulian form there is “a somewhat lozenge contour, caused by the large cheek-bones”—“a broader flatter face”—“eyes less evenly crossing the face in their line of picture”—“beard deficient”—“with regard to the peculiar races of the latter” (i. e. the Tamulians) “it can only be safely said that the mountaineers exhibit the Mongolian type of mankind more distinctly than the lowlanders, and that they have, in general, a paler yellower hue than the latter, amongst whom there are some (individuals at least) who are nearly as black as negroes.—The Bodo are scarcely darker than the mountaineers above them—whom they resemble—only with all the physiognomical characteristics softened down.—The Kols have a similar cast of face.”
This is the evidence of a competent observer to the fact of the Bodo &c. being, more or less, what is called Mongol; all the more valuable because he had not, then, recognized their language as monosyllabic. Meanwhile he never separates them from the Kols &c. but always connects the two. In other words, he gives us so much evidence to the fact of the Kols &c. being, more or less, Mongol also. But the Kols are the aborigines of India; whilst the Bodo are Tibetan.
Note (1859)
Recent researches have a tendency to make the Kols less Tamul and more Tibetan than they were held to be in 1849.