cratic system of rule, which concedes no real share of work to the people, and listens to no word of advice from the people, is the saving of India. On the other hand, the leaders of the people themselves demand and expect that the rights and privileges now enjoyed by English citizens are to come to them, all at once, like Minerva out of the forehead of Jupiter. The true path of progress lies midway. Progress-slow, cautious, and real progress-is both inevitable and necessary for the purposes of good administration. The statesman who seeks to revolutionise the country by forced progress really throws the people backward in their path of advancement. And the statesman who seeks to block the political advancement of the people by coercive measures and retrograde legislation is preparing the way to violence and disturbance, forcing the people to lawless methods for gaining their purpose, and thus gradually converting peaceful India to what Ireland was, not many generations ago.

ASSAM

By H. LUTTMAN-JOHNSON

(Late Indian Civil Service)

THE north-western frontier of India has always attracted the interest of the English public. The expansion of our Indian Empire in this direction has involved us in bloody and expensive wars-in battle, murder, and sudden death-things which in themselves excite our enthusiasm and our sympathy. Then in the northwest of India we have had some compensation for our sacrifices in the annexation of a populous and rich province, the Punjab. More recently our wars with the Afghan tribes have been fierce and hazardous, and have teemed with thrilling episodes. The idea that when we have to fight our European neighbour, Russia, we shall allow this distant and somewhat inaccessible frontier to become the field of operations has, during the last thirty years, added a new interest to it. So much has the north-west frontier absorbed public attention that the expansion of our Indian Empire in the north-east direction has proceeded almost unnoticed. But the causes which led to expansion in the one direction are equally operative in the other. Just as misgovernment, anarchy, and aggression led to our interference in the Punjab, and later beyond the Indus, so on the north-eastern frontier we could not afford to leave. the adjacent valleys of the Brahmaputra and the Surma (or Barak) to barbarism or the Burmese. Having occupied the valleys, we found ourselves compelled to

interfere also with the wild tribes which surrounded them. Similarly our great competitor, Russia, driven by similar causes and with similar motives, has spread herself over the whole of northern Asia. It is my object in this paper to describe as briefly as possible the expansion of our Indian Empire in the north-east direction.

DESCRIPTION OF THE NORTH-EASTERN TRACT

When the English, in the year 1765, obtained full control of the huge province of Lower Bengal, that is, of the districts forming the delta of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers, a large tract to the north and east of the delta, bounded on the north by the Himalayan mountains and on the east by Burmah, remained unexplored and unannexed. This tract comprises the Brahmaputra valley on the north, running some 450 miles east to west at the foot of the Himalayas; the Surma, or Barak valley, on the south, parallel to the northern valley, but only some 150 miles long; and a central zone of mountainous country some 4000 feet high, lying between the two valleys. The two valleys debouch at their western extremities on the fertile delta of Bengal. Much of the southern valley is but a continuation of that delta, and owes its fertility to the deposit of silt. The tide of the Bay of Bengal extends to it in the dry season of the year. Besides this there is an extensive mountainous tract running from north-east, where it branches off from the Himalayas at the eastern end of the Brahmaputra valley, to south-west, along the borders of Burmah. From this tract the central zone above noticed gives off on the

west.

The area of this north-eastern tract is some 45,000 square miles. The climate is exceedingly damp. The rainfall on the southern face of the central range

reaches 500 inches, generally it exceeds 100 inches. If the heavy rainfall makes the tract damp and unhealthy, it has its compensations-famine is unknown and tea flourishes.

While in India generally the population is Dravidian or indigenous, with a large admixture, especially in the north, of Aryan blood, in this north-eastern tract, though there is still a small Aryan overlayer, the. main stock, except in the southern or Surma valley, is Mongolian or Indo-Chinese. Lying on the confines of Tibet, China, and Burmah, it has been the meetingplace of the Aryan and Mongolian stocks. In its multitude of tribes and tongues it presents a fine field for ethnological and philological study. While the cow and its product, milk, are looked on in India as almost divine, a large proportion of the population of this tract eschew milk as a species of excrement. In India generally the people live on millets and pulses; here, as in the delta of Bengal, they are rice-eaters.

PREVIOUS HISTORY OF THE TRACT

The expansion of India in the north-east direction is not a new thing. That Buddhism found its way to these parts is attested by a large figure of Buddha carved in the rock on the bank of the Brahmaputra at Gauhati, the chief place in the northern valley. A temple in the same neighbourhood, now Hindu, which the Buddha is believed to have visited, and which still contains an image of him, is a place of pilgrimage to pious Buddhists. Occasionally a Chinaman finds his way to this temple through Tibet and the passes of the Himalayas. Tibetans come to it in numbers. That the inhabitants of the northern valley, so far as they are Hindu, are largely of Vaishnava persuasion, and have established Vaishnava monasteries after the manner of Buddhism, is also evidence that that religion, or at

least its ideas, penetrated to this region. Brahmanism was, no doubt, introduced into both valleys at an early period. The present Brahmans differ so widely from Brahmans in India that we must assume that their ancestors left India before the existing Brahmanical customs had become established. For instance, many of these north-eastern Brahmans sell their daughters in marriage, a custom abhorrent to orthodox Hindus. Besides these early immigrants, other more orthodox Brahmans have come in from time to time. Besides Brahmans, other Hindu natives of India of Aryan stock no doubt migrated to these valleys. A large portion of the inhabitants claim descent from such immigrants. But it is doubtful how far this claim can be accepted, at any rate in the northern valley, where the professional castes of Hinduism are still non-existent. Generally the migration from India, both in the northern and southern valleys, has been of the indigenous rather than of the Aryan stock. In the northern valley this migration has mingled with the original Mongolian stock, and it is not easy to decide where the Indian stock ends and the Mongolian stock begins. That the original autochthones have many of them become Hindus-that is, have adopted, so far as they can, some form of the Hindu social system-increases the difficulty of distinguishing the two stocks. If the habit of opium-eating is considered a test, then the Mongolian stock extends into the north-eastern corner of the Bengal delta. If physical appearance is relied on, the result is the same, though the Mongoloid features disappear rapidly when the Brahmaputra valley is left behind. If religion and language are to be our guide, then the Indian element is much stronger than the Mongolian. But to this day we see the indigenous people becoming Hindu, and we know that the process is no new one. With the adoption of Hinduism, the Indian-derived language, very near akin to the languages