C. CAUCASIAN PEOPLES.[391]

All who have seen the ethnographical maps of the Caucasus must have been struck by the motley appearance which they present; fifty various tribes may in fact be counted in this isthmus, the area of which is less than that of Spain. I shall speak here only of the Caucasians properly so called—that is to say, of the peoples who dwell only in the Caucasus, putting on one side all others (Iranians, Europeans, Turks, Mongols, Semites, etc.) who have overflowed into this country from the adjacent regions.

The Caucasians are sub-divided into four linguistic or ethnic groups: the Cherkess (on the north-west of the Caucasian range), the Lesgian Chechen (on the north-east of the range), the Kartvels or Georgians (on the south-west of the range), and the Ossets (in the centre of the range on both slopes). The last, by their language, are the nearest to the Iranians and the Armenians, but the three other groups form a perfect linguistic unit. The dialects which they speak preserve the impress of a common origin and form a family apart which has nothing in common with any other.

The Cherkess or Circassians, until the middle of this century, inhabited all the western part of Ciscaucasia; but, since the conquest of their country by the Russians, they have emigrated en masse into the Ottoman empire. At the present day there are only a few remnants of them in the Caucasus. Principal tribes, Abkhazians, Adighé or Cherkess (Circassians) properly so called, Kabards of the plain, Abadzeh, Chapsugh, etc.

The Chechen-Lesgians are divided, as the name implies, into two groups: the Chechen (with the Ingushes, the Kists, etc.) of the upper basin of the Terek, who have long been considered as a population apart (Figs. 110 and 111), and the Lesgians of Daghestan. These last are sub-divided into five great sections, according to their dialects: (1) The Avars-Andi, with the Dido, whose language tends to preponderate owing to the historic part played by the tribe of the Avars, to which belonged the famous Shamil, the hero of the Caucasus, whose memory still lives. (2) The Dargha in the centre of Daghestan, the best known tribe of which is that of the Kubachi, living in little houses piled one above the other on the sides of the mountains. (3) The Kurines of the Samur basin, with the Tsakhurs (Tabassaurans, etc.). (4) The Laks or Kazi-Kumyks, with which are connected lesser known tribes, like the Agul, the Budukh, and the Khinalugh, whose language is distinct from all the other dialects of Daghestan. (5) The Udes, an ancient Christian tribe converted to Islamism, of which there remain but 750 individuals still acquainted with their mother-tongue (district of Nukha, province of Elisabetpol).

The Kartvels, Karthli or Georgians, who alone of the Caucasians possess a special mode of writing, and a literature, are divided into three linguistic sections: (1) Gruzin, which comprises the Georgians properly so called of the plains of the province of Tiflis, Georgians of the mountains (Khevsurs, Pshavs, and Toushs, 21,300 in all), and the Imers (Fig. 109) with the Gurians. (2) The Mingrelian section of people living more to the west, composed of the Mingrelians of the Kutais country and the Lazes of the Batum circle. (3) The Swan section, comprising the tribe of Swanet or Swanetians, driven back into the unhealthy regions of the province of Kutais, where the race degenerates; cretins and those afflicted with goitre form a third part of the population.

The Ossets, while speaking a language which (in the Digorian dialect) is nearly allied to Iranian, have nevertheless much in common with the other Caucasians, from whom they are distinguished perhaps by the frequent occurrence of fair hair (10 per cent.) and light eyes (29 per cent.); more frequent than among all the other Caucasian peoples, the Imers, the Lesgi-Dido, and the Chechen excepted. But figures are still too inadequate in regard to the number of subjects with dark hair and eyes (51 and 53 per cent.) to enable us to affirm, as all authors from Am. Marcellinus to our own days have done, that the Ossets are a people of fair race. They are above the average in stature (1 m. 68), and sub-brachycephalic (ceph. ind. on the liv. sub. 82.6).

As to the somatic characters of the other Caucasians, we know little of those of the Cherkess (sub-brachycephalic, of medium height), but we are better informed in regard to the Lesgians and the Kartvel. The contrast between the two groups is striking. The Lesgians are very brachycephalic (see Appendix II.), especially the tribes of the east; their stature is fairly high. To these characters are united others which, in their totality, produce the most singular effect; the prominent nose, straight or curved, recalls the Semites, while the projecting cheek-bones, broad face, and angles of the lower jaw directed outward, suggest the Mongols; lastly, the whole aspect becomes still more odd, owing to the light-grey or greenish eyes, and fair or chestnut hair, so common among the Lesgians (Figs. 110 and 111).

Quite different are the characters of the Kartvel. In the first place, they form a less homogeneous group; we must distinguish in it between the eastern and the western Georgians. The former (Gruzins) are true brachycephals, though in a lesser degree than the Lesgians, while the latter (Mingrelians, Imers) are distinguished from all the other Caucasians by the elongated form of the head (see Appendix II.). The stature varies in harmony with the cranial forms; the Kartvel tribes with rounded heads have the shortest stature, and the dolichocephalic tribes the highest; light hair is less common in the two groups than among the Lesgians, but we find among the Georgians in general a great number of subjects in whom the iris has a particular yellow colour, a grey or greenish yellow. The Gruzins have a rather rounded face and broad nose, while the Imers have an elongated visage, thin nose, tight lips, pointed chin (Fig. 109); their physiognomy reminds one of a goat’s head, according to Pantiukhof, who considers the Imers to be the purest representatives of the primitive Kartvels.[392]

CHAPTER X.

ANCIENT INHABITANTS OF ASIA.

Prehistoric Times.—It is a common practice to call Asia, or at least certain regions of Asia, “the cradle of mankind,” the “officina gentium.” The migrations and invasions of the Asiatic peoples into Europe, which took place from the most remote times, gave birth, naturally enough, to this idea among the western peoples (p. 317 et seq.). However, no serious data authorise us to say that the first man was born rather in Asia than Europe. Nowhere do we find there any traces of tertiary man.[393] Eugène Dubois discovered, it is true, quite close to the Asiatic continent in the very uppermost tertiary beds (upper pliocene) of the Island of Java, the bones of a being which he considers as intermediate between man and the anthropoid apes, and which he has called Pithecanthropus erectus (Figs. 112 and 113). But Java belongs to-day as much to the Oceanian world as to Asia, and the Pithecanthropus is not altogether a man, either according to his discoverer or many other authorities. Some regard this being simply as a gigantic gibbon, while others (myself among the number) hold that he is a being more closely related to man than to the anthropoid apes, or even a man of a race inferior to all existing ones. If this last hypothesis be correct we must admit the existence of tertiary man in Asia, since it is highly probable that even at the end of the tertiary period the islands of Sumatra and Java were connected with the great continent by the Malay peninsula.[394]

As to quaternary man, if no bones have yet been found, tools absolutely similar to those of Europe have been noted almost everywhere in Asia; in Siberia, around Lake Baikal (Tchersky and Poliakof), and near to Tomsk in the loess, beside a dismembered and calcined skeleton of a mammoth, the remains of a pantagruelic repast of quaternary Siberians (Kuznétzof); in Japan, in the ancient province of Jenchiou, now Osaka, the Ivate and Miaghi province, northern Nippon (S. Fuse), western Nippon (Vidal) in the country of Rikuzen, now in the province of Etzigo or Teshigo (Inuzuka); then in anterior Asia, in the grottos at the mouth of the Nahr-el-Kelb, near Beirut (Lortet); at Hannauch to the east of Tyre (Lortet and Pelagaud), in Galilee (Cazalis of Fondouce and Moretain), in Phœnicia (Zumoffen), etc.[395] In India, attention has been drawn to several palæolithic stations in the midst of the ancient alluvia of the rivers Nerbadda, Krishna, and Godaveri (Wynn); in certain places there quartzite implements were associated with the bones of extinct animals (Equus nomadicus, Hippopotamus palæindicus) or animals which have since emigrated into other regions (Bos palæindicus, etc.). Single tools have been found in the beds of laterite near Madras, in Scinde, at Banda, in the central provinces (Rivett-Carnac), in the south-east of Bengal.[396]

Monuments and objects of the polished stone and bronze periods, often confounded in Asia, have been found almost everywhere. They are connected with peoples who presented at that remote date great differences in their civilisation and probably in their physical type. The excavations of Schliemann at Hissarlik (Asia Minor) have brought to light a civilisation which appears to correspond with the end of the stone age and the beginning of the bronze epoch (2,500 years B.C.?). Prehistoric objects in polished stone and bronze have been found at other points of Asia Minor (A. Martin), in Lycaonia (Spiegelthal), in the Sinai peninsula (Bauermann and Richard), on the shores of Lake Issik-koul (Russian Turkestan). Southern Siberia, the Kirghiz steppes, north and north-western Mongolia are covered with stone circles (Kereksur), barrows, tumuli, menhirs (Kishachilo) of every form, with burial-places in which are found objects in wood, bone, bronze, copper, iron (Radloff, Potanin, Klementz). The skulls which have been taken from some of these burial-places, in the upper valley of the Yenisei, are dolichocephalic; the plaster mortuary masks found in the same region by Adrianof present a type somewhat European.[397]

It must not be forgotten that many of these monuments date from the historic epoch and belong, as proved by the runiform inscriptions of Mongolia discovered by Yadrintsef and deciphered by Thomson, to the seventh and eighth centuries of the Christian era.[398]

The kitchen-middens of Omori, near Tokio, and of several other localities in Japan examined by Morse, Milne, and Tsuboi, afford evidence of the existence in this country of a fairly civilised race which was acquainted with pottery, but employed only bone and partly polished stone implements. The excavations of ancient underground dwellings in the islands of Yezo (Morse, Tsuboi) and Saghalien (Poliakoff) lead us to believe that this race extended much farther to the north. It is possible that it was related to the men whose polished flint implements have been found in Siberia in the valley of the Tunka, in that of the Patcha, one of the tributaries of the river Amur (Uvarof), and in the shell-heaps of the Pacific coast near Vladivostok (Margaritof).[399] Polished stone hatchets have been found in the north-east of China in the vicinity of tumuli resembling the American “mounds” (Williamson); others have been picked up in the Yunnan (Sladen), and in Burma (Theobald); Moura, Jammes, and Morel exhumed in Cambodia, between Lake Tonlé-Sap and the Mekong, side by side with objects of bronze, several polished stone implements of a peculiar type (Fig. 114), a kind of square-tongued axe (shouldered celt), which has since been found again in several other places in Indo-China as far as the upper Laos (Lefèvre-Pontalis) and Burma.[400] In the district of Somron-Sen (Cambodia), previously explored by Jammes, as well as in the neighbourhood of Saigon, Corre discovered similar implements close to shell-heaps containing, besides pottery and stone tools, human bones, but no skulls.

Lastly, in India, the “cromlechs,” “mounds,” and finds of stone objects similar to those which are found in Europe, may be counted in hundreds. It is certain that the stone “circles” of the central provinces and the “Kouroumbarings” of Southern India date from a period anterior to the Aryan immigration. As in Europe, so in Asia the age of metals borders very closely on the historic period of which the Chinese annals have preserved for us a record. The monuments of Chaldea, Assyria, Asia Minor, India, and Cambodia, also reveal ethnographical facts of great interest (see, for instance, note 2, p. 419).

PRESENT INHABITANTS AND RACES OF ASIA.

So also, in the present state of anthropological knowledge, we can only discern in the midst of the numerous Asiatic populations, in a quite general way, the elements furnished by the following eleven races:—Five races peculiar to Asia (Dravidian, Assyroid, Indo-Afghan, Ainu, Mongolian), and six races which are also met with in other parts of the world: Negrito, Indonesian, Arab, Ugrian, Turkish, and Eskimo (leaving out of account the Assyroid and Indo-Afghan races, which are found again among the Jews and the European Gypsies). I have already given (p. 285 et seq.) the principal characters of these races; it only remains to say a few words as to their geographical distribution in Asia.

The Eskimo race is quartered in the north-east of the continent; that of the Ainus in Saghalien, Yezo, and perhaps in northern Japan; while the Ugrian race is represented by its Yeniseian variant. The Mongolian race (with its two secondary races, northern and southern) is found almost all over Asia. The Turkish race is limited more particularly to the inland regions of Central Asia. The Indonesians are numerous in Indo-China, and in the islands from Japan to the Asiatic Archipelago, while the Dravidians and Indo-Afghans abound in India. The latter are also met with in anterior Asia, side by side with the Assyroids and Arabs. Some representatives of the Negrito race inhabit the Malay peninsula and the Andaman Islands; the elements of this race are also found among the inhabitants of Indo-China and perhaps India.

As to existing populations of the Asiatic continent, I shall rapidly pass them in review, grouping them, according to geographical region, under six heads: peoples of Northern Asia; of Central Asia; of Eastern Asia; of Indo-China; of India; and lastly, of Anterior or Western Asia.

I. NORTHERN ASIA, consisting almost exclusively of Siberia, a cold country covered with dense virgin forests (taïga) or marshy, frozen plains (tundra), harbours, in addition to Russian or Chinese colonists, only a few somewhat wretched tribes, mainly hunters, but depending partly on fishing and hoe-culture.

We may group them thus:—(1) tribes of Western Siberia, having some affinities with the Samoyeds and the eastern Finns, which I shall call Yeniseians or Tubas; (2) peoples of the extreme north-east of the Asiatic continent, whom Schrenck[401] describes as Palæasiatics; (3) the Tunguses of Eastern Siberia and Manchuria.

1. Yeniseians or Tubas.—Besides the Samoyeds of Asia, who differ from their kinsfolk in Europe only by their more Mongoloid features, the Yeniseians comprise two distinct groups of populations. In the first place the so-called Ostiaks of the Yenisei, on the right bank of this river (between Yeniseisk and Touroukhansk), probable descendants of the Kien-Kouen and the Ting-ling of the Chinese annals. It is a tribe in process of extinction, whose language differs from the Samoyed tongue and the Finnish dialects properly so called (Castren). Then come the tribes who formerly formed the Tuba nation, mentioned until the seventh century A.D. by the name of Tupo by the Chinese annalists; they inhabited the basin of the upper Yenisei, the Altai region, and north-western Mongolia, and bore the local names of Matores, Arines, Kottes, Assan, Tuba, etc.

These peoples have disappeared as linguistic units,[402] but their physical type, some of their characteristic manners, as well as a few words of their language, are preserved among certain populations speaking a Turkish dialect. The Russians call these populations “Tatars”; they might more suitably be called by the name of Altaians. This ethnic group, whose physical type has been altered by intermixtures with peoples of Turkish or Mongolian race, comprises the “Tatars” of Abakan, that is to say, Katchines, Koibals (eight hundred individuals), Sagai, and Kizils; the “Tatars” of Altai and those of Chulim, among whom must be noted the “Tatars of the black forests” (Chernievyié Tatary in Russian), called “Tubas” by their neighbours. The latter are mesocephalic, of medium height; they have abandoned little by little the hunting state, and become primitive cultivators of the soil; they break up the ground with the hoe, which was used by them until not very long ago to dig up edible roots, and they cut their corn with hunting-knives.[403] The Soiots or Soyons of North-western Mongolia, who call themselves Tubas, are probably the descendants of the ancient Uigurs (Turkish nation) commingled with aboriginal Yeniseians of this country and partly Mongolised about the seventeenth century.

2. The Palæasiatic group should comprise, according to Schrenck, all the ancient peoples of Asia driven back at the present day towards the north-eastern extremity of the Continent. The more important of these peoples are the following:—The Chuchi (or Chukchi), numbering about 8000, are the most typical representatives of the group; they inhabit the north-east of Siberia, and the occupation of some is the breeding of reindeer, and fishing of others; however, the distinction between the nomadic and fishing Chukchi is both of an economic and ethnic order.[404] The Koriaks dwell to the south of the Chukchi, as far as Kamtchatka; they bear a close resemblance to them and speak the same language. The Eskimo of Asia, Namuollo, or Yu-Ite formerly occupied the coast of the Chukchi country, as shown by their ancient habitations excavated by Wrangel and Nordenskiold. At the present day they are not found except in isolated camps on the coast and in the islands of the Behring Sea. They differ but very little from the Eskimo of Alaska; their ornaments, however, recall rather those of the Aleuts. The Kamtchadals of the centre and west of Kamtchatka differ from the peoples just mentioned. They number 4,250 at the present day, and are becoming Russianised very rapidly. They have completely given up their language, which has no relation to any linguistic family now known, and they speak a very corrupt form of Russian. Nominally orthodox Christians, they are at bottom animists, and the anthropomorphic element, often under obscene forms, occupies a large place in their myths and legends. They are fishers and hunters.

The Yukaghirs are the last remnants of a somewhat powerful people who formerly occupied all that part of Siberia situated to the east of the Lena, and who were composed of several tribes: Omoks, Anauls, Cheliags, etc.[405] It was believed until the last few years that even the Yukaghirs had disappeared, but quite recently Iokhelson[406] ascertained that there are at least 700 individuals, and that their language, which has no affinities with any of the Uralo-Altaic dialects, is spoken by a certain number of Tunguse-Lamuts (see p. 373), their neighbours. On the other hand, the Yukaghirs of Verkhoiansk, have adopted the Lamut dialect, and those of the banks of the Iana the Yakut tongue. By several peculiar manners and customs (classificatory system of relationship, pictography, etc.) they approach very closely certain North American Indians. Physically they resemble the Tunguse-Lamuts, though more brachycephalic and somewhat less dark-haired as a rule.

The Ainus (Figs. 49 and 117), who are classed among the Palæasiatics, inhabit the north and east parts of the island of Yezo, the south of Saghalien, and the three most southern islands of the Kuriles. They form a group by themselves, different from all the other peoples of Asia. Their elongated heads (ceph. index on the liv. sub. 77.8), their prominent supraciliary ridges, the development of the pilous system, the form of the nose, give to them some resemblance to the Russians, the Todas, and the Australians; but other characters (coloration of the skin, prominent cheek-bones, short stature, frequent occurrence of the os japonicum, etc.) distinguish them from these peoples and afford grounds for classing them as a separate race (see Chap. VIII.). According to Japanese historians, the Ainus or Asuma Yebissu occupied the whole of Nippon from the seventh century B.C. until the second century of the Christian era. In the seventh century A.D. they still occupied all that portion of this island situated to the north of the 38th degree of north latitude, and even in the ninth century the chronicles speak of the incursions of these “barbarians.” Thus the Ainu element enters very largely into the composition of one of the types of the Japanese people, not only at Yezo but in the north of Nippon (province of Aomori), where several Ainu words still survive in current speech. In the Kurile islands the Ainus are intermixed with the Kamtchadals and the Aleuts introduced by the Russo-American Company about the middle of the present century.

It is calculated that there are about 18,500 Ainus (of whom 1,300 are in the island of Saghalien) at the present time; their number at Yezo has remained stationary for several years. The dress of the Ainus is a sort of greatcoat with broad sleeves, fastened with a girdle so that the right lappel covers the left lappel as among Turkish peoples, and contrary to the way it is done among the Chinese and Mongols. The chief occupation of the Ainus is hunting and fishing; they engage but little in agriculture. Their religion is pure animism; the word Kamui, which means spirit (like the Kami of the Japanese Shintoists), also serves to indicate everything incomprehensible, in the same way as the word “shif,” the literal meaning of which is “animal” (may this be a word corresponding to totem?).

The Ainus, like most Asiatic peoples, such as the Giliaks, Tunguses, etc., have a special veneration for the bear; they organise festivals in its honour, during which a bear is killed, after having received the homage of many inaou (staffs decorated with shavings).

The Ainu language is agglutinative, and has no analogy with any known language.[407]

The Giliaks, who inhabit the north of Saghalien, and the mainland to the north of the mouth of the Amur, suggest by their traits sometimes the Ainus, sometimes the Tunguses, but they are brachycephalic. They are a people of fishers, living on the banks of rivers and the sea, in the winter in huts half buried in the ground, in the summer in little houses on piles. The Giliaks are readily disposed to trade, and are distinguished by their taste for ornaments. Their number hardly exceeds 5000 individuals.[408]

The Tunguses, while speaking a particular language, exhibit the Mongol type, softened by intermixtures with the primitive inhabitants (Palæasiatics?) of their territory, which extends from the Arctic Ocean to the 40th degree of north latitude, and from the Yenisei to the Pacific Ocean. Their number can hardly exceed 50,000 individuals over this immense stretch of country. They are divided into southern and northern Tunguses and maritime Tunguses or Lamuts. The river Amur forms the approximate boundary between the first two sections of Tunguses. The Lamuts occupy the shores of the sea of Okhotsk, the north-west of Kamtchatka, and extend more to the west to the river Iana. The Northern Tunguses are split up into several tribes, of which the following are the principal, going from east to west:—The Olchas or Mangoon, at the mouth of the Amur; their congeners the Oroks, in the north of the island of Saghalien; the Orochons, of a very pure Tunguse type; the Manegres (Fig. 43), and the “Olennyié” Tunguses, or the Tunguses with reindeer (Figs. 115 and 116). As to the southern Tunguses, they comprise the Goldes of the lower Amur and Ussuri, of a very pure type, and having a fairly well developed ornamental art; the Oroches of the coast; and lastly the Solon-Daurs, very much intermixed with the Mongols, of which colonies exist in the Kuldja.

The Manchus, reduced to a small number, belong by their dialect as well as by their physical type to the Tunguse group. They are being absorbed more and more by the Chinese, and hardly form a tenth part of the population of the country which bears their name (Pozdniéef). It is probable that the Niu-chi or Yu-chi of Shan-alin and Sien-pi on the northern border of Corea, mentioned in the Chinese annals, were Tunguse tribes.

The type which predominates among the Tunguses represents the secondary race called North Mongolian and characterised by mesocephaly or a slight sub-dolichocephaly, and by a rather elongated face. The stature varies; the Orochons are of average stature and the Manchus very tall, etc.[409]

II. PEOPLES OF CENTRAL ASIA.—The immense central Asiatic region, whose waters have no outlet towards the sea, is formed principally of denuded table-lands (Thibet) or of plains, sometimes grassy, sometimes desert (Mongolia, Turkestan). It is inhabited for the most part by populations which may be grouped from the linguistic point of view under three heads, Turks, Mongols, Thibetans.[410]

The peoples speaking the different Turkish dialects who are called Turco-Tatars or Turanians are scattered over an immense area comprising half of Asia and a large portion of Eastern Europe, from the Arctic Ocean (Yakuts) to Kuen-lun (Polus) and Ispahan (Turkomans of Persia), from the banks of the Kolima and the Hoang-ho (Yegurs) to Central Russia (Tatars of Kasimov) and Macedonia (Osmanli Turks). All these peoples may be gathered together into three great groups: eastern, central, and western.[411]

The eastern group comprises the Yakuts, who have preserved in its purity the ancient Turco-Uigurian language, but who in type, manners, and customs show the influence of contiguity with the Palæasiatics; then the various tribes of non-Yeniseian “Tatars” (see p. 366) of Siberia, like the Altaians (called Kalmuks of Altai, although they have nothing in common with the true Kalmuks), nomads who have recently adopted settled habits, like the Teleuts (or Kara-Kalmuks), likewise nomads, or the Tatars of Siberia, divided, according to their habitat, into Tatars of the Baraba steppes, Tatars of Irtish, of Tobol, etc.[412]

To this group must be added the Taranchi and other “Turks” of East Turkestan, as well as the Polus of the northern slope of the Kuen-lun, more or less mingled with Indo-Afghan elements; the Yegurs of the province of Kan-su in China, etc.[413]

The central group comprises, in the first place, the Kirghiz-Kazak of the plains between the Irtish and the Caspian, with the Kara-Kirghiz of the Tian-chan mountains, typical nomads who under a Mussulman veneer have preserved many ancient Turkish animist customs;[414] then the Uzbegs and Sartes, villagers or citizens, more or less mingled with Iranian elements, of Russian Turkestan; and finally the Tatars of the Volga, or of European Russia. Among these last, the so-called Kazan Tatars, descendants of the Kipchaks, must be specially mentioned. Arriving on the banks of the Volga in the thirteenth century, they intermingled there with the Bulgarians. They differ from the Astrakhan Tatars (Figs. 107 and 108), descendants of the Turco-Mongols of the Gold horde, mixed with the Khazars, as well as from the Nogai of the Crimea,[415] representatives of whom we find also in the Caucasus, near Astrakhan, and in Lithuania, where, while remaining Mussulmans, they have adopted the language and the garb of Poles. With this group we must connect the Bashkir-Mesthcheriaks, a tribe intermixed with Turkish, Mongol, and Ugrian elements; and their congeners the Shuvashes, as well as the Kumyks, the Karachai, the Kabards, or Tatars of the Caucasus mountains, distinct from the true Kabards.

The western group is composed of Turkomans of Persia (Khojars, Afshars) and Russian (Turkmen) or Afghan Turkestan (Jemshids, etc.), of Aderbaijani, Turkish-speaking Iranians of the Caucasus and Persia, and lastly the Osmanli Turks. Included under this name are subjects of the Sultan speaking the Turkish language and professing Islamism. We must distinguish among them the settled Osmanli, much intermixed, and the nomadic tribes (Turkomans, Yuruks, etc.), who exhibit several characteristics of the Turkish race.

The Turkish race, so far as can be gathered from recent anthropological works, is preserved in a comparatively pure state among the Turks of the central group, but in the eastern group it has been profoundly modified in consequence of intermixtures with the Mongolian, Tunguse, and Ugrian races; as also in the western group, in which we have to take into account elements of the Assyroid, Indo-Afghan, and Arab races, and certain European races (Adriatic chiefly). The Turkish race may be thus described: Stature, above the average (1 m. 67–1 m. 68); head, hyper-brachycephalic (ceph. ind. on the liv. sub., 85 to 87), elongated oval face, non-Mongoloid eyes, but often with the external fold of eyelid (p. 78); the pilous system moderately developed; broad cheek-bones, thick lips; straight, somewhat prominent nose; tendency to obesity.[416]

The Turks are essentially nomadic, and when they change their mode of life it is rather towards the chase, commerce, or trade that their efforts are directed; the true cultivators of the soil (Taranchi, Sartes, Osmanli, Volga Tatars) are Turks already powerfully affected by intermixtures. The Turkish tent is the most highly finished of transportable habitations (p. 164–166). Meat and milk products form the staple foods, as they do among all nomads. With the exception of the Christian Chuvashes and the Shaman Yakuts, all the Turks are Mussulmans; but often they are only nominally such, at bottom remaining Shamans. The veneer of Islamism becomes thinner and thinner among the Turkish peoples as we go from west to east. The Osmanlis, the most fanatical of all the Turks, are the most mixed as regards type, language, manners, and customs. It is perhaps to this mixed origin that they owe the relative stability of the state which they have founded, for no nomadic Turkish tribe has been able to create a political organism of long duration, and the vast empires of the Hiungnu, the Uigurs, the Kipchaks, have had only an ephemeral existence.

2. The Mongols[417] form an ethnic group more homogeneous as regards manners and customs and physical type than the Turks. Their name is chiefly known on account of the great empire founded by Genghis Khan, but it must be observed that the nomadic hordes united into a single body, and led to victory by this conqueror, were only very partially composed of Mongols, other nomadic peoples, and especially Turks, formed more than half of them. Hence the practice among Europeans, as among the Chinese,—a practice which is kept up to the present time,—of giving the name of one of the Turkish tribes, Ta-ta or Tatar, transformed into Tartar, to the Mongols, and extending it to many of the Mongoloid peoples, like the Tunguses for example.

Three principal divisions are recognised in this group: Western Mongols or Kalmuks, the Eastern Mongols, and the Buriats.[418] The Western Mongols, who style themselves Eleuts, and whom the neighbouring peoples call Kalmuks, are scattered, owing to wars and migrations, over the immense tract lying between Siberia and Lassa, from the banks of the Hoang-ho to those of the Manich (a tributary of the Don). The more compact groups are found in European Russia (Kalmuks of Astrakhan, Figs. 20 and 44, and the Caucasus); in Dzungaria (the Torgoots) and north-western Mongolia, between Altai and Thian-Shan; lastly, in Alashan and farther to the west in the Chinese province of Kuku-Nor and northern Thibet. They number about a million.

The Eastern Mongols occupy almost the whole of the region known by the name of Mongolia properly so called. In the south of this country they are broken up into a multitude of tribes (Tumets, Shakars or Tsakhar, etc.); while in the north they form a single nation, that of the Khalkhas, which has still preserved, in spite of its submission to China, some traces of its ancient political organisation. The Khalkhas number about 200,000, and the southern Mongols 500,000.

The Buriats form a population sprung from the Khalkhas, intermixed at several points with various Siberian elements, Tunguse, Yakut, Russian; they occupy the steppes and forests of the province of Irkutsk, but their central seat is Transbaikal, whence they spread out even into Mongolia, into the valleys of the Orkhon and the Argun. They number about 250,000.

The type of the Mongolian race is very strongly marked among most of the Kalmuks and Khalkhas; it is less distinct among the Buriats, etc. It may thus be described: Nearly average stature (1 m. 63–64); head, sub-brachycephalic (ceph. ind. on the liv. sub. 83); black straight hair, pilous system little developed; the skin of a pale-yellow or brownish hue, prominent cheek-bones, thin straight flattened nose, Mongoloid eyes (p. 77), etc.

With the exception of some Buriat tribes the Mongols are typical nomadic shepherds. Their live-stock, camels, sheep, and horses supply them not only with food, the raw material for the manufacture of tents and garments, but also means of transport and fuel (camel excrement or dried dung). Unlike the nomadic Turks, who are fond of fighting, the Mongols of the present day are gentle and peaceable folk. Can this be the effect of the influence of Lama-Buddhism, which they all profess except a few small Buriat tribes, who have remained Shamans? We are inclined to believe this when we consider the important part which this religion plays in the daily life of the Mongols.

3. Thibetans.[419]—We may include under this name the non-Mongolian populations of Thibet and the surrounding countries, known by the name of Bod, or Thibetans properly so called in southern Thibet, by the name of Tanguts in the Chinese province of Kuku-Nor, of Si-fan in western Sechuen, by that of Ladaki and Champa in eastern Cashmere (province of Leh), of Gurong, Limbu, Mangar and Murmi in Nepal, of Lepchas or Rongs in Sikkin, of Bhutani in Bhotan, etc. The Abors, Mishmee, etc., of the Himalayan country who dominate Assam are also included among the Thibetans, but they approach the Indonesians in type. It is the same with the Garro and their neighbours on the east, the Khasia or Djainthia, whose language, however, differs from the Thibetan.[420]

Most Thibetans are cultivators of the soil or shepherds, pillagers in case of need, and fervent votaries of numerous Lamaite-Buddhist sects, of which that of the Geluk-pa (yellow caps) represents the ruling church. Its chief, the Dalai-Lama, residing at Lassa, is at the same time the sovereign of Thibet.

From the somatological point of view the Thibetans exhibit certain sufficiently marked variations. The Bothia are below the average stature (1 m. 62 or 1 m. 63); the Lepchas are short (1 m. 57); and the Thibetans of Nepal vary as regards average stature from 1 m. 59 (Mangars) to 1 m. 67 (Murmis). The head is mesocephalic (ceph. ind. 80.7 on the liv. sub.), but sub-dolichocephalic or sub-brachycephalic forms are frequently met with. As a general rule, side by side with the Mongoloid type may be seen among the Thibetans, singly or united, the traits of another type, a somewhat slender figure, thin, prominent, often aquiline nose, straight eyes with undrooping eyelids, long and sometimes wavy hair, reminding one, in short, of the Gypsy type.[421] This type, moreover, is found beyond Thibet. The Lo-lo or Nésus, as they call themselves, of western Sechuen and the north-east of Yunnan, with whom we must connect the Kolo or Golyk of the country of Amdo (east of Thibet), perhaps represent it in its purest form, if the portrait of them drawn by Thorel is correct. With slight figure, brownish complexion, they have a straight profile, oval face, high forehead, straight and arched nose, thick beard even on the sides of the face and always frizzy or wavy hair.[422] Their language, however, fixed by a hieroglyphic mode of writing, appears to belong to the Burmese family.[423] The Lo-lo not under Chinese rule are of a gay disposition; they love dancing and singing. Woman is held among them in great respect; there are some tribes even whose chiefs belong to the weaker sex.

We must connect with the Lo-lo a multitude of other tribes, less pure in type: the various Miao-tsé, mountaineers of the southern part of the province of Hunnan, of Kwei-chow, of the northern part of the Kwang-si, the north-west district of Kwang-tung, more or less intermixed with the Chinese; the Lissus of the Lu-tse-Kiang (Upper Salwen) and the Lantsan-Kiang (Upper Mekong), near to the new boundary of China and British India; the Mosso or Nashis of the district of Li-Kiang to the east of the Lissus, related to the latter and having an iconomatic writing; lastly, the Lu-tse or Kew-tse, who call themselves Melams or Anoogs, to the west of the Lissus and separated by an inhabited tract from the Mishmee, the Sarong and other Thibeto-Indonesian tribes. The language of the Lu-tse differs from that of any of the neighbouring peoples, and their physical type places them between the Lissus and the Indonesians, such as the Naga for example; they are short (1 m. 56 according to Roux), but strong and vigorous; their hair is frizzy.[424] The Mu-tse mentioned by Terrien de Lacouperie, the Lawa or Does described by Holt Hallet, the Muzours of T. de Lacouperie or the Musos of Archer, the Kas-Khuis of Garnier, scattered between the Mekong and the Salwen from the twentieth to the twenty-fifth degree of north latitude, are probably akin to the Lo-lo and the Mossos.[425]

III. POPULATIONS OF EASTERN ASIA.—The far east of Asia is inhabited by three nations of mixed origin: Chinese, Coreans, Japanese.

1. The Chinese form by themselves alone more than the third, if not the half of the population of Asia. They occupy in a solid mass the whole of China properly so called, and stretch in isolated groups far beyond the political limits of the “eighteen provinces.” Manchuria, Southern Mongolia, Dzungaria, a portion of Eastern Turkestan and Thibet have been invaded by Chinese colonists; and outside of the Empire it is estimated there are not less than three millions of “Celestials” who have emigrated to Indo-China, Malaysia, the two Americas, and even to the islands of the Pacific Ocean and Africa.

The Chinese people have sprung from manifold intermixtures, and indeed there are several types to discover in this nation, the anthropological study of which is scarcely more than outlined; as it is, however, according to historical data we may presume that five or six various elements enter into its composition.

We know from the books of Shu-King that the primitive country of the Chinese was the north of the present province of Kan-su. Thence the agricultural colonists moved (about the year 2200 B.C., according to a doubtful chronology) into the fertile valley of the Houng-ho and its tributary the Wei or Hwei. Little by little, the Chinese colonists spread along other valleys, but it took them centuries to conquer the aboriginal tribes (the Djoong, the Man, the Pa, the Miao-tse). Again in the seventh century B.C. (when exact chronology commences) the territory occupied by the Chinese scarcely extended beyond the valley of the lower Yang-tsi on the south and that of the Pei-ho on the north, and comprised within these limits several aboriginal tribes like the Hoai, of the valley of the same name, or the Lai of the Shantung peninsula, who maintained their independence. However that may be, the Chinese succeeded, little by little, in driving back the first occupiers of the soil into the mountains of the west and south, where they are still found under the names of Man-tse, Miao-tse, I-gen, Mans, Thos, etc.[426]