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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[JULY 1911.
Kasia mountains. The latter therefore represent either the Hindu Kush or the mountains of Kashgar in Central Asia.50
To sum up the preceding information. We gather that according to the most ancient Indian authorities in the extreme north-west of India, on the Hindû Kush and the moun. tainous tracts to the south, and in the western Panjab there was a group of tribes, one of which was called Khaśa, which were looked upon as Kshatriyas of Aryan origin. These spoke a language closely allied to Sanskrit, but with a vocabulary partly agreeing with that of the Eranian Avesta. They were considered to have lost their claim to consideration as Aryans, and to have become Mléchchhas, or barbarians, owing to their non-observance of the rules for eating and drinking observed by the Sanskritic peoples of India. These Khasas were a warlike tribe, and were well known to classical writers, who noted, as their special home, the Indian Caucasus of Pliny. They had relations with Western Tibet, and carried the gold dust found in that country into India.
It is probable that they once occupied an important position in Central Asia, and that countries, places and rivers, such as Kashmir, Kashgar in Central Asia, and the Kashgar of Chitral were named after them. They were closely connected with the group of tribes nicknamed Pisachas' or 'cannibals' by Indian writers, and before the sixth century they were stated to speak the same language as the people of Balkh. At the same period they had apparently penetrated along the southern slope of the Himalaya as far east as Nepal, and in the twelfth century they certainly occupied in considerable force the hills to the south, southwest and south-east of Kashmîr.
At the present day their descendants, and tribes who claim descent from them, occupy a much wider area. The Khakhas of the Jehlam valley are 'Khabas, and so are some of the Kanêts of the hill-country between Kângrâ and Garhwal. The Kanêts are the low-caste cultivating class of all the Eastern Himalaya of the Panjab and the hills at their base as far West as Kulu, and of the eastern portion of the Kangra district, throughout which tract they form a very large proportion of the total population. The country they inhabit is held or governed by Hill Rajpûts of pre-historic ancestry, the greater part of whom are far too proud to cultivate with their own hands, and who employ the Kanets as husbandmen. Like the ancient Khasas, they claim to be of impure Râjpût (i.e. Kshatriya) birth. They are divided into two great tribes, the Khasia and the Râo, the distinction between whom is still sufficiently well-marked. A Khasiâ observes the period of impurity after the death of a relation prescribed for a twice-born man; the Râo that prescribed for an outcast. The Khasiâ wears the sacred thread, while the Râo does not.51 There can thus be no doubt about the Khasiâ Kanêts.
50 According to Lasson, p. 1020, the Kaola ópn of Ptolemy are the mountains of Kashgar, i.e. Khagairi,' the mountain of the Khalas. See, however, Stein, Ancient Khotan, pp. 50 ff. The same name re-appears in Chitral, south of the Hindu Kush, where the river Khonar is also called the Khashgar. For further speculations on the subject the reader is referred to St. Martin, Mém. de l'Acad. des Inscr. Sav. Etrang. I serie vi, i, pp. 264 ff., and to Atkinson (op. cit.), p. 377.
Ibbetson, op. cit., 8-487. Regarding the R&os, see the next instalment of this article.
