| caption: |
origins of North East Frontier peoples |
| text: |
I COMMENCE with the North-Eastern Frontier, the basin of the mighty Brahmaputra, where the population, like the conglomerate-boulders shining as mosaics in the beds of the great river and its upper affluents, is formed of materials found in situ in the hills to the north and south. There is doubtless an intimate connection between the Indo-Chinese population of Asam, and some of the people that formed nations in the Gangetic provinces before the Aryans appeared in them. We can trace the path of many hordes from the North-Eastern Frontier to remote regions of India and Burma; and we find in Asam colonies formed as it were of the stragglers of the parties that had passed through. With the northern regions, from whence these hordes came, I have now no concern, but I take these tribes up first as the most archaic form we possess of the materials out of which the ancient population was formed. |
