Viewing page 150 of 197

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

GOORKHA, BRAHMIN, AND SOOD.
(214)

Members of the three principal classes in Nipal are here represented. The short, square figure on the proper right of the group is a Goorkha. He belongs to the Khas, or Kshuttrie division of the people, which, though of aboriginal descent, claims to belong to the ancient military division of Hindooism, but has a marked distinction from the Rajpoot tribes of India. The true Goorkha has, so to speak, few Hindoo prejudices. He can eat any food except beef. He needs no particular care in making his cooking place, when absent from home; and is, in every respect, a better soldier than the Hindoo of the plains of Upper India. The true value of the Goorkhas as soldiers was sufficiently evident in the war with Nipal in 1815, when, on several occasions, stockades in the hills, and other positions, were defended with a gallantry and devotion, which excited the admiration of the English soldiers opposed to them; and though the Goorkhas were eventually obliged to sue for peace, they have never since broken faith with the British Government of India. It would have been very possible for them to have assisted the Mahrattas in the war of 1815, when the Peshwah sent embassies to Nipal, to urge an advance against the British, and the recovery of districts ceded in 1815; but the Nipalese Government was not then, or during the Affghan war, when it might have done us serious injury, to be moved against us, and in 1857-8, a large Nipal force, in active co-operation with our own against the rebels in Oude, proved that the former bonds of mutual respect and good-will had never been weakened. From the hill tract gained by the war of 1815, the Goorkha population has furnished us with many excellent soldiers, and the native infantry of the Bengal Presidency has no more faithful or distinguished corps than the Sirmoor and other battalions of Goorkha infantry. The Goorkha represented is in his ordinary costume, and armed with his national weapons, the bow, and the kookeri, or curved knife or bill, which, in his hands and at close quarters, is a very deadly weapon. With the exception of the mountaineers of Coorg, none of the warlike tribes of India make use of this peculiar arm, which is as efficient as a