Page:Narratives of the mission of George Bogle to Tibet.djvu/57

lii banners for display on the Manis, but voluminous works, so that eacb monastery possesses a library of Buddhistic lore. The lamas of Tibet also excel as workers in metal and modellers in clay, designing leaves and flowers of exquisitely delicate workmanship.

While the Gelupka, or Yellow sect, is in the ascendant in Tibet, the adherents of the older, but now heretical Red sect, still have a large monastery at Sakia-jong, and have retained supremacy among the Buddhists in Nepal and Bhutan, on the slopes of the Southern Himalaya. In the well-wooded and moist gorges of the Cis-nivean Himálaya, the country was occupied, in very ancient times, by people of Tibetan descent, especially in the upper and middle zones; while lower down, and bordering on the plains of India, the tribes are of more mixed race.

Mr. Brian Hodgson, who is unrivalled in his knowledge of the Cis-nivean Himálayan races, divides the inhabitants of the region between the Kali and the Monass into ten tribes, the Cis-Himálayan Bhotias or Tibetans in the upper zone, the Sienwa, Gurung, Magar, Murmi, Newar, Kirati, and Limbu, in Nepal; the Lepcha in Sikkim, and Lhopa or Dukpa (Bhutanese) in Bhutan.

The aborigines of Nepal survive in two wild forest tribes, called Chepang and Kusunda, dwelling in the dense jungle of the central region, of which Mr. Hodgson has given a very interesting account. But the people of Tibetan or Mongolian race made their way over the numerous passes, and established themselves in the deep gorges and forest-covered slopes of Nepal, Sikkim, and Bhutan not later than in the fifth century,