Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 2.djvu/201

 BOOKSA OR BOKSA.—HINDOO. (108)

HIS tribe, who closely resemble the Tharoos (see No. 117), live entirely in the Terai forest; they are a quiet, shy race, keeping very much to themselves. In the rebellion, they showed themselves much attached to the British Government.

The members of the tribe are of short stature and very spare in habit; in both respects exceeding the ordinary Hindoo peasant of the district, from whom, however, they do not differ much in general build or complexion. Their eyes are small, the opening of the eyelids being narrow, linear, and horizontal; the face is very broad across the cheek-bones, and the nose is depressed, thus increasing the apparent flatness of the face; the jaw is prognathous, and the lower lip thick; the moustache and beard being usually very scanty. Some of these peculiarities are much more marked in certain individuals than in others; but most of them are noticeable in almost every man's face, and it seems certain that a Boksa will at once recognize another to belong to his tribe, even if he never saw him before. The fact of the Boksas having features with so many points of resemblance to the Turanian type so well marked, has been commented on by all previous observers.

The features of the women who allow an opportunity of seeing them closely, are comely enough; and of the same general character as those of the men.

The dress of the men is the same as that of the ordinary native of the North-West Provinces; but, except in one or two cases, none of them wear turbans over the thin cotton cap which generally covers the head. The little boys run about naked, or nearly so; the girls wear a scanty rag. The women's dress consists of a petticoat, generally blue or of an orange-red, with a dirty white or orange-red cloth (chaddar) passed over the breast and head, falling over the right arm.

The clear and connected accounts of Elliot and Batten state, that the traditions of the Boksas make them out to be Powar Rajpoots, descended from Oodya Jeet (or his relative Jey Deo) and his followers, who, in the twelfth century, left his territory in Rajpootana on account of family quarrels, and came, either intermediately or directly, to settle in their present location.

The only assertions in which most of these Boksas agreed were two—that