Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 2.djvu/68

 MOORMIS. (75)

HE Moormis are a very numerous tribe, found in all parts of the Nipal mountains, from the Gunduck river, twenty miles west of Katmandu, to the Mechi; whence, in smaller numbers, they are to be met with in the Sikhim country, as far east as the Teestah. The great bulk of this tribe, however, is to be found between the valley of Nipal and the Dood-Koosi. Their Tibetan origin is well established. They are altogether a pastoral and agricultural people, rearing flocks of sheep and goats near the snows, and cultivating at the greatest elevations capable of producing them, Indian corn and murwa, their staple grains. They settle on the mountain tops at elevations of from 4,000 to 6,000 feet, living in cottages built of stone and thatched with grass. They are divided into several families or clans, as follows:—Mooktan, Pakreen, Shengar, Yemijan, Thokar, Bomjan, Roomha, Gyapaka, Theng, Ghesing, Doomjan, Mepehan, Guwrha, Beil. The Moormis are Buddhists, and follow the Bhotia and Lepcha Lamas, as well as those of their own tribe. It is necessary for the Moonni Lamas, however, to have been educated at Lhassa, or at some other Tibetan college, ere they gain much respect among their own tribe. Moormi priests are not restricted to celibacy. The language of the tribe is supposed to be a dialect of the Tibetan, although the Bhoteahs and Moormis cannot converse in it. The only written language known to the Moormis is that of Tibet, in which their Lamas read the sacred writings of Buddhism. They bury their dead on the mountain tops, raising tombs of earth and stone over the graves, occasionally engraving the name of the deceased in the Tibetan characters on slabs of stone laid into the erection. They are decidedly a Mongolian tribe, and are the least handsome of all the mountaineers of this part of the Himalaya. Of all the Tibetan tribes on the south side of the Himalaya, they are understood to be those whose habits have undergone the least change.