About the Book This gazetteer presents a detailed account of the land and people of Sikhim under the rule of British Empire in India. Going deep into the early history of it discusses at length its physical features, the Sikhim Raj, the British intervention, and relations between Sikhim and Tibet. Further describing geographical position of Sikhim, it deals with the history of Sikhim and its rulers, its flora and fauna, the Lamaic church in Sikhim, its important monasteries, salient features of temples, the monkhood, magic rites and charms, demonolatry, and exorcism. Finally, it provides deep insight into the monastic life in Sikhim.
About the Author Sir Herbert Hope Risley was a British ethnographer and colonial administrator, a member of the Indian Civil Service who conducted extensive studies on the tribes and castes of the Bengal Presidency. He is notable for the formal application of the caste system to the entire Hindu population of British India in the 1901 census. In 1885, Risley was appointed to conduct a project entitled the Ethnographic Survey of Bengal. In 1899, he was appointed Census Commissioner.
Introduction On the northern border of the British district of Darjeeling, the main chain of the Himalayas throws out to the southward two enormous spurts Singiloia and Chola rangos. Those almost impassable barriers enclose three sides of a gigantic amphitheatre, hewn, as it were, out of the Himalaya, and sloping down on its southern or open side towards the plains of India. The tracts of mountainous country thus shut in consist of a tangled series of interlacing ridges, rising range above range to the foot of the wall of high peaks and passes which marks the "abode of snow" and its offshoots. The steps of this amphitheatre make up the territory known Physical features. as Independent Sikhim (Sukhumi or 'new house'); the encircling wall of peaks and passes forms on the north and east the frontier of Tibet, while on the west and south-east it divides Sikhim and Darjeeling from Nepal, and the Dichu forms the boundary between Sikhim and Bhutan. Pursuing our simile a little further, we may add that the lower levels of the Sikhim amphitheatre, the valleys of the Tista and Balasan and Mahanadi rivers, are similar in character to, and virtually form part of, our frontier district of Darjeeling. The northern hills, on the other hand, whence the snow- fed torrents of the Lachen and Lachung struggle down through pre- cipitous valleys to unite in the broader but hardly less turbulent Tists, are molded on a grander and more markedly Bimalayan scale. Geographically speaking, these heights are of closer kin to the snow- clad giants who dominate them than to the lower elevations and tamer scenery of Sikhim Proper. With the latter, indeed, all inter- course is cut off during five months of the year, and during this time the people of the highlands dwell apart except for occasional visits from traders, who find their way over the Kangralama pass in Tibet. Of the early history of Sikhim a few doubtful glimpses reach us Early history. through the thick mist of Lepcha tradition. The Lepchas, or as they call themselves, the Rong-pa (ravine-folk), claim to be the autochthones of Sikhim Proper. Their physical characteristics stamp them as members of the Mongolian race, and certain peculiarities of language and religion render it probable that the tribe is a very ancient colony from Southern Tibet. They are all things woodmen of the woods, knowing the ways of birds and beasts, and possessing an extensive zoological and botanical nomenclature of their own.
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