In transcribing this late Victorian description of various ethnic groups and tribes from Leonowens’s Life and Travel in India before the Days of Railroads (c. 1884), I have used the rough transcription made available by the Internet Archive, integrated some footnotes into the main text, and where possible added images and links to material elsewhere in the Victorian Web. — George P. Landow
The Kalhis (another curious tribe) are evidently a northern race; they are tall, well-formed, with regular features, aquiline nose, blue or gray eyes, and soft dark-brown hair. The sun is their chief deity. On the Mandevan Hills, near Thau, is a temple to the sun, said to have been erected by the Kalhis on their first arrival in Guzerat. In this temple there is a huge image of the Sun-god with a halo round its head. The symbol of the sun with the words, “Sri suryagni shakh” (“the witness of the holy sun”) is affixed to all official documents and deeds of property. [149]
Bibliography
Leonowens, Anna Harriette. Life and Travel in India being Recollections of a Journey before the Days of Railroads. Philadelphia: Porter and Coates; London: Trübner, n.d. [c. 1884]. Internet Archive online version of a copy in the University of California Library. Web. 3 December 2018.
Last modified 5 December 2018