JDH describes the history & religion of the Lepcha people to his uncle Palgrave: Sikkim aborigines with Mongolian origins. Compared to plains tribes of India, driven into the Himalaya, Vindhya and Ghat mountain ranges, they remain undisturbed. Lamaism is the Sikkim court religion. Buddhism was introduced from Tibet in 1400AD. Before that Lepchas worshiped spirits Kunchain & Junga after whom the mountain [Kanchenjunga] is named. Early Lepcha recorded history was destroyed in the Ghurkha [Ghurkha] war but monks say that Buddhist priests converted the Lepchas & extended the Sikkim territory from Teesta & Rungeet rivers to the Cosi [Kosi] & into Nepal to Tambar, driving out the Maghars. The vagrant Lepchas are under the control of the industrious immigrant Bhoteas from Tibet but still allowed to practice their own religion. The Buddhist clergy are influential, there are 20 temples in Sikkim with 800 priests & a few nuns. JDH describes the temples & other religious edifices & the figures of Buddha, Sakya, Rajahs, Lamas & other idols they contain. The oldest temples are Tapiding, Changachelling & Pemiongchi; uninfluenced by modern Hindu worship. JDH describes Chaityas, personal memorials, & Mendengs, inscribed walls, & illustrates the former. He describes the ways in which people worship & similarities & differences to the Roman Catholic Church. [Brian Houghton] Hodgson doubts anything is borrowed from Nestroian's Christians in Little Bucharia or later Jesuit missionaries. BHHH's Buddhist Researches appears in a pamphlet which Richardson of Cornhill has & there are also works by Lassen, Burnouf & Cousin. JDH has some inscribed slabs from the monks but they are just invocations, Lepcha histories are written on Nepal paper & JDH has one black sheet with gold writing, there may be more in the grand library at Lhasa or Dijaretie[?]. JDH mentions that the Lepchas have a deluge myth & the Himal has been under water since the tertiary epoch.