Meches and the Totos two sub-Himalayan tribes of North Bengal

The portion of West Bengal from the Ganges on the south and the Himalayas on the north is called North Bengal. It consists of the districts of Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri,. Cooch-Behar, West Dinajpur and Malda, all under the political jurisdiction of Jalpai guri division. It has Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan to the north; Bihar to the west; East Pakistan (now Bangla Desh) and the rest of West Bengal to the south and Assam to the east.

The writer of this Monograph on the Meches of the extreme north of North Bengal was born at Jalpaiguri, spent the greater part of his life in North Bengal and moved amongst them very closely for more than twenty years and had frequent contacts with them. The materials used in this work were collected during his tour and they were duly checked and sometimes revised. Some of the materials and information obtained from the early writers were supplemented to compare the changes the Meches had undergone during the interval. Almost all of them could speak and understand Bengali language and so direct conversation was possible without the help of interpreters. The ladies also, sometimes, did not hesitate to speak to the writer. Thus the author had every opportunity to know much about their family affairs; the visible manners and customs and the invisible thoughts of their mind. The more the writer mixed with them the more convinced he was that human nature was everywhere the same, no matter? under what clime it flourished and that if common men were approached with trust and affection the return was much more than expected. Careful notes of their affaits were kept and many photographs were taken, some of which appear in this monograph. In this work only dashes and dots have been used for phonetic transcription just to simplify printing. In some cases the Mech words and sentences have also been written in Bengali characters for the convenience of Bengali knowing Meches andnothers.