It is evident,
then, that the waves of tribal migration must have been impeded at this
point, and that the Indo-Āryan influence farther east must be due rather
to warlike or peaceful penetration than to the wholesale encroachment of
multitudes.
then, that the waves of tribal migration must have been impeded at this
point, and that the Indo-Āryan influence farther east must be due rather
to warlike or peaceful penetration than to the wholesale encroachment of
multitudes.
Cambridge History of India - v1
Four of the great families of human
speech - the Austric, the Tibeto-Chinese, the Dravidian, and the Indo-
European-are directly represented among the living languages of India,
of which no fewer than two hundred and twenty are recorded in the Census
Report for 1911 ; while a fifth great family, the Semitic, which has been
introduced by Muhammadan conquerors in historical times, has, through
the medium of Arabic and Persian, greatly modified some of the Indian
vernaculars. The Austric, Tibeto-Chinese, and Indo-European families are
widely spread elsewhere over the face of the earth. The Dravidian has not
been traced with absolute certainty beyond the limits of the Indian Empire;
but there is evidence which seems to indicate that it was introduced into
India in prehistoric times,
The drama of Indian history, then, is one in which many peoples of
very diverse origin have played their parts. In all ages the fertility and
the riches of certain regions, above all the plain of the Ganges, have attrac-
ted invaders from the outside world ; while over-population and the desic-
cation of the land have given an impulse to the movements of peoples from
the adjacent regions of Asia. Thus both the attracting and the explusive for-
ces which determine migrations have acted in the same direction. It is true
indeed that the civilisations which have been developed in India have react-
ed, and that Indian religions, Indian literature, and Indian art have spread
out of India and produced a deep and far-reaching influence on the countries
33
## p. 34 (#68) ##############################################
34
[CH.
PEOPLES AND LANGUAGES
of Further Asia ; but the migrations and the conquests which provided
the human energy with which these civilisations were created have invaria-
bly come into India from the outside. And the peninsular character
of the sub-continent has retained invaders within its borders, with the result
that racial conditions have tended to become ever more and more complex.
The outcome of the struggle for existence between so many peoples possess-
ing different traditions and different ideals is to be seen in the almost in-
finite variety of degrees of culture which exists at the present day. Some
types of civilisation have been progressive ; others have remained station-
ary. So that we now find, at one extreme of the social scale, communities
whose members are contributing to the advancement of the literature,
science, and art of the twentieth century, and, at the other extreme, tribes
still governed by their primitive constitutions, still using the implements
and weapons, and still retaining the religious ideas and customs of their
remote ancestors in the Stone Age.
The Himālayas form an effective barrier against direct invasions from
the north : the exceedingly toilsome passes in their centre are traversed
only by a few patient traders or adventurous explorers. But at the
western and eastern extremities, river valleys and more practicable mountain
passes afford easier means of access. Through these gateways swarms of
nomads and conquering armies, from the direction of Persia on the one
hand and from the direction of China on the other, have poured into India
from time immemorial.
By routes passing through Baluchistān on the west and Afghānistān
on the north-west, the country of the Indus has been repeatedly invaded
by peoples belonging to the Caucasian race from Western Asia, and by
peoples belonging to the Northern or Mongolo-Altaic group of the Mongo-
lian race from Central Asia. But these immigrations were not all of the
same nature, nor did they all produce the same effect on the population of
India. In the course of time their character became transformed. At the
most remote period there were slow persistent movements of whole tribes, or
collections of tribes, with their women and children, their flocks and herds :
at a later date they were little more than organised expeditions of armed
men. The former exercised a permanent influence on the racial conditions
of the country which they invaded : the influence of the latter was political
or social rather than racial.
This change in the nature of invasions was the gradual effect of natural
causes. Over large tracts of Asia the climate has changed within the his-
torical period. The rainfall has diminished or ceased; and once fruitful lands
have been converted into impassable deserts. Both Irān and Turkestān, the
two reservoirs from which the streams of migration flowed into the Indus
valley, have been affected by this desiccation of the land. Archaeological
## p. 35 (#69) ##############################################
II]
WESTERN AND EASTERN INVADERS
35
>
investigations in Seistān and in Chinese Turkestān have brought to light the
monuments of ancient civilisations which had long ago passed into oblivion.
Especially valuable from the historical point of view are the accounts given
by Sir Aurel Stein of his wonderful discoveries in Chinese Turkestān.
From the chronological evidence, which he has so carefully collected from
the documents and monuments discovered, we are unable to ascertain the
dates, at which the various ancient sites were abandoned because of the
progressive desiccation during a period of about a thousand years (first
century B. c. to ninth century A. D. ). We may thus realise how it has come
to pass that a region which once formed a means of communication not
only between China and India, but also between China and Europe, has now
become an almost insuperable barrier. The same causes have tended to
separate India from Irān. The last irruption which penetrated to Delhi,
the heart of India, through the north-western gateway was the Persian
expedition of Nădir Shāh in 1739.
The routes which lead from the east into the country of the Ganges
seem not to have been affected to the same extent by climatic changes.
The invaders from this quarter belonged to the Southern group of the
Mongolian race, the home of which was probably in N. W. China. They
came into India partly from Tibet down the valley of the Brahmaputra,
and partly from China through Burma by the Mekong, the Salween, and the
Irrawaddy. To other obstacles which impeded their progress were add-
ed the dense growth of the jungle and its wild inhabitants. Tribal migra-
tions from these regions can scarcely be said to have ceased altogether even
now. But they are held in check by the British occupation of Upper Burma.
The movements to the south-west and south of the Kachins, a Tibeto-
Burman tribe, from the north of Upper Burma have in recent times afford-
ed an illustration of the nature of these migrations (Imp. Gaz. xiv, pp. 253-5).
Thus have foreign races and foreign civilisations been brought into
India, the history of which is in a large measure the story of the struggle
between newcomers and the earlier inhabitants. Such invasions may be
compared to waves breaking on the shore. Their force becomes less the
farther they proceed, and their direction is determined by the obstacles
with which they come in contact. The most effective of these obstacles,
even when human effort is the direct means of resistance, are the geogra-
phical barriers which nature itself has set up. We shall therefore best
understand the distribution of races in the sub-continent if we remember
its chief natural divisions.
The ranges of the Vindhya system with their almost impenetrable
forests have in all ages formed the great dividing line between Northern and
Southern India. In early Brāhman literature they mark the limits beyond
which Āryan civilisation had not yet penetrated, and at the present day the
two great regions which they separate continue to offer the most striking
## p. 36 (#70) ##############################################
36
[CH.
PEOPLES AND LANGUAGES
contrasts in racial character, in language, and in social institutions. But
the Vindhyas can be passed without difficulty at their western and eastern
extremities, where lowlands form connecting links with the plains of the
Indus and the Ganges. The coastal regions are therefore transitional.
They have been more directly affected by movements from the north than
the central plateau of the Deccan.
In Northern India, natural boundaries are marked by the river
Indus, by the Thar or Great Desert of Rājputāna, and by the sub-Himāla-
yan fringe which is connected on the east with Assam and Burma.
The seven geographical regions thus indicated form the basis for the
ethnographical classification of the peoples of India which is now generally
accepted. The scheme was propounded by the late Sir Herbert Risley in
the Census Report for 1901. Its details are the result of careful measure-
ments and observations extending over many years. It is conveniently
summarised in the Imperial Gazetteer (new edition, vol. 1, pp. 29. ff. ) from
which the descriptions in the following account are quoted. The physical
types are here enumerated in an order beginning from the south, instead of
from the north-west as in the original scheme :
1. The Dravidian type in the larger section of the peninsula which
lies to the south of the United Provinces and east of about longitude 76°E.
“The stature is short or below mean ; the complexion very dark, approach-
ing black; hair plentiful, with an occasional tendency to curl; eyes dark ;
head long; nose very broad, sometimes depressed at the root, but not so as
to make the face
appear
flat. '
This was assumed by Risley to be the original type of the popula-
tion of India, now modified to a varying extent by the admixture of Āryan,
Scythian, and Mongoloid elements'. It must be remembered, however, that,
when the term 'Dravidian' is thus used ethnographically, it is nothing more
than a convenient tabel. It must not be assumed that the speakers of
the Dravidian languages are aborigines. In Southern India, as in the North,
the same general distinction exists between the more primitive tribes of the
hills and jungles and the civilised inhabitants of the fertile tracts ; and
some ethnologists hold that the difference is racial and not merely the
result of culture. Mr. Thurston, for instance, says :
It is the Pre-Dravidian aborigines, and not the later and more cultured Dravi.
dians, who must be regarded as the primitive existing race. . . . . . These Pre-Dravidians
. . . . . . are differentiated from the Dravidian classes by their short stature and broad
(platyrhine) noses. There is strong ground for the belief that the Pre-Dravidians are
ethnically related to the Veddas of Ceylon, the Talas of the Celebes, the Batin of
Sumatra, and possibly the Australians. (The Madras Presidency, pp. 124-5. )
It would seem probable, then, that the original speakers of the Dravi-
dian languages were invaders, and that the ethnographical Dravidians are
a mixed race. In the more habitable regions the two elements have fused,
while representatives of the aborigines are still to be found in the fastnesses
9
## p. 37 (#71) ##############################################
II]
DRAVIDIANS
37
to which they retired before the encroachments of the newcomers. If this
view be correct, we must suppose that these aborigines have, in the course
of long ages, lost their ancient languages and adopted those of their con-
querors. The process of linguistic transformation, which may still be obser-
ved in other parts of India, would seem to have been carried out more
completely in the South than elsewhere.
The theory that the Dravidian element is the most ancient which we
can discover in the population of Northern India, must also be modified by
what we now know of the Muņdā languages, the Indian representatives
of the Austric family of speech, and the mixed languages in which
their influence has been traced (p. 43). Here, according to the evidence now
available, it would seem that the Austric element is the oldest, and that it
has been overlaid in different regions by successive waves of Dravidian and
Indo-European on the one hand, and by Tibeto-Chinese on the other. Most
ethnologists hold that there is no difference in physical type between the
present speakers of Muņdā and Dravidian languages. This statement has
been called in question ; but, if it be true, it shows that racial conditions
have become so complicated that it is no longer possible to analyse their
constituents. Language alone has preserved a record which would other-
wise have been lost.
At the same time, there can be little doubt that Dravidian languages
were actually flourishing in the western regions of Northern India at
the period when languages of the Indo-European type were introduced by
the Āryan invasions from the north-west. Dravidian characteristics have
been traced alike in Vedic and Classical Sanskrit, in the Prākrits, or early
popular dialects, and in the modern vernaculars derived from them. The
linguistic strata would thus appear to be arranged in the order-Austric,
Dravidian, Indo-European.
There is good ground, then, for supposing that, before the coming of
the Indo-Aryans speakers of the Dravidian languages predominated both
in Northern and in Southern India ; but, as we have seen, older elements
are discoverable in the populations of both regions, and therefore the
assumption that the Dravidians are aboriginal is no longer tenable. Is there
any evidence to show whence they came into India ?
No theory of their origin can be maintained which does not account for
the existence of Brāhūī, the large island of Dravidian speech in the moun-
tainous regions of distant Baluchistān which lie near the western routes into
India. Is Brāhūſ a surviving trace of the immigration of Dravidian-speaking
peoples into India from the west ? Or does it mark the limits of an overflow
from India into Baluchistān ? Both theories have been held ; but as all the
great movements of peoples have been into India and not out of India, and
| as a remote mountainous district may be expected to retain the survivals of
## p. 38 (#72) ##############################################
38
(CH.
PEOPLES AND LANGUAGES
ancient races while it is not likely to have been colonised, the former view
would a priori seem to be by far the more probable. The reasons why it has
not been universally accepted is that the racial character of the Brāhūis is
now mairly Irānian, and not Dravidian in the Indian sense of the term.
But the argument from race is not so conclusive as may appear at first
sight. The area in which the Dravidian Brāhūi is still spoken forms part of
the region which is occupied by Turko-Irānian peoples ; and the peculiar
tribal constitution of the Brāhūis, is one which, unlike the caste-system,
does not insist on social exclusiveness, but, on the contrary, definitely
invites recruitment from outside. This is clear from the account given in
the Gazetteer of the ‘Baloch and Brāhūi type of tribe' :
The second type of Turko-Irānian tribe is based primarily not upon agnatic, kin-
ship, but upon common good and ill : in other words, it is cemented together only by
the obligations arising from the blood-feud. There is no eponymous ancestor, and the
tribe itself does not profess to be composed of homogeneous elements. . . . . . The same
principles hold good in tl e case of the Brābūſ. . . whose numbers have been recruited
from among Afghāns, Kūrds, Jadgāls, Baloch, and other elements. (Imp. Gaz. I. p. 310)
Such circumstances must necessarily change the racial character of the
tribe by a gradual process which might well in the course of ages lead to a
complete transformation. There is therefore nothing in the existing racial
conditions, and equally nothing in the existing physical conditions, to
prevent us from believing that the survival of a Dravidian language in
Baluchistān must indicate that the Dravidians came into India through
Baluchistān in prehistoric times. Whether they are ultimately to be traced
to a Central Asian or to a Western Asian origin cannot at present be decid-
ed with absolute certainty ; but the latter hypothesis receives very strong
support from the undoubted similarity of the Sumerian and Dravidian eth-
nic types.
2. The Indo-Aryan type in Kashmir, the Punjab from the Indus to
about the longitude of Ambāla (76° 46'E. ), and Rājputāna. 'The stature is
mostly tall ; complexion fair ; eyes dark ; hair on face plentiful ; head long;
nose narrow and prominent, but not specially long. '
The region now occupied by people of this type forms the eastern
portion of the wide extent of territory inhabited by Aryan settlers in the
earliest historical times—the period of the Rigveda, probably about 1200 B. C.
Their oldest literature, which is in a language closely connected with ancient,
Persian, Greek, and Latin, supplies no certain indication that they still
retained the recollection of their former home ; and we may reasonably
conclude, therefore, that the invasions, which brought them into India,
took place at a date considerably earlier.
1 For the remains of ancient culture in this region, sro Imp. Guz. I, p. 302 ; XIV,
p. 3: 0.
2 Hall, The Ancient History of the Near East (4th ed. ), pp. 173-4. The converse
view is, however, held by the author, viz. that the Sumerians came into Western Asia
from India.
## p. 39 (#73) ##############################################
II]
INDO-ARYANS
39
2
The Indo-Aryans came from Bactria, over the passes of the Hindu
Kush into S. Afghānistān, and thence by the valleys of the Kābul river, the
Kurram, and the Gumal, all of them rivers well known to the poets of the
Rigveda-into the N. W. Frontier Province and the Punjab. In the age of
the Rigveda they formed five peoples, each consisting of a number of tribes
in which the women were of the same race as their husbands. This is proved
conclusively by their social and religious status. We may be certain, there.
fore, that the invasions were no mere incursions of armies, but gradual
progressive movements of whole tribes, such as would have been impossible
at a later date, when climatic causes had transformed the physical conditions
of the country (p. 34). On this point the evidence of literature receives the
support of ethnology : for only thus, according to Risley, can be explained
the uniform distribution of the Indo-Aryan racial type throughout the region
which it occupies, and the strongly marked contrasts which it presents to
types prevailing in regions to the east and south. Later settlements neces-
sarily consisted almost entirely of men. Such modifications of the racial
character as would be produced by inter-marriage with the women of the
country would, in course of time, cease to be recognisable. They would be
as difficult to trace as the Roman factor in the population of Britain.
3. The Turko-Irānian type in the N. W. Frontier Province, Baluchis-
tān, and those districts of the Punjab and Sind which lie west of the Indus.
'Stature above mean ; complexion fair ; eyes mostly dark, but occasionally
grey ; hair on face plentiful ; head broad ; nose moderately narrow, promi-
nent, and very long. '
The northern section of the region now inhabited by peoples of this
type, that is to say, the country of the north-western tributaries of the Indus,
was, in the times of the Rigveda, occupied by Indo-Aryans. The predomi-
nant racial character of the whole region is due to the invasion of Mongolo-
Altaic peoples from Turkestān on the one hand, and of Persian Aryans or
Irānians on the other. The Indus is the ethnographical boundary between
the Turko-Irānian and Indo-Aryan types, just as in history it has often been
the political boundary between Irān and India.
4. The Scytho-Dravidian type in Sind east of the Indus, Gujarāt, and
the western section of the peninsula as far as about longitude 76° E. , that is
to say, the Bombay Presidency or Western India generally. "The type is
clearly distinguished from the Turko-Irānian by a lower stature, a greater
length of head, a higher nasal index, a shorter nose, and a lower orbitonasal
index. '
This type, of which the Marāthās are the chief representatives, occupies
a position between the broad-headed Turko-Irānians and the long-headed
Dravidians. Its designation assumes that the foreign broad-headed element
was introduced during the period of Scythian (Çaka) rule in western India
## p. 40 (#74) ##############################################
40
(CH.
PEOPLES AND LANGUAGES
(c. 120-380A. D). But there can be little doubt that its origin must be traced
to a period far more remote. The çakas were among those military con-
querors who broke into the Punjab after the downfall of the Maurya Empire:
and it can scarcely be supposed that the extension of their power to Wes-
tern India materially affected the race. The fact that their Scythian names,
as is shown by coins and inscriptions, became Hinduised after a few gene-
rations, is conclusive proof that they were forced to adapt themselves to
their social environment. We must therefore seek the disturbing racial in-
fluence in some earlier tribal immigration of which no other memorial now
remains. The invaders probably belonged to the broad-headed Alpine race
which inhabited the plateaus of Western Asia (Anatolia, Armenia, and
Irān)" ; and they would seem to have come into Western India, as the
Dravidians also most probably came, through Baluchistān before desiccation
had made the routes impassable for multitudes.
5. The Āryo-Dravidian or Hindustāni type in the plain of the Ganges
from about longitude 76° 30' E. to 87° E. ; that is to say, in the eastern
fringe of the Punjab, in the United Provinces, and in Bihār. "The head-
form is long, with a tendency to medium ; the complexion varies from light-
ish brown to black, the nose ranges from medium to broad, being always
broader than among the Indo-Aryans ; the stature is lower than in the latter
group, and usually below the average' (i. e. it ranges from 5' 3" to 5'5").
The Āryo-Dravidian type occupies the ancient Madhyadeça, or the
Midland Country,' extending, according to Manu (II, 12) from Vinaçana,
where the river Sarasvati loses itself in the Great Desert, to Allahābād, to-
gether with some five degrees of the country farther east. It is a mixed type
caused apparently by the Indo-Aryan colonisation of a region previously
held by a population mainly Dravidian. The Indo-Aryan type does not, as
might have been expected from analogous instances, shade by imperceptible
degrees into the Āryo-Dravidian type ; but a marked change from the for-
mer to the latter is observable about the longitude of Sirhind.
It is evident,
then, that the waves of tribal migration must have been impeded at this
point, and that the Indo-Āryan influence farther east must be due rather
to warlike or peaceful penetration than to the wholesale encroachment of
multitudes.
To explain this abrupt transition, the theory of a second Āryan in-
vasion, which is supposed to have come into the plain of the Ganges from
the Pāmirs through Gilgit and Chitrā), was propounded by the late Dr.
Hoernle and has been generally accepted in the official publications of the
Government of India. This theory is made improbable by the physical
difficulties of the route suggested, and some of the arguments adduced in
its favour are demonstrably mistaken. There is no such break of continuity
Haddon, The Wanderings of Peoples, pp. 12, 17,
## p. 41 (#75) ##############################################
II)
ĀRYO-DRAVIDIANS
41
between the tribes of the Rigveda and the peoples of the later literaturę aş
it presupposes! . At the same time it seemed to be supported by the existing
distribution of the Indo-Aryan languages ; but, as will be seen (p. 44), an
equally satisfactory explanation of this distribution may be suggested.
Apart from this theory, the conclusions of ethnology are entirely in
accord with the historical indications of the literature. The ethnographical
limit is also the dividing line between the geography of the Rigveda and the
geography of the later Vedic literature. In the Rigveda Āryan communities
have scarcely advanced beyond the country of the river Sarasvati (Sirhind),
which for ever afterwards was remembered with especial veneration as
Brahmāvarta, 'the Holy Land. ' In the Brāhmaṇās the centre of religious
activity has been transferred to the adjacent country on the south-east, i. e.
the upper portion of the doāb between the Jumna and the Ganges, and the
Muttra District of the United Provinces. This was Brahmarshideça - 'the
Country of the Holy Sages. ' Here it was that the hymns of the Rigveda,
which were composed in the North-West- the country of the 'Seven Rivers'
as it is called (Rv. VIII, 24, 27), were collected and arranged ; and here it
was that the religious and social system which we call Brāhmanism assumed
its final form--a form which, in its religious aspect, is a compromise bet-
ween Āryan and more primitive Indian ideas, and, in its social aspect, the
result of the contact of different races. After Brāhman culture had thus
occupied what has in all ages been the commanding position in India, its
trend was still eastwards ; and the country of the 'Seven Rivers,' though not
altogether forgotten, occupies a place of less importance in the later
literature.
Both of the facts above mentioned - the abrupt transition from the
Indo-Aryan to the Āryo-Dravidian type, and the extension of Āryan influ-
ence from Brahmăvarta to Brahmarshideca - are best understood if we
remember the natural feature which connects the plain of the Indus with the
plain of the Ganges. This is the strait of habitable land which lies between
the desert and the mountains. Its historical significance has already been
noticed? . It is in this strait that the decisive battles, on which the fate of
India has depended, have been fought ; and here too we may suppose that
the progress of racial migrations from the north-west in prehistoric times
must have been checked. Both politically and ethnographically it forms a
natural boundary. In the age of the Rigveda the Āryans had not yet broken
through the barrier, though the Jumna is mentioned in a hymn (vii, 18, 19)
in such a way as to indicate that a battle had been won on its banks. It
was only at some later date that the country between the Upper Jumna and
Ganges and the district of Delhi were occupied. A record of this occupa-
tion has been preserved in some ancient verses quoted in the catapatha
1 See Chapters V. p. 106 and XIII.
Chapter I, pp. 20 f.
2
.
## p. 42 (#76) ##############################################
42
[CH.
PEOPLES AND LANGUAGES
Brāhmaṇa (XIII, 5, 4, 11-14) which refer to the triumphs celebrated by
Bharata Dauhshanti after his victories on the Jumna and the Ganges, and
to the extent of his conquests. In their new home the Bharatas, who were
settled in the country of the Sarasvati in the times of the Rigveda (see III,
23, 4), were merged in the Kurus ; and their whole territory, the new
together with the old, became famous in history under the name Kuru.
kshetra — 'the Field of the Kurus. ' This was the scene of the great war of
the descendants of Bharata Dauḥshanti, and the centre from which Indo-
Āryan culture spread, first throughout Hindustān, and eventually through.
out the whole sub-continent. The epoch of Indo-Aryan tribal migration
was definitely closed. It was succeeded by the epoch of Indo-Aryan
colonisation,
6. The Mongoloid type in Burma, Assam, and the sub-Himālayan
tract which includes Bhutān, Nepāl, and the fringe of the United Provinces,
the Punjab, and Kashmir. “The head is broad ; complexion dark, with a
yellowish tinge ; hair on face scanty ; stature short or below average ; nose
fine to broad ; face characteristically flat ; eyelids often oblique. '
The term Mongoloid denotes the racial type which has been produced
by the invasion of peoples of the Southern Mongolian race from Tibet and
China. We have already seen how these peoples have from time immemo.
rial been coming down the river valleys into Burma and Northern India
(p. 35) ; and we shall learn more about them, and about the earlier inhabi-
tants with whom they intermingled, when we consider the evidence of
language (p. 44).
7. The Mongolo-Dravidian or Bengali type in Bengal and Orissa.
“The head is broad ; complexion dark ; hair on face usually plentiful ; stature
medium ; nose medium, with a tendency to broad. '
This type is regarded as 'probably a blend of Dravidian and Mongo-
loid elements, with a strain of Indo-Aryan blood in the higher groups. '
The region in which it prevails lay beyond the geographical ken of the earlier
literature. It comes into view first in the later literature (the epics and
Purāņas) when it was occupied by a number of peoples among whom the
Vangas (from whom Bengal has inherited its name) and the Kalingas of
Orissa were the chief. On the north-west it is separated from the Āryo.
Dravidian area by what is now also the political dividing-line between Bihār
and Bengal. In regard to this limit, as marking the extent of Indo-Aryan
influence at an early date, ethnology and literature are fully in agreement.
In the Atharvaveda the Magadhas of the Patna and Gayā Districts, and the
Angas of the Monghyr and Bhāgalpur Districts in Southern Bihār, are men-
tioned in a manner which indicates that they were among the most distant
of known peoples (see Vedic Index, II, p. 116); while a legend in the
çatapatha Brāhmaṇa (I, 4, 1, 10 ff. ) preserves the memory of the spread of
9
9
## p. 43 (#77) ##############################################
II)
AUSTRIC LANGUAGES
43
Brāhmanism from the west into Videha, or Tirhut in Northern Bihār. The
traces of Indo-Aryan descent, which have been observed in the higher
social grades of Bengal and Orissa, must be due to colonisation at a later
date.
On the south-west the Mongolo-Dravidians are separated from the
Dravidians by the north-eastern apex of the plateau of the Deccan, where
in the Santāl Parganas and the Chotā Nāgpur Division, hills and forests
have preserved a large group of primitive tribes, some of whom continue to
speak dialects of the oldest form of language known in India.
It is here that we find the Muņdā languages, which like the Mon-
Khmer languages of Assam and Burma, are surviving representatives of the
Austric family of speech, the most widely diffused on earth. It has been
traced (from Easter Island off the coast of South America in the east to
Madagascar in the west, and from New Zealand in the south to the Punjab
in the north' (Census Report, 1911, 1, p. 324).
The Mundā languages are scattered far and wide. They are found
not only in the Santāl Parganas and Chotā Nāgpur, but also in the Mahā.
deo Hills of the Central Provinces, and in the northern districts of the
Madras Presidency; and they form the basis of a number of mixed
languages which make a chain along the Himālayan fringe from the Punjab
to Bengal.
The Mon-Khmer languages are similarly dispersed. They survive in
the Khāsi Hills of Assam, in certain hilly tracts of Upper Burma, in the
coastal regions of the Gulf of Martaban in Lower Burma, in the Nicobar
Islands, and in some parts of the Malay Peninsula.
Thus Austric languages, which still flourish in Annam and Cambodia,
remain in India and Burma as islands of speech to preserve the record of a
far distant period when Northern India (possibly Southern India also) and
Farther India belonged to the same linguistic area.
And there is some
evidence that they shared the same culture in neolithic times ; for the
'chisel-shaped, high-shouldered celts' are specially characteristic of these
regions. There can be little doubt that the Indian and Burmese tribes who
speak Austric languages are descended from the neolithic peoples who made
these celts. We may regard them as representing the earliest population con-
cerning which we possess any definite information. Other tribes may have
an equal claim to antiquity ; but they have abandoned their ancestral speech
and adopted that of their more recent and more progressive neighbours.
Their title is consequently less clear.
Invasions from the east, some of them historical, have brought into
the ancient domain of Austric speech languages belonging to two branches
of the Tibeto-Chinese family—the Tibeto-Burman and the Siamese-Chinese.
1 Chapter XXVI.
## p. 44 (#78) ##############################################
44
PEOPLES AND LAVGU AGES
(ch.
Tibeto-Burman hås occupied the western half of Burma, where it is
represented by Burmese, and the sub-Himālayan fringe of India : while
Siamese-Chinese has prevailed in the Shan States of eastern Burma.
The influence of each has, at different periods, extended to Assam, where at
the present day both have given place to Assamese, an Aryan language
closely related to Bengali.
In the same way, the Austric languages have been submerged by suc-
cessive floods of Dravidian and Indo-European from the west and north-
west. Dravidian languages, with the exception of Brāhūī, are now confined
to the peninsula south of the Vindhyas and to Ceylon ; but it is supposed
that, at the period of the Aryan invasions, they prevailed also in the north.
This inference is derived from the change which Indo-European underwent
after its introduction into India, and which can only be explained as the
result of some older disturbing element. The oldest form of Indo-Aryan,
the language of the Rigveda, is distinguished from the oldest form of Irā.
nian, the language of the Avesta, chiefly by the presence of a second series
of dental letters, the so-called cerebrals. These play an increasingly impor-
tant part in the development of Indo-Aryan in its subsequent phases. They
are foreign to Indo-European languages generally, and they are characteris-
tic of Dravidian. We may conclude, then, that the earlier forms of speech,
by which Indo-European was modified in the various stages of its progress
from the north-west were predominantly Dravidian.
At the present time Dravidian languages are stable only in the coun-
tries of the south where they have developed great literatures like Tamil,
Malayālam, Kanarese, and Telugu. In the northern borders of the Dravi.
dian sphere of influence, the spoken languages which have not been stereo-
typed by literature are, as each succeeding Report of the Census of India
shows, still continuing to retreat before the onward progress of Indo-Aryan.
The process, as it may be observed at the present day in India as elsewhere,
has been admirably described by Sir George Grierson, whose observa-
tions are most valuable as explaining generally the manner in which the
language of a more progressive civilisation tends to grow at the expense of
its less efficient rivals.
When an Āryan tongue comes into contact with an uncivilised aboriginal one,
it is invariably the latter which goes to the wall. The Āryan does not attempt to speak
it, and the necessities of intercourse compel the aborigine to use a broken “pigeon' form
a
of the language of a superior civilisation. As generations pass this mixed jargon more
and more approximates to its model, and in process of time the old aboriginal language
is forgotten and dies a natural death. At the present day in ethnic borderlands, we see
this transformation still going on, and can watch it in all stages of its progress. It is
only in the south of India, where aboriginal languages are associated with a high degree
of culture, that they have held their own. The reverse process, of an Āryan tongue
being superseded by an aboriginal one never occurs. (Imp. Gaz. I, pp. 351-2 )
## p. 45 (#79) ##############################################
HI)
INDO-ARYAN LANGUAGES
45
a
But the advancing type does not remain unaffected. Each stage in its
progress must always bear traces of the compromise between the new and
the old ; and, as each recently converted area tènds in its turr to carry the
change a step farther, the result is that the influence of the progressive
larguage is modified in an increasing degree. Thus is produced a series of
varieties, which through the development of their peculiar features become
in course of time distinct species differing from the original type and from
each other in accordance with their position in the series.
We are thus furnished with a satisfactory explanation of the distri-
bution of the Indo-Aryan languages. As classified by the Linguistic Survey
they radiate from a central area occupied by the Midland languages, the
chief representative of which is Western Hindi. In the north of this area lay
the country of the Kurus and Pañchālas where, according to the çatapatha
Brāhmana (II1, 2, 3, 15) speech, i. e. Brāhman speech, had its home (Vedic
Index, 1, p. 165). This is the centre from which the spread of Brāhmanism
and Brāhman culture may be traced historically. From it the language of
the Brāhman scriptures extended with the religion and became eventually
the sacred language of the whole sub-continent; from it the influencë of the
Aryan type of speech was diffused in all directions, receiving a check only
in the south where the Dravidian languages were firmly established
Immediately outside the languages of the Midland come those of the
Inner Band - Punjābi, Rājasthāni and Gujrāti on the west, Pahāri on the
north, and eastern Hindi on the east ; and beyond them the languages of
the Outer Band-Kāshmiri, Lahndā, Sindhi, and Kacchi on the west,
Marāthī on the south-west, and Bihāri, Bengali, Assamese, and Oriyā on
the east
The Indo-Aryan languages have now extended very considerably to the
south of Āryāvarta, 'the Region of the Aryans,' as defined by Manu (11, 22),
i. e. the country between the Himālayas and the Vindhyas from the Bay of
Bengal to the Arabian Sea. Orthodox Brāhmanism, as represented by
Manu, directed that all members of the ‘twice-born' social orders, Brāhmans,
Kshatriyas, and Vaiçyas, should resort to this region, and enjoined that
every man of these orders should be instructed in his religious and social
duties by a Brāhman belonging to one of the peoples of Brahmarshideça
(Kurus, Matsyas, Pañchālas, and çūrasenas). These, as we have seen,
inhabited the northern portion of the Midland linguistic area. If we follow
the course of the Jumna-Ganges we shall pass from the languages of the mid-
land through those of the Inner and Outer Bands, and we shall pass from
Brahmarshideça through Kosala (Oudh), Videha (N. Bihār) and Vanga
(Bengal), which mark successive stages in the spread of Brāhmanism to the
eastern limit of Āryāvarta as they are reflected in the literature. 1
Vedic Index, II. pp. 237, 298.
>
1
## p. 46 (#80) ##############################################
46
[CH.
PEOPLES AND LANGUAGES
It is not so easy to trace the relations between Brahmarshideça and
the earlier Aryan settlements in the land of the Seven Rivers. It is possible
that further invasions of which no record has been preserved may have
disturbed both political and linguistic conditions in the North-West. We
know nothing certain about the fate of this (region until the latter half of
the sixth century B. C. , when Gandhāra (Peshāwar in the N. W. Frontier
Province and Rāwalpindi in the Punjab) together with the province of the
Indus— 'India' properly so-called – were included in the Persian empire of
the Achaemenids.
The base from which this Persian power expanded into India was
kh), the country of the Oxus, which in the reign of Cyrus (558-
530 B. c. ) had become the eastern stronghold of Irān. From Bactria the
armies of the Achaemenids, like those of Alexander and many subsequent
conquerors, and like the invading tribes of Indo-Aryans many centuries
before, passed over the Hindu Kush and through the valley of the Kābul
river into the country of the Indus.
Speakers of the two great sections of Āryan languages, Irānians and
Indo-Aryans, were thus brought into contact ; and as a result of some such
contact, whether at this period or at some earlier date, we find a group of
mixed languages still surviving where they might be expected, in the transi.
tional zone between the Hindu Kush and the Punjab, that is to say, in the
Kábul valley, Chitrāl, and Gilgit. These Piçācha languages, as they are
called, were once more widely spread : the Greek forms of place-names, for
instance, seem to show that they prevailed in N. W. India in the fourth
century B. C. ; but at the present time they are merely an enclave in the
Irānian and Indo-Aryan domains.
They possess an extraordinarily archaic character. Words are still in everyday
use which are almost identical with the forms they assumed in Vedic hymns, and
which now survive only in a much corrupted state in the plains of India.
In their essence languages are neither Irānian nor Indo-Aryan, but are
something between both. (Imp. Gaz. I. p. 356. )
The most natural explanation of these mixed languages is that they are
ancient Āryan (Vedic) dialects which have been overlaid with Irānian as the
result of later invasion. The districts in which they are spoken were
certainly colonised by the early Āryan settlers, for both the Kābul river
(Kubhā) and its tributary the Swāt (Suvāstu) are mentioned in the hymns
of the Rigveda.
The contrary view, expressed in the Imperial Gazetteer I. p. 355), viz.
that the Piçãcha languages are the result of an Aryan invasion of a region
originally Irānian, seems to be less probable. It presuposes the existence of
an early settlement of Āryan in the Pāmirs, distinct from the Aryans proper,
who had entered the Punjab by the valley of the Kābul,' and is thus bound
with the hypothesis of a second wave of Āryan immigration.
up
## p. 47 (#81) ##############################################
II]
SOCIAL INSTITUTION
47
Beyond the Piçãcha languages on the north, and beyond the Outer
Indo-Aryan Band on the west, Irānian forms of speech prevail. The most
important of these, so far as they are represented within the limits of the
Indian Empire, are the Pashto of Afghānistān, the name of which preserves
the memory of the Il'axtves mentioned by Herodotus, and Baloch, the main
language of Baluchistān.
The diversity of speech in the Indian Empire, like the diversity of
race, is naturally explained as the result of invasions from Western and
Further Asia. Such invasions belong to a period which was only brought
to a close by the establishment of the British dominion. The power which
has succeeded in welding all the subordinate ruling powers into one great
system of government is essentially naval ; and since it controls the sea.
ways, it has been forced, in the interests of security, to close the land ways.
This has been the object of British policy in regard to the countries which
lie on the frontiers of the Indian Empire, Afghānistān, Baluchistān, and
Burma. Political isolation has thus followed as a necessary consequence of
political unity. But it must be remembered that this political isolation is a
recent and an entirely novel feature in the history of India. It is the great
landmark which separates the present from the past.
Man has completed the work which nature had begun ; for, as we
have seen, climatic changes had for ages past been making access into India
more and more difficult. The era of tribal migration had long ago come to
an end, and had been succeeded by the era of conquest. All through history
down to the period of British rule we see one foreign power after another
breaking through the north-western gateway, and the strongest of these
winning the suzerainty over India. But the result in all cases was little
more than a change of rulers - the deposition of one dominant caste and
the substitution of another. The lives of the common people, their social
conditions and systems of local government, were barely affected by such
conquests. Indian institutions have therefore a long unbroken history
which makes their study especially valuable.
The chief distinguishing feature of Indian society at the present day
is the caste-system, the origin and growth of which may be traced from an
early period. It now divides the great majority of the inhabitants of Nor-
thern and Southern India into hundreds of self-contained social
castes and sub-castes. A man is obliged to marry outside his family, but
within the caste, and usually within the sub-caste, to which his family be-
longs. A family consists of persons 'reputed to be descended from a common
ancestor, and between whom marriage is prohibited. ' It is the exogamous
social unit. A collection of such units constitutes a sub-caste or caste.
A caste may, therefore, be defined as an endogamous group or collection of such
groups bearing a common name and having the same traditional occupation, who are
.
groups, i. e.
## p. 48 (#82) ##############################################
48
[ch.
PEOPLE AND LANGUAGES
so linked together luy these and other ties, such as the tradition of a common origin and
the possession of the same tutelary deity, and the same social status, ceremonial
observances and family priests that they regard themselves, and are regarded by
others, as ſorming a single homogeneous community. (Census Report, 1911, I).
The institution is essentially Brāhmanical, and it has spread with
the spread of Brāhmanism. It either does not exist, or exists only in an
imperfect state of development, in countries where Buddhism has triumphed,
such as Burma and Ceylon. It would indeed appear to rest ultimately on
two doctrines which are distinctively Brāhmanical - the doctrine of the reli-
gious unity of the family, which is symbolised by the offerings made to
deceased ancestors, and the doctrine of sva-karma, which lays on every man
the obligation to do his duty in that state of life in which he has been
born.
The orthodox Hindu holds that the caste-system is of divine appoint-
ment and that it has existed for all time. But the sacred books themselves,
when they are studied historically, supply evidence both of its origin and
of its growth. The poets of the Rigveda know nothing of caste in the later
and stricter sense of the word ; but they recognise that there are divers
orders of men—the priests (Brahmā or Brāhmana), the nobles (Rājanya
or Kshatriya), the tillers of the soil (Viç or Vaiçya), and the servile classes
(çūdra). Between the first three and the fourth there is a great gulf fixed.
The former are conquering Aryans : the latter are subject Dasyus. The
difference between them is one of colour (varņa) : the Āryans are collec-
tively known as 'the light colour', and the Dasyus as 'the dark colour'.
speech - the Austric, the Tibeto-Chinese, the Dravidian, and the Indo-
European-are directly represented among the living languages of India,
of which no fewer than two hundred and twenty are recorded in the Census
Report for 1911 ; while a fifth great family, the Semitic, which has been
introduced by Muhammadan conquerors in historical times, has, through
the medium of Arabic and Persian, greatly modified some of the Indian
vernaculars. The Austric, Tibeto-Chinese, and Indo-European families are
widely spread elsewhere over the face of the earth. The Dravidian has not
been traced with absolute certainty beyond the limits of the Indian Empire;
but there is evidence which seems to indicate that it was introduced into
India in prehistoric times,
The drama of Indian history, then, is one in which many peoples of
very diverse origin have played their parts. In all ages the fertility and
the riches of certain regions, above all the plain of the Ganges, have attrac-
ted invaders from the outside world ; while over-population and the desic-
cation of the land have given an impulse to the movements of peoples from
the adjacent regions of Asia. Thus both the attracting and the explusive for-
ces which determine migrations have acted in the same direction. It is true
indeed that the civilisations which have been developed in India have react-
ed, and that Indian religions, Indian literature, and Indian art have spread
out of India and produced a deep and far-reaching influence on the countries
33
## p. 34 (#68) ##############################################
34
[CH.
PEOPLES AND LANGUAGES
of Further Asia ; but the migrations and the conquests which provided
the human energy with which these civilisations were created have invaria-
bly come into India from the outside. And the peninsular character
of the sub-continent has retained invaders within its borders, with the result
that racial conditions have tended to become ever more and more complex.
The outcome of the struggle for existence between so many peoples possess-
ing different traditions and different ideals is to be seen in the almost in-
finite variety of degrees of culture which exists at the present day. Some
types of civilisation have been progressive ; others have remained station-
ary. So that we now find, at one extreme of the social scale, communities
whose members are contributing to the advancement of the literature,
science, and art of the twentieth century, and, at the other extreme, tribes
still governed by their primitive constitutions, still using the implements
and weapons, and still retaining the religious ideas and customs of their
remote ancestors in the Stone Age.
The Himālayas form an effective barrier against direct invasions from
the north : the exceedingly toilsome passes in their centre are traversed
only by a few patient traders or adventurous explorers. But at the
western and eastern extremities, river valleys and more practicable mountain
passes afford easier means of access. Through these gateways swarms of
nomads and conquering armies, from the direction of Persia on the one
hand and from the direction of China on the other, have poured into India
from time immemorial.
By routes passing through Baluchistān on the west and Afghānistān
on the north-west, the country of the Indus has been repeatedly invaded
by peoples belonging to the Caucasian race from Western Asia, and by
peoples belonging to the Northern or Mongolo-Altaic group of the Mongo-
lian race from Central Asia. But these immigrations were not all of the
same nature, nor did they all produce the same effect on the population of
India. In the course of time their character became transformed. At the
most remote period there were slow persistent movements of whole tribes, or
collections of tribes, with their women and children, their flocks and herds :
at a later date they were little more than organised expeditions of armed
men. The former exercised a permanent influence on the racial conditions
of the country which they invaded : the influence of the latter was political
or social rather than racial.
This change in the nature of invasions was the gradual effect of natural
causes. Over large tracts of Asia the climate has changed within the his-
torical period. The rainfall has diminished or ceased; and once fruitful lands
have been converted into impassable deserts. Both Irān and Turkestān, the
two reservoirs from which the streams of migration flowed into the Indus
valley, have been affected by this desiccation of the land. Archaeological
## p. 35 (#69) ##############################################
II]
WESTERN AND EASTERN INVADERS
35
>
investigations in Seistān and in Chinese Turkestān have brought to light the
monuments of ancient civilisations which had long ago passed into oblivion.
Especially valuable from the historical point of view are the accounts given
by Sir Aurel Stein of his wonderful discoveries in Chinese Turkestān.
From the chronological evidence, which he has so carefully collected from
the documents and monuments discovered, we are unable to ascertain the
dates, at which the various ancient sites were abandoned because of the
progressive desiccation during a period of about a thousand years (first
century B. c. to ninth century A. D. ). We may thus realise how it has come
to pass that a region which once formed a means of communication not
only between China and India, but also between China and Europe, has now
become an almost insuperable barrier. The same causes have tended to
separate India from Irān. The last irruption which penetrated to Delhi,
the heart of India, through the north-western gateway was the Persian
expedition of Nădir Shāh in 1739.
The routes which lead from the east into the country of the Ganges
seem not to have been affected to the same extent by climatic changes.
The invaders from this quarter belonged to the Southern group of the
Mongolian race, the home of which was probably in N. W. China. They
came into India partly from Tibet down the valley of the Brahmaputra,
and partly from China through Burma by the Mekong, the Salween, and the
Irrawaddy. To other obstacles which impeded their progress were add-
ed the dense growth of the jungle and its wild inhabitants. Tribal migra-
tions from these regions can scarcely be said to have ceased altogether even
now. But they are held in check by the British occupation of Upper Burma.
The movements to the south-west and south of the Kachins, a Tibeto-
Burman tribe, from the north of Upper Burma have in recent times afford-
ed an illustration of the nature of these migrations (Imp. Gaz. xiv, pp. 253-5).
Thus have foreign races and foreign civilisations been brought into
India, the history of which is in a large measure the story of the struggle
between newcomers and the earlier inhabitants. Such invasions may be
compared to waves breaking on the shore. Their force becomes less the
farther they proceed, and their direction is determined by the obstacles
with which they come in contact. The most effective of these obstacles,
even when human effort is the direct means of resistance, are the geogra-
phical barriers which nature itself has set up. We shall therefore best
understand the distribution of races in the sub-continent if we remember
its chief natural divisions.
The ranges of the Vindhya system with their almost impenetrable
forests have in all ages formed the great dividing line between Northern and
Southern India. In early Brāhman literature they mark the limits beyond
which Āryan civilisation had not yet penetrated, and at the present day the
two great regions which they separate continue to offer the most striking
## p. 36 (#70) ##############################################
36
[CH.
PEOPLES AND LANGUAGES
contrasts in racial character, in language, and in social institutions. But
the Vindhyas can be passed without difficulty at their western and eastern
extremities, where lowlands form connecting links with the plains of the
Indus and the Ganges. The coastal regions are therefore transitional.
They have been more directly affected by movements from the north than
the central plateau of the Deccan.
In Northern India, natural boundaries are marked by the river
Indus, by the Thar or Great Desert of Rājputāna, and by the sub-Himāla-
yan fringe which is connected on the east with Assam and Burma.
The seven geographical regions thus indicated form the basis for the
ethnographical classification of the peoples of India which is now generally
accepted. The scheme was propounded by the late Sir Herbert Risley in
the Census Report for 1901. Its details are the result of careful measure-
ments and observations extending over many years. It is conveniently
summarised in the Imperial Gazetteer (new edition, vol. 1, pp. 29. ff. ) from
which the descriptions in the following account are quoted. The physical
types are here enumerated in an order beginning from the south, instead of
from the north-west as in the original scheme :
1. The Dravidian type in the larger section of the peninsula which
lies to the south of the United Provinces and east of about longitude 76°E.
“The stature is short or below mean ; the complexion very dark, approach-
ing black; hair plentiful, with an occasional tendency to curl; eyes dark ;
head long; nose very broad, sometimes depressed at the root, but not so as
to make the face
appear
flat. '
This was assumed by Risley to be the original type of the popula-
tion of India, now modified to a varying extent by the admixture of Āryan,
Scythian, and Mongoloid elements'. It must be remembered, however, that,
when the term 'Dravidian' is thus used ethnographically, it is nothing more
than a convenient tabel. It must not be assumed that the speakers of
the Dravidian languages are aborigines. In Southern India, as in the North,
the same general distinction exists between the more primitive tribes of the
hills and jungles and the civilised inhabitants of the fertile tracts ; and
some ethnologists hold that the difference is racial and not merely the
result of culture. Mr. Thurston, for instance, says :
It is the Pre-Dravidian aborigines, and not the later and more cultured Dravi.
dians, who must be regarded as the primitive existing race. . . . . . These Pre-Dravidians
. . . . . . are differentiated from the Dravidian classes by their short stature and broad
(platyrhine) noses. There is strong ground for the belief that the Pre-Dravidians are
ethnically related to the Veddas of Ceylon, the Talas of the Celebes, the Batin of
Sumatra, and possibly the Australians. (The Madras Presidency, pp. 124-5. )
It would seem probable, then, that the original speakers of the Dravi-
dian languages were invaders, and that the ethnographical Dravidians are
a mixed race. In the more habitable regions the two elements have fused,
while representatives of the aborigines are still to be found in the fastnesses
9
## p. 37 (#71) ##############################################
II]
DRAVIDIANS
37
to which they retired before the encroachments of the newcomers. If this
view be correct, we must suppose that these aborigines have, in the course
of long ages, lost their ancient languages and adopted those of their con-
querors. The process of linguistic transformation, which may still be obser-
ved in other parts of India, would seem to have been carried out more
completely in the South than elsewhere.
The theory that the Dravidian element is the most ancient which we
can discover in the population of Northern India, must also be modified by
what we now know of the Muņdā languages, the Indian representatives
of the Austric family of speech, and the mixed languages in which
their influence has been traced (p. 43). Here, according to the evidence now
available, it would seem that the Austric element is the oldest, and that it
has been overlaid in different regions by successive waves of Dravidian and
Indo-European on the one hand, and by Tibeto-Chinese on the other. Most
ethnologists hold that there is no difference in physical type between the
present speakers of Muņdā and Dravidian languages. This statement has
been called in question ; but, if it be true, it shows that racial conditions
have become so complicated that it is no longer possible to analyse their
constituents. Language alone has preserved a record which would other-
wise have been lost.
At the same time, there can be little doubt that Dravidian languages
were actually flourishing in the western regions of Northern India at
the period when languages of the Indo-European type were introduced by
the Āryan invasions from the north-west. Dravidian characteristics have
been traced alike in Vedic and Classical Sanskrit, in the Prākrits, or early
popular dialects, and in the modern vernaculars derived from them. The
linguistic strata would thus appear to be arranged in the order-Austric,
Dravidian, Indo-European.
There is good ground, then, for supposing that, before the coming of
the Indo-Aryans speakers of the Dravidian languages predominated both
in Northern and in Southern India ; but, as we have seen, older elements
are discoverable in the populations of both regions, and therefore the
assumption that the Dravidians are aboriginal is no longer tenable. Is there
any evidence to show whence they came into India ?
No theory of their origin can be maintained which does not account for
the existence of Brāhūī, the large island of Dravidian speech in the moun-
tainous regions of distant Baluchistān which lie near the western routes into
India. Is Brāhūſ a surviving trace of the immigration of Dravidian-speaking
peoples into India from the west ? Or does it mark the limits of an overflow
from India into Baluchistān ? Both theories have been held ; but as all the
great movements of peoples have been into India and not out of India, and
| as a remote mountainous district may be expected to retain the survivals of
## p. 38 (#72) ##############################################
38
(CH.
PEOPLES AND LANGUAGES
ancient races while it is not likely to have been colonised, the former view
would a priori seem to be by far the more probable. The reasons why it has
not been universally accepted is that the racial character of the Brāhūis is
now mairly Irānian, and not Dravidian in the Indian sense of the term.
But the argument from race is not so conclusive as may appear at first
sight. The area in which the Dravidian Brāhūi is still spoken forms part of
the region which is occupied by Turko-Irānian peoples ; and the peculiar
tribal constitution of the Brāhūis, is one which, unlike the caste-system,
does not insist on social exclusiveness, but, on the contrary, definitely
invites recruitment from outside. This is clear from the account given in
the Gazetteer of the ‘Baloch and Brāhūi type of tribe' :
The second type of Turko-Irānian tribe is based primarily not upon agnatic, kin-
ship, but upon common good and ill : in other words, it is cemented together only by
the obligations arising from the blood-feud. There is no eponymous ancestor, and the
tribe itself does not profess to be composed of homogeneous elements. . . . . . The same
principles hold good in tl e case of the Brābūſ. . . whose numbers have been recruited
from among Afghāns, Kūrds, Jadgāls, Baloch, and other elements. (Imp. Gaz. I. p. 310)
Such circumstances must necessarily change the racial character of the
tribe by a gradual process which might well in the course of ages lead to a
complete transformation. There is therefore nothing in the existing racial
conditions, and equally nothing in the existing physical conditions, to
prevent us from believing that the survival of a Dravidian language in
Baluchistān must indicate that the Dravidians came into India through
Baluchistān in prehistoric times. Whether they are ultimately to be traced
to a Central Asian or to a Western Asian origin cannot at present be decid-
ed with absolute certainty ; but the latter hypothesis receives very strong
support from the undoubted similarity of the Sumerian and Dravidian eth-
nic types.
2. The Indo-Aryan type in Kashmir, the Punjab from the Indus to
about the longitude of Ambāla (76° 46'E. ), and Rājputāna. 'The stature is
mostly tall ; complexion fair ; eyes dark ; hair on face plentiful ; head long;
nose narrow and prominent, but not specially long. '
The region now occupied by people of this type forms the eastern
portion of the wide extent of territory inhabited by Aryan settlers in the
earliest historical times—the period of the Rigveda, probably about 1200 B. C.
Their oldest literature, which is in a language closely connected with ancient,
Persian, Greek, and Latin, supplies no certain indication that they still
retained the recollection of their former home ; and we may reasonably
conclude, therefore, that the invasions, which brought them into India,
took place at a date considerably earlier.
1 For the remains of ancient culture in this region, sro Imp. Guz. I, p. 302 ; XIV,
p. 3: 0.
2 Hall, The Ancient History of the Near East (4th ed. ), pp. 173-4. The converse
view is, however, held by the author, viz. that the Sumerians came into Western Asia
from India.
## p. 39 (#73) ##############################################
II]
INDO-ARYANS
39
2
The Indo-Aryans came from Bactria, over the passes of the Hindu
Kush into S. Afghānistān, and thence by the valleys of the Kābul river, the
Kurram, and the Gumal, all of them rivers well known to the poets of the
Rigveda-into the N. W. Frontier Province and the Punjab. In the age of
the Rigveda they formed five peoples, each consisting of a number of tribes
in which the women were of the same race as their husbands. This is proved
conclusively by their social and religious status. We may be certain, there.
fore, that the invasions were no mere incursions of armies, but gradual
progressive movements of whole tribes, such as would have been impossible
at a later date, when climatic causes had transformed the physical conditions
of the country (p. 34). On this point the evidence of literature receives the
support of ethnology : for only thus, according to Risley, can be explained
the uniform distribution of the Indo-Aryan racial type throughout the region
which it occupies, and the strongly marked contrasts which it presents to
types prevailing in regions to the east and south. Later settlements neces-
sarily consisted almost entirely of men. Such modifications of the racial
character as would be produced by inter-marriage with the women of the
country would, in course of time, cease to be recognisable. They would be
as difficult to trace as the Roman factor in the population of Britain.
3. The Turko-Irānian type in the N. W. Frontier Province, Baluchis-
tān, and those districts of the Punjab and Sind which lie west of the Indus.
'Stature above mean ; complexion fair ; eyes mostly dark, but occasionally
grey ; hair on face plentiful ; head broad ; nose moderately narrow, promi-
nent, and very long. '
The northern section of the region now inhabited by peoples of this
type, that is to say, the country of the north-western tributaries of the Indus,
was, in the times of the Rigveda, occupied by Indo-Aryans. The predomi-
nant racial character of the whole region is due to the invasion of Mongolo-
Altaic peoples from Turkestān on the one hand, and of Persian Aryans or
Irānians on the other. The Indus is the ethnographical boundary between
the Turko-Irānian and Indo-Aryan types, just as in history it has often been
the political boundary between Irān and India.
4. The Scytho-Dravidian type in Sind east of the Indus, Gujarāt, and
the western section of the peninsula as far as about longitude 76° E. , that is
to say, the Bombay Presidency or Western India generally. "The type is
clearly distinguished from the Turko-Irānian by a lower stature, a greater
length of head, a higher nasal index, a shorter nose, and a lower orbitonasal
index. '
This type, of which the Marāthās are the chief representatives, occupies
a position between the broad-headed Turko-Irānians and the long-headed
Dravidians. Its designation assumes that the foreign broad-headed element
was introduced during the period of Scythian (Çaka) rule in western India
## p. 40 (#74) ##############################################
40
(CH.
PEOPLES AND LANGUAGES
(c. 120-380A. D). But there can be little doubt that its origin must be traced
to a period far more remote. The çakas were among those military con-
querors who broke into the Punjab after the downfall of the Maurya Empire:
and it can scarcely be supposed that the extension of their power to Wes-
tern India materially affected the race. The fact that their Scythian names,
as is shown by coins and inscriptions, became Hinduised after a few gene-
rations, is conclusive proof that they were forced to adapt themselves to
their social environment. We must therefore seek the disturbing racial in-
fluence in some earlier tribal immigration of which no other memorial now
remains. The invaders probably belonged to the broad-headed Alpine race
which inhabited the plateaus of Western Asia (Anatolia, Armenia, and
Irān)" ; and they would seem to have come into Western India, as the
Dravidians also most probably came, through Baluchistān before desiccation
had made the routes impassable for multitudes.
5. The Āryo-Dravidian or Hindustāni type in the plain of the Ganges
from about longitude 76° 30' E. to 87° E. ; that is to say, in the eastern
fringe of the Punjab, in the United Provinces, and in Bihār. "The head-
form is long, with a tendency to medium ; the complexion varies from light-
ish brown to black, the nose ranges from medium to broad, being always
broader than among the Indo-Aryans ; the stature is lower than in the latter
group, and usually below the average' (i. e. it ranges from 5' 3" to 5'5").
The Āryo-Dravidian type occupies the ancient Madhyadeça, or the
Midland Country,' extending, according to Manu (II, 12) from Vinaçana,
where the river Sarasvati loses itself in the Great Desert, to Allahābād, to-
gether with some five degrees of the country farther east. It is a mixed type
caused apparently by the Indo-Aryan colonisation of a region previously
held by a population mainly Dravidian. The Indo-Aryan type does not, as
might have been expected from analogous instances, shade by imperceptible
degrees into the Āryo-Dravidian type ; but a marked change from the for-
mer to the latter is observable about the longitude of Sirhind.
It is evident,
then, that the waves of tribal migration must have been impeded at this
point, and that the Indo-Āryan influence farther east must be due rather
to warlike or peaceful penetration than to the wholesale encroachment of
multitudes.
To explain this abrupt transition, the theory of a second Āryan in-
vasion, which is supposed to have come into the plain of the Ganges from
the Pāmirs through Gilgit and Chitrā), was propounded by the late Dr.
Hoernle and has been generally accepted in the official publications of the
Government of India. This theory is made improbable by the physical
difficulties of the route suggested, and some of the arguments adduced in
its favour are demonstrably mistaken. There is no such break of continuity
Haddon, The Wanderings of Peoples, pp. 12, 17,
## p. 41 (#75) ##############################################
II)
ĀRYO-DRAVIDIANS
41
between the tribes of the Rigveda and the peoples of the later literaturę aş
it presupposes! . At the same time it seemed to be supported by the existing
distribution of the Indo-Aryan languages ; but, as will be seen (p. 44), an
equally satisfactory explanation of this distribution may be suggested.
Apart from this theory, the conclusions of ethnology are entirely in
accord with the historical indications of the literature. The ethnographical
limit is also the dividing line between the geography of the Rigveda and the
geography of the later Vedic literature. In the Rigveda Āryan communities
have scarcely advanced beyond the country of the river Sarasvati (Sirhind),
which for ever afterwards was remembered with especial veneration as
Brahmāvarta, 'the Holy Land. ' In the Brāhmaṇās the centre of religious
activity has been transferred to the adjacent country on the south-east, i. e.
the upper portion of the doāb between the Jumna and the Ganges, and the
Muttra District of the United Provinces. This was Brahmarshideça - 'the
Country of the Holy Sages. ' Here it was that the hymns of the Rigveda,
which were composed in the North-West- the country of the 'Seven Rivers'
as it is called (Rv. VIII, 24, 27), were collected and arranged ; and here it
was that the religious and social system which we call Brāhmanism assumed
its final form--a form which, in its religious aspect, is a compromise bet-
ween Āryan and more primitive Indian ideas, and, in its social aspect, the
result of the contact of different races. After Brāhman culture had thus
occupied what has in all ages been the commanding position in India, its
trend was still eastwards ; and the country of the 'Seven Rivers,' though not
altogether forgotten, occupies a place of less importance in the later
literature.
Both of the facts above mentioned - the abrupt transition from the
Indo-Aryan to the Āryo-Dravidian type, and the extension of Āryan influ-
ence from Brahmăvarta to Brahmarshideca - are best understood if we
remember the natural feature which connects the plain of the Indus with the
plain of the Ganges. This is the strait of habitable land which lies between
the desert and the mountains. Its historical significance has already been
noticed? . It is in this strait that the decisive battles, on which the fate of
India has depended, have been fought ; and here too we may suppose that
the progress of racial migrations from the north-west in prehistoric times
must have been checked. Both politically and ethnographically it forms a
natural boundary. In the age of the Rigveda the Āryans had not yet broken
through the barrier, though the Jumna is mentioned in a hymn (vii, 18, 19)
in such a way as to indicate that a battle had been won on its banks. It
was only at some later date that the country between the Upper Jumna and
Ganges and the district of Delhi were occupied. A record of this occupa-
tion has been preserved in some ancient verses quoted in the catapatha
1 See Chapters V. p. 106 and XIII.
Chapter I, pp. 20 f.
2
.
## p. 42 (#76) ##############################################
42
[CH.
PEOPLES AND LANGUAGES
Brāhmaṇa (XIII, 5, 4, 11-14) which refer to the triumphs celebrated by
Bharata Dauhshanti after his victories on the Jumna and the Ganges, and
to the extent of his conquests. In their new home the Bharatas, who were
settled in the country of the Sarasvati in the times of the Rigveda (see III,
23, 4), were merged in the Kurus ; and their whole territory, the new
together with the old, became famous in history under the name Kuru.
kshetra — 'the Field of the Kurus. ' This was the scene of the great war of
the descendants of Bharata Dauḥshanti, and the centre from which Indo-
Āryan culture spread, first throughout Hindustān, and eventually through.
out the whole sub-continent. The epoch of Indo-Aryan tribal migration
was definitely closed. It was succeeded by the epoch of Indo-Aryan
colonisation,
6. The Mongoloid type in Burma, Assam, and the sub-Himālayan
tract which includes Bhutān, Nepāl, and the fringe of the United Provinces,
the Punjab, and Kashmir. “The head is broad ; complexion dark, with a
yellowish tinge ; hair on face scanty ; stature short or below average ; nose
fine to broad ; face characteristically flat ; eyelids often oblique. '
The term Mongoloid denotes the racial type which has been produced
by the invasion of peoples of the Southern Mongolian race from Tibet and
China. We have already seen how these peoples have from time immemo.
rial been coming down the river valleys into Burma and Northern India
(p. 35) ; and we shall learn more about them, and about the earlier inhabi-
tants with whom they intermingled, when we consider the evidence of
language (p. 44).
7. The Mongolo-Dravidian or Bengali type in Bengal and Orissa.
“The head is broad ; complexion dark ; hair on face usually plentiful ; stature
medium ; nose medium, with a tendency to broad. '
This type is regarded as 'probably a blend of Dravidian and Mongo-
loid elements, with a strain of Indo-Aryan blood in the higher groups. '
The region in which it prevails lay beyond the geographical ken of the earlier
literature. It comes into view first in the later literature (the epics and
Purāņas) when it was occupied by a number of peoples among whom the
Vangas (from whom Bengal has inherited its name) and the Kalingas of
Orissa were the chief. On the north-west it is separated from the Āryo.
Dravidian area by what is now also the political dividing-line between Bihār
and Bengal. In regard to this limit, as marking the extent of Indo-Aryan
influence at an early date, ethnology and literature are fully in agreement.
In the Atharvaveda the Magadhas of the Patna and Gayā Districts, and the
Angas of the Monghyr and Bhāgalpur Districts in Southern Bihār, are men-
tioned in a manner which indicates that they were among the most distant
of known peoples (see Vedic Index, II, p. 116); while a legend in the
çatapatha Brāhmaṇa (I, 4, 1, 10 ff. ) preserves the memory of the spread of
9
9
## p. 43 (#77) ##############################################
II)
AUSTRIC LANGUAGES
43
Brāhmanism from the west into Videha, or Tirhut in Northern Bihār. The
traces of Indo-Aryan descent, which have been observed in the higher
social grades of Bengal and Orissa, must be due to colonisation at a later
date.
On the south-west the Mongolo-Dravidians are separated from the
Dravidians by the north-eastern apex of the plateau of the Deccan, where
in the Santāl Parganas and the Chotā Nāgpur Division, hills and forests
have preserved a large group of primitive tribes, some of whom continue to
speak dialects of the oldest form of language known in India.
It is here that we find the Muņdā languages, which like the Mon-
Khmer languages of Assam and Burma, are surviving representatives of the
Austric family of speech, the most widely diffused on earth. It has been
traced (from Easter Island off the coast of South America in the east to
Madagascar in the west, and from New Zealand in the south to the Punjab
in the north' (Census Report, 1911, 1, p. 324).
The Mundā languages are scattered far and wide. They are found
not only in the Santāl Parganas and Chotā Nāgpur, but also in the Mahā.
deo Hills of the Central Provinces, and in the northern districts of the
Madras Presidency; and they form the basis of a number of mixed
languages which make a chain along the Himālayan fringe from the Punjab
to Bengal.
The Mon-Khmer languages are similarly dispersed. They survive in
the Khāsi Hills of Assam, in certain hilly tracts of Upper Burma, in the
coastal regions of the Gulf of Martaban in Lower Burma, in the Nicobar
Islands, and in some parts of the Malay Peninsula.
Thus Austric languages, which still flourish in Annam and Cambodia,
remain in India and Burma as islands of speech to preserve the record of a
far distant period when Northern India (possibly Southern India also) and
Farther India belonged to the same linguistic area.
And there is some
evidence that they shared the same culture in neolithic times ; for the
'chisel-shaped, high-shouldered celts' are specially characteristic of these
regions. There can be little doubt that the Indian and Burmese tribes who
speak Austric languages are descended from the neolithic peoples who made
these celts. We may regard them as representing the earliest population con-
cerning which we possess any definite information. Other tribes may have
an equal claim to antiquity ; but they have abandoned their ancestral speech
and adopted that of their more recent and more progressive neighbours.
Their title is consequently less clear.
Invasions from the east, some of them historical, have brought into
the ancient domain of Austric speech languages belonging to two branches
of the Tibeto-Chinese family—the Tibeto-Burman and the Siamese-Chinese.
1 Chapter XXVI.
## p. 44 (#78) ##############################################
44
PEOPLES AND LAVGU AGES
(ch.
Tibeto-Burman hås occupied the western half of Burma, where it is
represented by Burmese, and the sub-Himālayan fringe of India : while
Siamese-Chinese has prevailed in the Shan States of eastern Burma.
The influence of each has, at different periods, extended to Assam, where at
the present day both have given place to Assamese, an Aryan language
closely related to Bengali.
In the same way, the Austric languages have been submerged by suc-
cessive floods of Dravidian and Indo-European from the west and north-
west. Dravidian languages, with the exception of Brāhūī, are now confined
to the peninsula south of the Vindhyas and to Ceylon ; but it is supposed
that, at the period of the Aryan invasions, they prevailed also in the north.
This inference is derived from the change which Indo-European underwent
after its introduction into India, and which can only be explained as the
result of some older disturbing element. The oldest form of Indo-Aryan,
the language of the Rigveda, is distinguished from the oldest form of Irā.
nian, the language of the Avesta, chiefly by the presence of a second series
of dental letters, the so-called cerebrals. These play an increasingly impor-
tant part in the development of Indo-Aryan in its subsequent phases. They
are foreign to Indo-European languages generally, and they are characteris-
tic of Dravidian. We may conclude, then, that the earlier forms of speech,
by which Indo-European was modified in the various stages of its progress
from the north-west were predominantly Dravidian.
At the present time Dravidian languages are stable only in the coun-
tries of the south where they have developed great literatures like Tamil,
Malayālam, Kanarese, and Telugu. In the northern borders of the Dravi.
dian sphere of influence, the spoken languages which have not been stereo-
typed by literature are, as each succeeding Report of the Census of India
shows, still continuing to retreat before the onward progress of Indo-Aryan.
The process, as it may be observed at the present day in India as elsewhere,
has been admirably described by Sir George Grierson, whose observa-
tions are most valuable as explaining generally the manner in which the
language of a more progressive civilisation tends to grow at the expense of
its less efficient rivals.
When an Āryan tongue comes into contact with an uncivilised aboriginal one,
it is invariably the latter which goes to the wall. The Āryan does not attempt to speak
it, and the necessities of intercourse compel the aborigine to use a broken “pigeon' form
a
of the language of a superior civilisation. As generations pass this mixed jargon more
and more approximates to its model, and in process of time the old aboriginal language
is forgotten and dies a natural death. At the present day in ethnic borderlands, we see
this transformation still going on, and can watch it in all stages of its progress. It is
only in the south of India, where aboriginal languages are associated with a high degree
of culture, that they have held their own. The reverse process, of an Āryan tongue
being superseded by an aboriginal one never occurs. (Imp. Gaz. I, pp. 351-2 )
## p. 45 (#79) ##############################################
HI)
INDO-ARYAN LANGUAGES
45
a
But the advancing type does not remain unaffected. Each stage in its
progress must always bear traces of the compromise between the new and
the old ; and, as each recently converted area tènds in its turr to carry the
change a step farther, the result is that the influence of the progressive
larguage is modified in an increasing degree. Thus is produced a series of
varieties, which through the development of their peculiar features become
in course of time distinct species differing from the original type and from
each other in accordance with their position in the series.
We are thus furnished with a satisfactory explanation of the distri-
bution of the Indo-Aryan languages. As classified by the Linguistic Survey
they radiate from a central area occupied by the Midland languages, the
chief representative of which is Western Hindi. In the north of this area lay
the country of the Kurus and Pañchālas where, according to the çatapatha
Brāhmana (II1, 2, 3, 15) speech, i. e. Brāhman speech, had its home (Vedic
Index, 1, p. 165). This is the centre from which the spread of Brāhmanism
and Brāhman culture may be traced historically. From it the language of
the Brāhman scriptures extended with the religion and became eventually
the sacred language of the whole sub-continent; from it the influencë of the
Aryan type of speech was diffused in all directions, receiving a check only
in the south where the Dravidian languages were firmly established
Immediately outside the languages of the Midland come those of the
Inner Band - Punjābi, Rājasthāni and Gujrāti on the west, Pahāri on the
north, and eastern Hindi on the east ; and beyond them the languages of
the Outer Band-Kāshmiri, Lahndā, Sindhi, and Kacchi on the west,
Marāthī on the south-west, and Bihāri, Bengali, Assamese, and Oriyā on
the east
The Indo-Aryan languages have now extended very considerably to the
south of Āryāvarta, 'the Region of the Aryans,' as defined by Manu (11, 22),
i. e. the country between the Himālayas and the Vindhyas from the Bay of
Bengal to the Arabian Sea. Orthodox Brāhmanism, as represented by
Manu, directed that all members of the ‘twice-born' social orders, Brāhmans,
Kshatriyas, and Vaiçyas, should resort to this region, and enjoined that
every man of these orders should be instructed in his religious and social
duties by a Brāhman belonging to one of the peoples of Brahmarshideça
(Kurus, Matsyas, Pañchālas, and çūrasenas). These, as we have seen,
inhabited the northern portion of the Midland linguistic area. If we follow
the course of the Jumna-Ganges we shall pass from the languages of the mid-
land through those of the Inner and Outer Bands, and we shall pass from
Brahmarshideça through Kosala (Oudh), Videha (N. Bihār) and Vanga
(Bengal), which mark successive stages in the spread of Brāhmanism to the
eastern limit of Āryāvarta as they are reflected in the literature. 1
Vedic Index, II. pp. 237, 298.
>
1
## p. 46 (#80) ##############################################
46
[CH.
PEOPLES AND LANGUAGES
It is not so easy to trace the relations between Brahmarshideça and
the earlier Aryan settlements in the land of the Seven Rivers. It is possible
that further invasions of which no record has been preserved may have
disturbed both political and linguistic conditions in the North-West. We
know nothing certain about the fate of this (region until the latter half of
the sixth century B. C. , when Gandhāra (Peshāwar in the N. W. Frontier
Province and Rāwalpindi in the Punjab) together with the province of the
Indus— 'India' properly so-called – were included in the Persian empire of
the Achaemenids.
The base from which this Persian power expanded into India was
kh), the country of the Oxus, which in the reign of Cyrus (558-
530 B. c. ) had become the eastern stronghold of Irān. From Bactria the
armies of the Achaemenids, like those of Alexander and many subsequent
conquerors, and like the invading tribes of Indo-Aryans many centuries
before, passed over the Hindu Kush and through the valley of the Kābul
river into the country of the Indus.
Speakers of the two great sections of Āryan languages, Irānians and
Indo-Aryans, were thus brought into contact ; and as a result of some such
contact, whether at this period or at some earlier date, we find a group of
mixed languages still surviving where they might be expected, in the transi.
tional zone between the Hindu Kush and the Punjab, that is to say, in the
Kábul valley, Chitrāl, and Gilgit. These Piçācha languages, as they are
called, were once more widely spread : the Greek forms of place-names, for
instance, seem to show that they prevailed in N. W. India in the fourth
century B. C. ; but at the present time they are merely an enclave in the
Irānian and Indo-Aryan domains.
They possess an extraordinarily archaic character. Words are still in everyday
use which are almost identical with the forms they assumed in Vedic hymns, and
which now survive only in a much corrupted state in the plains of India.
In their essence languages are neither Irānian nor Indo-Aryan, but are
something between both. (Imp. Gaz. I. p. 356. )
The most natural explanation of these mixed languages is that they are
ancient Āryan (Vedic) dialects which have been overlaid with Irānian as the
result of later invasion. The districts in which they are spoken were
certainly colonised by the early Āryan settlers, for both the Kābul river
(Kubhā) and its tributary the Swāt (Suvāstu) are mentioned in the hymns
of the Rigveda.
The contrary view, expressed in the Imperial Gazetteer I. p. 355), viz.
that the Piçãcha languages are the result of an Aryan invasion of a region
originally Irānian, seems to be less probable. It presuposes the existence of
an early settlement of Āryan in the Pāmirs, distinct from the Aryans proper,
who had entered the Punjab by the valley of the Kābul,' and is thus bound
with the hypothesis of a second wave of Āryan immigration.
up
## p. 47 (#81) ##############################################
II]
SOCIAL INSTITUTION
47
Beyond the Piçãcha languages on the north, and beyond the Outer
Indo-Aryan Band on the west, Irānian forms of speech prevail. The most
important of these, so far as they are represented within the limits of the
Indian Empire, are the Pashto of Afghānistān, the name of which preserves
the memory of the Il'axtves mentioned by Herodotus, and Baloch, the main
language of Baluchistān.
The diversity of speech in the Indian Empire, like the diversity of
race, is naturally explained as the result of invasions from Western and
Further Asia. Such invasions belong to a period which was only brought
to a close by the establishment of the British dominion. The power which
has succeeded in welding all the subordinate ruling powers into one great
system of government is essentially naval ; and since it controls the sea.
ways, it has been forced, in the interests of security, to close the land ways.
This has been the object of British policy in regard to the countries which
lie on the frontiers of the Indian Empire, Afghānistān, Baluchistān, and
Burma. Political isolation has thus followed as a necessary consequence of
political unity. But it must be remembered that this political isolation is a
recent and an entirely novel feature in the history of India. It is the great
landmark which separates the present from the past.
Man has completed the work which nature had begun ; for, as we
have seen, climatic changes had for ages past been making access into India
more and more difficult. The era of tribal migration had long ago come to
an end, and had been succeeded by the era of conquest. All through history
down to the period of British rule we see one foreign power after another
breaking through the north-western gateway, and the strongest of these
winning the suzerainty over India. But the result in all cases was little
more than a change of rulers - the deposition of one dominant caste and
the substitution of another. The lives of the common people, their social
conditions and systems of local government, were barely affected by such
conquests. Indian institutions have therefore a long unbroken history
which makes their study especially valuable.
The chief distinguishing feature of Indian society at the present day
is the caste-system, the origin and growth of which may be traced from an
early period. It now divides the great majority of the inhabitants of Nor-
thern and Southern India into hundreds of self-contained social
castes and sub-castes. A man is obliged to marry outside his family, but
within the caste, and usually within the sub-caste, to which his family be-
longs. A family consists of persons 'reputed to be descended from a common
ancestor, and between whom marriage is prohibited. ' It is the exogamous
social unit. A collection of such units constitutes a sub-caste or caste.
A caste may, therefore, be defined as an endogamous group or collection of such
groups bearing a common name and having the same traditional occupation, who are
.
groups, i. e.
## p. 48 (#82) ##############################################
48
[ch.
PEOPLE AND LANGUAGES
so linked together luy these and other ties, such as the tradition of a common origin and
the possession of the same tutelary deity, and the same social status, ceremonial
observances and family priests that they regard themselves, and are regarded by
others, as ſorming a single homogeneous community. (Census Report, 1911, I).
The institution is essentially Brāhmanical, and it has spread with
the spread of Brāhmanism. It either does not exist, or exists only in an
imperfect state of development, in countries where Buddhism has triumphed,
such as Burma and Ceylon. It would indeed appear to rest ultimately on
two doctrines which are distinctively Brāhmanical - the doctrine of the reli-
gious unity of the family, which is symbolised by the offerings made to
deceased ancestors, and the doctrine of sva-karma, which lays on every man
the obligation to do his duty in that state of life in which he has been
born.
The orthodox Hindu holds that the caste-system is of divine appoint-
ment and that it has existed for all time. But the sacred books themselves,
when they are studied historically, supply evidence both of its origin and
of its growth. The poets of the Rigveda know nothing of caste in the later
and stricter sense of the word ; but they recognise that there are divers
orders of men—the priests (Brahmā or Brāhmana), the nobles (Rājanya
or Kshatriya), the tillers of the soil (Viç or Vaiçya), and the servile classes
(çūdra). Between the first three and the fourth there is a great gulf fixed.
The former are conquering Aryans : the latter are subject Dasyus. The
difference between them is one of colour (varņa) : the Āryans are collec-
tively known as 'the light colour', and the Dasyus as 'the dark colour'.
