CHAPTER III. THE NON-ARYAN RACES. ARYANS or THE present chapter treats of the lower tribes, an obscure The NONpeople, who, in the absence of a race-name of their own, may Aboribe called the non-Aryans or Aborigines. They have left no gines. written records; indeed, the use of letters, or of any simplest hieroglyphics, was to them unknown. The sole works of their hands which have come down to us are rude stone circles, and the upright slabs and mounds, beneath which, like the primitive Kistvaenpeoples of Europe, they buried their dead. From these we only discover that, at some far distant but unfixed period, they knew how to make round pots of hard, thin earthenware, not inelegant in shape; that they fought with iron weapons, and wore ornaments of copper and gold. Rome have been dug up from their graves. Coins of Imperial Still earlier remains prove that, long before their advent, India was peopled as far builders. as the depths of the Central Provinces, by tribes unacquainted Flint with the metals, who hunted and warred with polished flint weapons. axes and other deftly wrought implements of stone, similar to those found in Northern Europe. And even these were the successors of yet ruder beings, who have left their agate knives and rough flint weapons in the Narbada valley. In front of this far-stretching background of the early-Metal and Stone Ages, we see the so-called Aborigines being beaten down by the newly arrived Aryan race. described The struggle is commemorated by the two names which the The Nonvictors gave to the early tribes, namely, the Dasyus, or 'enemies,' Aryans as and the Dásas, or 'slaves.' The new-comers from the north by the prided themselves on their fair complexion, and their Sanskrit Aryans. word for 'colour' (varna) came to mean 'race' or 'caste.' Their earliest poets, 3000 years ago, praised in the Rig-veda their bright gods, who, slaying the Dasyus, protected the The Aryan colour;' who 'subjected the black-skin to the Aryan man.' 'BlackThey tell us of their 'stormy deities, who rush on like furious bulls and scatter the black-skin.' The sacrificer gave thanks to his god for 'dispersing the slave bands of black descent,' and for sweeping away 'the vile Dasyan colour.' Moreover, skin.' Flatnosed. Raweaters. the Aryan, with his finely formed features, loathed the squat Mongolian faces of the Aborigines. One Vedic singer speaks of them as noseless' or flat-nosed, while another praises his own 'beautiful-nosed' gods. Indeed, the Vedic hymns abound in scornful epithets for the primitive tribes, as 'disturbers of sacrifices,' 'gross feeders on flesh,' 'raw-eaters,' 'lawless,' 'notsacrificing,' 'without gods,' and 'without rites.' As time went on, and these rude tribes were driven back into the forest, they were painted in still more hideous shapes, till they became the 'monsters' and 'demons' of the Aryan poet and priest. 'Demons' Their race-name Dasyu, 'enemy,' thus grew to signify a devil, as the old Teutonic word for enemy (still used in that sense in German) has become the English fiend.' The of the Aryan race. More civilised non Aryan tribes. The non they are. Nevertheless, all of them could not have been savages. We hear of wealthy Dasyus, and even the Vedic hymns speak much of their 'seven castles' and' ninety forts.' In later Sanskrit literature, the Aryans make alliance with aboriginal princes; and when history at length dawns on the scene, we find some of the most powerful kingdoms of India ruled by dynasties of non-Aryan descent. Nor were they devoid of religious rites, or of cravings after a future life. 'They adorn,' says a very ancient Sanskrit treatise,1 'the bodies of their dead with gifts, with raiment, with ornaments; imagining that thereby they shall attain the world to come.' These ornaments are the bits of bronze, copper, and gold which we now dig up from beneath their rude stone monuments. In the Sanskrit epic which narrates the advance of the Aryans into Southern India, a non-Aryan chief describes his race as 'of fearful swiftness, unyielding in battle, in colour like a dark-blue cloud.’2 Let us now examine these primitive peoples, not as portrayed Aryans as by their enemies 3000 years ago, but as they exist at the present day. Thrust back by the Aryans from the plains, they have lain hidden away in the recesses of the mountains, like the remains of extinct animals which palæontologists find in hillcaves. India thus forms a great museum of races, in which we can study man from his lowest to his highest stages of culture. The specimens are not fossils or dry bones, but living communities, to whose widely diverse conditions we have to adapt our administration and our laws. The Among the rudest fragments of mankind are the isolated Andaman Andaman islanders in the Bay of Bengal. The old Arab and European voyagers described them as dog-faced man-eaters. islanders. 1 Chandogya Upanishad, viii. 8. 5, Muir's Sanskrit Texts, ii. 369 (1874). 2 Rámáyana (ed. Gorresio), iii. 28. 18. The English officers sent to the islands in 1855 to establish a Settlement, found themselves surrounded by quite naked cannibals of a ferocious type; who daubed themselves when festive with red earth, and mourned in a suit of olive-coloured mud. They used a noise like crying to express friendship or joy; bore only names of common gender, which they received before birth, and which therefore had to be applicable to either sex; and their sole conception of a god was an evil spirit, who spread disease. For five years they repulsed every effort at intercourse with showers of arrows; but our officers slowly brought them to a better frame of mind by building sheds near the Settlement, where these poor beings might find shelter from the tropical rains, and receive medicines and food. The Anamalai Hills, in Southern Madras, form the refuge of Anamalai a whole series of broken tribes. Five hamlets of long-haired, hillmen. wild-looking Puliars live on jungle products, mice, or any small animals they can catch; and worship demons. Another clan, the Mundavers, shrink from contact with the outside world, and possess no fixed dwellings, but wander over the innermost hills with their cattle, sheltering themselves under little leaf sheds, and seldom remaining in one spot more than a year. The thick-lipped, small-bodied Kaders, 'Lords of the Hills,' are a remnant of a higher race. These hills, now almost uninhabited, abound in the great stone monuments (kistvaens and dolmens) which the primitive tribes erected over their dead. The Nairs, or hillmen of South-Western India, still The Nairs. practise polyandry, according to which one woman is the wife of several husbands, and a man's property descends not to his own but to his sister's children. This system also appears among the Himalayan tribes. tribes Provinces. In the Central Provinces, the aboriginal races form a large Nonproportion of the population. In certain Districts, as in the Aryan Feudatory State of Bastár, they amount to three-fifths of the of the inhabitants. Their most important race, the Gonds, have made Central some advances in civilisation; but the wilder tribes still cling The to the forest, and live by the chase. Some of them are Gonds. reported to have used, within a few years back, flint points for their arrows. The Máriás wield bows of great strength, which they hold with their feet while they draw the string with both hands. A still wilder tribe, the Márís, fly from their grass-built huts on the approach of a stranger. Once a year a messenger Taxcomes to them from the local Rájá to take their tribute, which gathering consists chiefly of jungle products. He does not, however, Máris. among the enter their hamlets, but beats a drum outside, and then hides The 'Leaf wearers' Hill himself. The shy Máris creep forth, place what they have to give in an appointed spot, and run back into their retreats. Farther to the north-east, in the Tributary States of Orissa, Juangs or there is a poor tribe, 10,000 in number, of Juangs or Patuas, literally the 'leaf-wearers,' whose women wore no clothes. The of Orissa only covering on the females consisted of a few strings of beads round the waist, with a bunch of leaves tied before and behind. Those under British influence have since been clothed clothed by by order of the Government, and their native chief was persuaded to do the same work for others. In 1871, the English officer called together the clan, and after a speech, handed out strips of cotton for the women to put on. They then passed in single file, to the number of 1900, before him, made obeisance to him, and were afterwards marked on the forehead with vermilion, as a sign of their entering into civilised society. Finally, they gathered the bunches of leaves which had formed their sole clothing into a heap, and set fire to it. Govern ment. A relic of the Stone Age. Juang dwellings. Himalayan tribes. This leaf-wearing tribe had no knowledge of the metals till quite lately, when foreigners came among them, and no word existed in their native language for iron or any other metal. But their country abounds in flint weapons, so that the Juangs form a remnant to our own day of the Stone Age. 'Their huts,' writes the officer who knows them best, 'are among the smallest that human beings ever deliberately constructed as dwellings. They measure about 6 feet by 8. The head of the family and all the females huddle together in this one shell, not much larger than a dog-kennel.' The boys and the young men of the village live in one large building apart by themselves; and this custom of having a common abode for the whole male youth of the hamlet is found among many aboriginal tribes in distant parts of India. Proceeding to the northern boundary of India, we find the slopes and spurs of the Himálayas peopled by a great variety of rude tribes. Some of the Assam hillmen have no word for expressing distance by miles nor any land-measure, but reckon the length of a journey by the number of plugs of tobacco. or pán which they chew upon the way. As a rule, they are fierce, black, undersized, and ill-fed. They eked out a wretched subsistence by plundering the more civilised hamlets of the Assam valley; a means of livelihood which they are but slowly giving up under British rule. Some of the wildest of them, such as the independent Abars, are now engaged as a sort of irregular police, to keep the peace of the border, in return for a yearly gift of cloth, hoes, and grain. Their very names bear witness to their former wild life. One tribe, the Akas of Assam, is divided into two clans, known respectively Akas of as 'The eaters of a thousand hearths,' and 'The thieves who Assam. lurk in the cotton-field.' non Many of the aboriginal tribes, therefore, remain in the same More early stage of human progress as that ascribed to them by the advanced Vedic poets more than 3000 years ago. But others have made Aryan great advances, and form communities of a well-developed tribes. type. I confine myself to a brief description of two of them. The Santáls and the Kandhs inhabit the north-eastern edge of the central plateau. The Santáls have their home among the hills which abut on the Ganges in Lower Bengal. The Kandhs live about 200 miles to the south, on the spurs and ridges which look down upon the Orissa delta. govern ment. The Santáls dwell in villages in the jungles or among the The mountains, apart from the people of the plains. They Santáls. number about a million, and give their name to a large District, the SANTAL PARGANAS, 140 miles north-west of Calcutta. Although still clinging to many customs of a hunting forest tribe, they have learned the use of the plough, and settled down into skilful husbandmen. Each hamlet is governed by its own head-man, who is supposed to be a descendant of the original founder of the village, and who is Santál assisted by a deputy head-man and a watchman. The boys of village the hamlet have their separate officers, and are strictly controlled by their own head and his deputy till they enter the married state. The Santáls know not the cruel distinctions of Hindu caste, but trace their tribes, usually fixed at seven, to the seven sons of the first parents. The whole village feasts, hunts, and worships together; and the Santál must take his wife, not from his own tribe, but from one of the six others. So strong is the bond of race, that expulsion from No castes, the tribe was the only Santál punishment. A heinous criminal but strong was cut off from 'fire and water' in the village, and sent forth feeling. alone into the jungle. Minor offences were forgiven upon a public reconciliation with the tribe; to effect which the guilty one had to provide a feast, with much rice-beer, for his clansmen. tribal Santál The chief ceremonies in a Santál's life, six in number, vary The six in different parts of the country, but all bear upon this strong cerefeeling of kinship. The first is the admission of the newly-monies. born child into the family,-a secret rite, one act of which consists in the father placing his hand on the infant's head and repeating the name of the ancestral deity. The second, the admission of the child into the tribe, is celebrated three or five F |