LIST OF 142 NON-ARYAN TRIBES.

67

non

Aryan

The following is a list of 142 of the principal non-Aryan List of languages and dialects, prepared by Mr. Brandreth for the Royal Asiatic Society in 1877, and classified according to their gram- lanmatical structure. Mr. Robert Cust has also arranged them in guages. another convenient form, according to their geographical habitat.

sub-divided, in some of the languages, but in the singular only, into masculine and feminine. The grammatical relations in the Dravidian are generally expressed by suffixes. Many nouns have an oblique form, which is a remarkable characteristic of the Dravidian group; still, with the majority of nouns, the post-positions are added directly to the nominative form. Other features of this group are-the frequent use of formatives to specialize the meaning of the root; the absence of relative pronouns and the use instead of a relative participle, which is usually formed from the ordinary participle by the same suffix as that which Dr. Caldwell considers as the oldest sign of the genitive relation; the adjective preceding the substantive; of two substantives, the determining preceding the determined; and the verb being the last member of the sentence. There is no true dual in the Dravidian languages. In the Dravidian languages there are two forms of the plural of the pronoun of the first person, one including, the other excluding, the person addressed. As regards the verbs, there is a negative voice, but no passive voice, and there is a causal form.' Bishop Caldwell's second edition of his great work, the Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages (Trübner, 1875), forms in itself an epoch in that department of human knowledge. Mr. Beames' Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India (Trübner, 1872) has laid the foundation for the accurate study of North Indian speech. Colonel Dalton's Ethnology of Bengal (Calcutta, 1872), and Sir George Campbell's Specimens of the Languages of India (Bengal Secretariat Press, 1874), have also shed new and valuable light on the questions involved.

1 Brackets refer to dialects that are very closely related ; † to languages beyond the circle of the Indian languages. (See list above and on next page.)

NON-ARYAN CENSUS OF INDIA.

69

lation

We discern, therefore, long before the dawn of history, Recapitumasses of men moving uneasily over India, and violently the nonpushing in among still earlier tribes. They crossed the snows Aryan of the Himalayas, and plunged into the tropical forests in races. search of new homes. Of these ancient races, fragments now exist almost in exactly the same stage of human progress as they were described by Vedic poets more than 3000 years ago. Some are dying out, such as the Andaman islanders, among whom in 1869 only one family had as many as three children. Others are increasing like the Santáls, who have doubled themselves under British rule. But they all require special and anxious care in adapting our complex administration to their primitive condition and needs. Taken as a whole, and including certain half-Hinduized branches, they numbered 17,627,758 in 1872, then about equal to three-quarters of the population of England and Wales. But while the bolder or more isolated of the aboriginal races have thus kept themselves apart, by far the greater portion submitted in ancient times to the Aryan invaders, and now make up the mass of the Hindus.

The following table shows the distribution of the aboriginal Distributribes throughout British India in 1872. But many live in tion of aborigines Native States, not included in this enumeration; and the in India Madras Census of 1872 did not distinguish aborigines from in 1872. low-caste Hindus. Their total number throughout all India (British and Feudatory) probably exceeded 20 millions in 1872.

Aboriginal Tribes and Semi-Hinduized Aborigines in 1872.

(Madras Presidency and the Feudatory States not included.)

As already stated, the Census of 1881 adopted a classification Aborigines. which fails to clearly distinguish the aboriginal elements in the in 1881. Indian population. In the North-Western Provinces, Oudh,

Not

returned.

and the Punjab, which returned an aggregate of nearly 11 millions of aboriginal or non-Aryan castes or tribes in 1872, no separate return of the aboriginal or non-Aryan element was made in 1881. It is merged by the enumerators in the returns separately of the Hindu low-castes. The same process has affected the returns of other Provinces. In Madras, for example, 27 castes formerly included in the list of aboriginal tribes, were transferred to the Hindu section of the population. In Bengal, the Census officers explain that the non-registration of the aboriginal element is in some cases due to 'radical differences in the system upon which the castes, and especially the sub-divisions of castes, were classified in 1872 and in 1881.' In the NorthWestern Provinces and Oudh, the special officer states that his system of classification 'is not compatible with the modern doctrine which divides the population of India into Aryan and aboriginal.'

No common data for 1872 and 1881.

Hinduiz ing ten. dencies.

Under these circumstances it would be misleading to attempt a comparison between the returns of the aboriginal or nonAryan population in 1872 and in 1881. On the one hand, there can be no doubt that the aboriginal castes and tribes are, in many parts of the country, tending towards Hinduism; and that many of them, as they rise in the scale of civilisation, lose their identity in the Hindu community. On the other hand, it is evident that the decreased returns of the aboriginal tribes and castes in 1881 are not entirely, or indeed chiefly, due to this process. It would be erroneous, therefore, to infer that the balance of 12 millions between the 171 millions of aborigines returned for British India in 1872 and the 4 millions nominally returned in 1881, had become Hindus.

A Hinduizing process is going on both among the aboriginal low castes in Hindu Provinces, and among the aboriginal tribes who border on such Provinces. But the apparent disappearance of nearly 13 millions of aborigines between 1872 and 1881 is due, not so much to this Hinduizing process, as to differences in the system of classification and registration adopted by the Census officers. That the disappearance of the Indian aborigines is apparent and not real, can be proved. The birth-rate among some of the aboriginal races is unusually high; and, with exceptions, the aboriginal tribes and castes are numerically increasing, although they are partially merging their separate identity in the Hindu. community.

In Bengal and Assam, the aboriginal races are divided into

CRUSHED TRIBES; PREDATORY CLANS. 71

nearly 60 distinct tribes,1

In the North-Western Provinces, Their

races in

16 tribes of aborigines were enumerated in the Census of 1872. principal In the Central Provinces they numbered 13 millions (1872); the 1872. ancient race of Gonds, who ruled the central table-land before the rise of the Maráthás, alone amounting to 1 millions. In British Burma, the Karens, whose traditions have a singularly Jewish tinge, numbered 330,000 in 1872, and 518,294 in 1881.

In Oudh, the nationality of the aboriginal tribes has been Crushed buried beneath waves of Rajput and Muhammadan invaders. tribes. For example, the Bhars, formerly the monarchs of the centre and east of that Province, and the traditional fort-builders to whom all ruins are popularly assigned, were stamped out by Ibráhím Shárki of Jaunpur, in the 15th century. The Gaulis or ancient ruling race of the Central Provinces, the Ahams of Assam, and the Gonds, Chandels, and Bundelas of Bundelkhand,2 are other instances of crushed races. In centres of the Aryan civilisation, the aboriginal peoples have been pounded down in the mortar of Hinduism, into the low-castes and out-castes on which the social fabric of India rests. A few of them, how- Gipsy ever, still preserve their ethnical identity as wandering tribes clans. of jugglers, basket-weavers, and fortune-tellers. Thus, the

Náts, Bediyas, and other gipsy clans are recognised to this day as distinct from the surrounding Hindu population.

tribes on

The aboriginal races on the plains have supplied the Aboriginal hereditary criminal classes, alike under the Hindus, the criminal Muhammadans, and the British. Formerly organized robber the plains. communities, they have, under the stricter police of our days, sunk into petty pilferers. But their existence is still recognised by the Criminal Tribes Act, passed so lately as 1871, and still enforced within certain localities of Oudh and Northern India.

hill races.

The non-Aryan hill races, who appear from Vedic times down- Predatory wards as marauders, have at length ceased to be a disturbing element in India. But many of them figure as predatory clans in Muhammadan and early British history. They sallied forth from their mountains at the end of the autumn harvest, pillaged and burned the lowland villages, and retired to their fastnesses laden with the booty of the plains. The measures

1 Among them may be noted the Santáls, 850,000 under direct British administration, total about a million in 1872; Kols, 300,000; Uráons or Dhangars, 200,000; and Mundas, 175,000-within British territory. In Assam-Cacharís, 200,000; Khásis, 95,000. These figures all refer to

1872.

* See for the origin of the Bundelas, Mr. J. Beames' Races of the NorthWestern Provinces, vol. i. p. 45, etc. (1869).