by which these wild races have been reclaimed, form some of Character The hill and forest tribes differ in character from the The non tribes as "They are faithful, truthful, and attached to their superiors,' Aryan hill writes General Briggs; 'ready at all times to lay down their soldiers. lives for those they serve, and remarkable for their indomitable courage. These qualities have always been displayed in our service. The aborigines of the Karnatik were the sepoys of Clive and of Coote. A few companies of the same stock joined the former great captain from Bombay, and helped to fight the battle of Plassey in Bengal, which laid the foundation of our Indian Empire. They have since distinguished themselves in the corps of pioneers and engineers, not only in India, but in Ava, in Afghánistán, and in the celebrated defence of Jalálábád. An unjust prejudice against them grew up in the native armies of Madras and Bombay, produced by the feelings of contempt for them existing among the Hindu and Muhammadan troops. They have no prejudices themselves; are always ready to serve abroad and embark on board ship; and I believe no instance of mutiny has ever occurred among them.' Since General Briggs wrote these HIGH QUALITIES OF NON-ARYANS. 73 sentences, the non-Aryan hill races have supplied some of the bravest and most valued of our Indian regiments, particularly the gallant little Gurkhas. Dixon on the Colonel Dixon's report, published by the Court of Directors, Colonel portrays the character of the Mhair tribes with admirable minuteness. He dilates on their 'fidelity, truth, and honesty,' their Mhairs. determined valour, their simple loyalty, and an extreme and almost touching devotion when put upon their honour. Strong as is the bond of kindred among the Mhairs, he vouches for their fidelity in guarding even their own relatives as prisoners when formally entrusted to their care. For centuries they had been known only as exterminators; but beneath the considerate handling of one Englishman, who honestly set about understanding them, they became peaceful subjects and welldisciplined soldiers. work Sir James Outram, when a very young man, did the same Outram's good work for the Bhils of KHANDESH. He made their chiefs among the his hunting companions, formed the wilder spirits into a Bhíl Bhils. battalion, and laid the basis for the reclamation of this formerly intractable race. (See also THE DANGS, Imperial Gazetteer of India.) the hill races. Every military man who has had anything to do with the aboriginal races acknowledges, that once they admit a claim on their allegiance, nothing tempts them to a treacherous or disloyal act. "The fidelity to their acknowledged chief,' wrote Captain Fidelity of Hunter, 'is very remarkable; and so strong is their attachment, that in no situation or condition, however desperate, can they be induced to betray him. If old and decrepit, they will convey him from place to place, to save him from his enemies.' Their obedience to recognised authority is absolute; and Colonel Tod relates how the wife of an absent chieftain procured for a British messenger safe-conduct and hospitality through the densest forests by giving him one of her husband's arrows as a token. The very officers who have had to act most sharply against them speak most strongly, and often not without a noble regret and self-reproach, in their favour. was not war,' Major Vincent Jervis writes of the operations against the Santáls in 1855. They did not understand yielding; as long as their national drums beat, the whole party would stand, and allow themselves to be shot down. They were the most truthful set of men I ever met.' 'It Ethnical distribution of Indian We have seen that India may be divided into three regions— the Himalayas on the north, the great River Plains that stretch races. southward from their foot, and the Three-sided Table-land which slopes upwards again from the River Plains, and covers the whole southern half of India. Two of these regions, the Himalayas on the north, and the Three-sided Table-land in the south, still afford retreats to the non-Aryan tribes. The third region, or the great River Plains, became in very ancient times the theatre on which a nobler race worked out its civilisation. CHAPTER IV. THE ARYANS IN ANCIENT INDIA. STOCK. THIS nobler race belonged to the ARYAN or Indo-Germanic THE stock, from which the Bráhman, the Rájput, and the English- ARYAN man alike descend. Its earliest home, visible to history, was in Central Asia. From that common camping-ground, certain branches of the race started for the east, others for the west. One of the western offshoots founded the Persian kingdom; another built Athens and Lacedæmon, and became the Hellenic nation; a third went on to Italy, and reared the City on the Its Seven Hills, which grew into Imperial Rome. A distant European colony of the same race excavated the silver-ores of prehistoric Spain; and when we first catch a sight of ancient England, we see an Aryan settlement fishing in wattle canoes, and working the tin mines of Cornwall. Meanwhile, other Its branches of the Aryan stock had gone forth from the primitive Eastern home in Central Asia to the east. Powerful bands found their way through the passes of the Himalayas into the Punjab, and spread themselves, chiefly as Bráhmans and Rájputs, over India. branches. branches. their We know little regarding these Aryan tribes in their early The camping-ground in Central Asia. From words preserved in Aryans in the languages of their long-separated descendants in Europe. primitive and India, scholars infer that they roamed over the grassy home. steppes with their cattle, making long halts to rear crops of grain. They had tamed most of the domestic animals; were acquainted with a hard metal, probably iron,' and silver; understood the arts of weaving and sewing; wore clothes; and ate cooked food. They lived the hardy life of the temperate zone, and the feeling of cold seems to be one of the earliest common remembrances of the eastern and the western branches of the race. Ages afterwards, when the Vedic singers in hot 1 Sanskrit, ayas, iron or, in a more general sense, metal, including gold but not copper in Sanskrit ; Latin, aes, aeris, copper, bronze; Gothic, ais, eisam; old German, er, iron; modern German, eisen. 2 * Sanskrit, kharjura, silver; Latin, argentum; Greek, äpyupos, ¿pyúpisv. 2 varieties of Aryan speech. India prayed for long life, they still asked for a hundred winters.' To this day the November rice in the tropical delta of the Ganges is called the haimántik (cf. Latin hiems) or crop of the 'snowy' season. The forefathers of the Greek and the Roman, of the Englishman and the Hindu, dwelt together in Asia, spoke the same European tongue, worshipped the same gods. The languages of Europe and Indian and India, although at first sight they seem wide apart, are languages merely merely different growths from the original Aryan speech. This is especially true of the common words of family life. The names for father, mother, brother, sister, and widow (Sanskrit, vidhavá), are the same in most of the Aryan languages, whether spoken on the banks of the Ganges, of the Tiber, or of the Thames. Thus the word daughter (Sanskrit, duhitri), which occurs in nearly all of them, has been derived from the Sanskrit root duh, 'milk,' and preserves the memory of the time when the daughter was the little milkmaid in the primitive Aryan household. Indo words. The words preserved alike by the European and Indian European branches of the Aryan race, as heirlooms of their common home in Western Central Asia, include most of the terms required by a pastoral people who had already settled down to the cultivation of the more easily reared crops. Their domesticated animals are represented by names derived from the same root, for cattle, sheep, wool, goats, swine, dogs, horses, ducks, geese; also mice; their agricultural life, by cognate words for corn (although the particular species of the cereal varied), flax or hemp, ploughing and grinding; their implements, by cognate terms for copper or iron, cart or waggon, boat, helm; their household economy and industries, by words from the same roots for sewing and weaving, house, garden, yard; also for a place of refuge, the division of the year into lunar months, and several of the numerals. Common The ancient religions of Europe and India had a similar origin of origin. They were to some extent made up of the sacred European and Indian stories or myths which our common ancestors had learned religions. while dwelling together in Central Asia. Certain of the Vedic gods were also the gods of Greece and Rome; and the Deity The Indo- |