10

India.

From time immemorial India has been famous CHAPTER I. for the richness and variety of its products. Espe- Products of cially it has furnished abundant food for man, excepting at intervals of drought and famine. For those who live on animal food, there is a great variety of game, as well as sheep, goats, and poultry of every kind. For those who are contented with a more simple diet, there is a superfluity of rice and rother grains, and of such condiments as pepper, mustard, and numerous spices. Fruit and vegetables are to be found in luxurious plenty, especially the nutritious plantain, the rich custard-apple, the red grape-like lechee, the delicate pine-apple, the musk and water melon, the juicy pomegranate, and above all the delicious mango, which is often larger than the largest pear, and as luscious as an English apricot. Almost every other requirement of humanity is also bountifully provided. The cotton shrub supplies ample clothing for so warm a climate. The bamboo and cocoa-nut tree furnish every material necessary for building a house, for binding it together with cordage, and for matting its sides. The forests contain some of the finest timber. mines, which are now apparently exhausted, seem to have been overflowing in ancient times with precious stones and metals; whilst the seas that washed the southern coasts, especially those of the island of Ceylon, abounded in oysters which produced the finest pearls.

The

rents of immi

Attractions such as these would naturally draw Different cur swarms of adventurers from over-populated or less gration. favoured climes; and it is easy to conceive that

the earliest tides of immigration would have followed

the course of the two monsoons. Thus in the re

CHAPTER I. motest past nondescripts from the unknown south and west of a bygone world may have been driven in rude craft by the south-west monsoon from the southern and Indian oceans towards the western coasts of the Peninsula and Dekhan. Meantime, tides of Turanian invasion may have been driven by the chilly blasts of the north-east monsoon, through the eastern Himalayas down the valley of the Brahmaputra. Finally, in a later age the Aryans on the north-west seem to have entered the Punjab and prepared for the invasion of Hindustan. These collisions of rival races were doubtless followed by those intermittent wars for land and subsistence, which seem to have characterized the progress of the human race from the earliest age of stone and iron. Invaders from the sea would drive the inhabitants of the coast into the interior. Immigrants from upper Asia would drive the inhabitants of the fertile plains into the hills and jungles. The territories occupied by the several bands of invaders would be constantly exposed to the ravages and outrages of marauders on the border. Thus the entire Indian continent would be filled with strife and anarchy; and men would secure their harvests, not merely by the ploughshare and the reaping-hook, but by the sword, the spear, and the bow.

Kolarians, or aborigines.

The races who occupied India prior to the Vedic Aryans have been excluded from the division of the ancient history into Vedic and Brahmanic times. Indeed they have no history apart from Vedic and Brahmanic traditions. The remains of so-called aboriginal races may be treasured up as memorials of primitive man, but they furnish few data which are available for the purposes of history.

SC For ages their relics have been turning to dust in CHAPTER I. ri caves or cromlechs, or lying buried beneath the it shapeless mounds which cover the sites of departed ste cities. A few dry bones, a few weapons of stone tic and rusted metal, a scattering of nameless impletments and ornaments, are occasionally discovered

amongst the debris of ancient settlements and formgotten battle-fields, which for ages have passed into oblivion. But such vestiges of the past can only interest the antiquarian, and throw no light upon religious or political culture. In the course of ages many of the primitive races may have been incor¿porated in the general population, and form in the present day the lower strata of the Hindú social system. Others, again, are still undergoing the gradual process of being Hinduized, although they are not I as yet recognized as forming a part of the Hindú e population. Living representatives of primitive races are still, however, lingering in secluded and dife ficult regions, but they have long ceased to play any important part in the annals of humanity. They represent the human race in its earliest childhood; and their pleasures and ideas are those of children modified more or less by the intercourse of the sexes. They may open up new fields of labour to the philanthropist and the missionary; they may be received into the Brahmanical pale, or be induced to accept Islam or Christianity; but their intellectual life has ebbed away, perchance never to be restored. In the later annals of India some of the tribes occasionally rise to the surface, and then drop back into their old obscurity; and it will accordingly suffice to describe them as they individually appear. For the convenience of refer

CHAPTER I. ence they are best generalized under the term of Kolarians.*

Dravidians:

Telugu, Tamil,"

Malayalam.

But there is one important race who can neither Kanarese, and be referred to an Aryan or Kolarian origin; who must have occupied a prominent position in the old Indian world which has passed away, and may yet have a high destiny to fulfil in the India which is to be. This is the great Dravidian race of the southern Peninsula. The Dravidians apparently entered India long before the Aryans, but it is impossible to say by what route. Their cradle was probably in some distant region in upper Asia. There they seem to have overflowed their ancient limits, and moved in successive waves of immigration into Hindustan. Their subsequent history is

5

A broad light has been recently thrown upon the pre-Aryan tribes by Colonel Dalton's valuable work, entitled "Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal." As far back as 1866 Dr Fayrer, of Indian celebrity, proposed a grand scheme for bringing together in one exhibition at Calcutta, typical examples of the races of the old world. It is much to be regretted that this scheme could not be realized, but so many difficulties were raised that the British Government declined to accept the responsibilities of the exhibition. The fullest information, however, respecting these tribes was collected from the local officers by the British Government, and entrusted to the editorship of Colonel Dalton, who has spent the greater portion of a long service in Assam and Chota Nagpore, the most interesting fields of ethnographical research in all Bengal. In 1872 Colonel Dalton produced his handsome volume, which is not only a treasury of authentic information, but is illustrated by a series of lithograph portraits of the principal tribes copied from excellent photographs taken on the spot.

Colonel Dalton comprises all the non-Aryan tribes under two heads, namely:1. The Kolarian, or those who speak a language allied with that of the Kols, Santals, Múndas, and their cognates.

2. The Dravidian, or those who speak a language allied with the Tamil or Telugu.

Colonel Dalton also treats of an important people, numbering several millions, who are certainly non-Aryan, but who have lost their language and traditions, and have so largely adopted Hindú customs and religion that they can only be called Hinduized aborigines.

5 The question as to the origin of the Dravidian people is still open to discussion. Dr Caldwell, who has spent many years in the south of India, speaks of them as of Turanian affinities, who entered India probably earlier than the Aryans, but across the lower Indus. Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian of South Indian Family of Languages, by the Rev. R. Caldwell.

nearly a blank; but they may perhaps be traced CHAPTER I. through the Dekhan on their way to the Peninsula, where they became fused into separate nationalities, each having its own language and institutions, so that it is difficult to say how far they may be referred to the same parent stem. In ancient times they established empires which were once the centres of wealth and civilization, but which only appear on the page of history when their political power was drawing to a close. In the present day they cover an area corresponding to the limits of the Madras presidency. They are represented by the Telugu, the Tamil, the Kanarese, and the Malayalam speaking people of the Peninsula. Their political life has stagnated under Brahmanical oppression and Mussulman rule; but they are already quickening into new energy under the healthy stimulus of western culture. The Dravidian people are indeed endowed with a latent vitality which stands out in marked contrast to the lassitude of the Bengalee; and when they have thrown off the spiritual thraldom of the Bráhmans, and subordinated their caste system to the interests of the common weal, they will begin to play an important part in the regeneration of the Indian world.

ligion.

The religion of the Dravidian race has long Dravidian rebeen crusted over by Brahmanism, but still the old faiths are sufficiently perceptible. The people worship guardian deities of the village and household; and every man has his own patron god. The serpent is everywhere respected, and more or less propitiated. The linga too is regarded as a symbol of the power of reproduction, and emblem of the supreme being; and it would thus appear that much