whom no express agreement had been made to the contrary. Murders were punished by blood-revenge, the kinsmen within Blooda certain degree being one and all bound to kill the slayer, revenge. unless appeased by a payment of grain or cattle. The man who wounded another had to maintain the sufferer until he recovered from his hurt. A stolen article must be returned, or its equivalent paid; but the Kandh twice convicted of theft was driven forth from his tribe, the greatest punishment known to the race. Disputes were settled by combat, or by the ordeal of boiling oil or heated iron, or by taking a solemn oath on an ant-hill, or on a tiger's claw, or a lizard's skin. When a house-father died, leaving no sons, his land was parcelled out among the other male heads of the village; for no woman, nor indeed any Kandh, was allowed to hold land who could not with his own hand defend it. ture. The Kandh system of tillage represented a stage half-way Kandh between the migratory cultivation of the ruder non-Aryan agricul tribes and the settled agriculture of the Hindus. They did not, on the one hand, merely burn down a patch in the jungle, take a few crops off it, and then move on to fresh clearings. Nor, on the other hand, did they go on cultivating the same fields from father to son. When their lands showed signs of exhaustion, they deserted them; and it was a rule in some of their settlements to change their village sites once in fourteen years. Caste is unknown; and, as among the Santáls, marriage between relations, or even within the same tribe, is forbidden. A Kandh wedding consisted of forcibly Kandh carrying off the bride in the middle of a feast. The boy's father paid a price for the girl, and usually chose a strong ture.' one, several years older than his son. In this way, Kandh maidens were married about fourteen, Kandh boys about ten. The bride remained as a servant in her new father-in-law's house till her boy-husband grew old enough to live with her. She generally acquired a great influence over him; and a Kandh may not marry a second wife during the life of his first one, except with her consent. marriages by 'Cap the Kandh village. The Kandh engaged only in husbandry and war, and despised Serfs of all other work. But attached to each village was a row of hovels inhabited by a lower race, who were not allowed to hold land, to go forth to battle, or to join in the village worship. These poor people did the dirty work of the hamlet, and supplied families of hereditary weavers, blacksmiths, potters, herdsmen, and distillers. They were kindly treated, and a portion of each feast was left for them. But they could never rise in the Kandh human sacrifices. The victims. The sacrifice. The Kandhs under British rule. Human sacrifices abolished. social scale. No Kandh could engage in their work without degradation, nor eat food prepared by their hands. They can give no account of their origin, but are supposed to be the remnants of a ruder race whom the Kandhs found in possession of the hills when they themselves were pushed backwards by the Aryans from the plains. The Kandhs, like the Santáls, have many deities, race-gods, tribe-gods, family-gods, and a multitude of malignant spirits and demons. But their great divinity is the Earth-god, who represents the productive energy of nature. Twice each year, at sowing-time and at harvest, and in all seasons of special calamity, the Earth-god required a human sacrifice (meriah). The duty of providing the victims rested with the lower race attached to the Kandh village. Brahmáns and Kandhs were the only classes exempted from sacrifice, and an ancient rule ordained that the offering must be bought with a price. Men of the lower race kidnapped the victims from the plains, and a thriving Kandh village usually kept a small stock in reserve, 'to meet sudden demands for atonement.' The victim, on being brought to the hamlet, was welcomed at every threshold, daintily fed, and kindly treated till the fatal day arrived. He was then solemnly sacrificed to the Earth-god, the Kandhs shouting in his dying ear, 'We bought you with a price; no sin rests with us!' His flesh and blood were distributed among the village lands. The In 1835, the Kandhs passed under our rule, and these rites had to cease. The proud Kandh spirit shrank from compulsion; but after many tribal councils, they agreed to give up their stock of victims as a valuable present to their new suzerain. Care was taken that they should not procure fresh ones. kidnapping of victims for human sacrifice was declared a capital offence; and their priests were led to discover that goats or buffaloes did quite as well for the Earth-god under British rule as human sacrifices. Until 1835, they consisted of separate tribes, always at war with each other and with the world. But under able English administrators (especially Campbell, Macpherson, and Cadenhead), human sacrifices were abolished, and the Kandhs were formed into a united and peaceful race (1837-45). The British officer removed their old necessity for tribal wars and family blood-feuds by setting himself up as a central authority. He adjusted their inter-tribal disputes, The race and punished heinous crimes. Lieutenant Charters Macpherson, won over in particular, won over the more troublesome clans to quiet to peaceful industry. industry, by grants of jungle tracts, of little use to us, but a THE THREE NON-ARYAN STOCKS. 63 paradise to them, and where he could keep them well under the non Whence came these primitive peoples, whom the Aryan Origin of invaders found in the land more than 3000 years ago, and who Aryan are still scattered over India, the fragments of a pre-historic tribes. world? Written annals they do not possess. Their oral traditions tell us little; but such hints as they yield, feebly point NonAryan to the north. They seem to preserve dim memories of a time traditions. when their tribes dwelt under the shadow of mightier hill ranges than any to be found on the south of the river plains of Bengal. 'The Great Mountain' is the race-god of the Santáls, and an object of worship among other tribes. Indeed, the Gonds, who numbered 1million in the heart of Central India in 1872, have a legend that they were created at the foot of Dewálagiri peak in the Himalayas. Till lately, they buried their dead with the feet turned northwards, so as to be ready to start again for their ancient home in the north. speech. But the language of the non-Aryan races, that record of a Nonnation's past more enduring than rock-inscriptions or tables of Aryan brass, is being slowly made to tell the secret of their origin. It already indicates that the early peoples of India belonged to The three three great stocks, known as the Tibeto-Burman, the Kolarian, nonand the Dravidian. Aryan stocks. Tibeto The first stock, or Tibeto-Burman tribes, cling to the skirts (1) The of the Himalayas and their north-eastern offshoots. They Burmans. crossed over into India by the north-eastern passes, and in some pre-historic time had dwelt in Central Asia, side by side with the forefathers of the Mongolians and the Chinese. Several of the hill languages in Eastern Bengal preserve Chinese terms, others contain Mongolian. Thus, the Nágás in Assam still use words for three and water which might almost be understood in the streets of Canton.1 1 The following are the twenty principal languages of the Tibeto-Burman group :-(1) Cachari or Bodo, (2) Gáro, (3) Tipura or Mrung, (4) Tibetan or Bhutiá, (5) Gurung, (6) Murmi, (7) Newar, (8) Lepchá, (9) Miri, (10) Aka, (11) Mishmi dialects, (12) Dhimal, (13) Kanáwari dialects, (14) Míkir, (15) Singpho, (16) Nágá dialects, (17) Kuki dialects, (18) Burmese, (2) The Kolarians (3) The Dravidi ans. The Kolarians, the second of the three non-Aryan stocks, appear also to have entered Bengal by the north-eastern passes. They dwell chiefly in the north, and along the north-eastern edge, of the three-sided table-land which covers the southern half of India. The Dravidians, or third stock, seem, generally speaking, on the other hand, to have found their way into the Punjab by the north-western passes. They now inhabit the southern part of the three-sided table-land, as far down as Cape Comorin, the southernmost point of India. It appears as if the two streams, namely the Kolarian tribes from the north-east and the Their con- Dravidians from the north-west, had converged and crossed each other in Central India. The Dravidians proved the stronger, broke up the Kolarians, and thrust aside their fragments to east and west. The Dravidians then rushed forward in a mighty body to the south. vergence in Central India. The Kolarians broken up. It thus came to pass that while the Dravidians formed a vast mass in Southern India, the Kolarians survived only as isolated tribes, so scattered as to soon forget their common (19) Khyeng, and (20) Manipuri. It is impossible,' writes Mr. Brandreth, THE KOLARIAN TRIBES. 65 origin. We have seen one of the largest of the Kolarian races, the Santáls, dwelling on the extreme eastern edge of the threesided table-land, where it slopes down into the Gangetic valley. The Kurkus, a broken Kolarian tribe, inhabit a patch of country about 400 miles to the west. They have for perhaps thousands of years been cut off from the Santáls by mountains and pathless forests, and by intervening races of the Dravidian and Aryan stocks. The Kurkus and Santáls have Scattered no tradition of a common origin; yet at this day the Kurkus Kolarian fragments. speak a language which is little else than a dialect of Santáli. The Savars, once a great Kolarian tribe, mentioned by Pliny and Ptolemy, are now a poor wandering race of woodcutters in Northern Madras and Orissa. Yet fragments of them have lately been found deep in Central India, and as far west as Rajputána on the other side. The Juángs are an isolated non-Aryan remnant among an Aryan and Uriya-speaking population. They have forgotten, and disclaim, any connection with the Hos or other Kolarian tribes. Nevertheless, their common origin is attested by a number of Kolarian words which they have unconsciously preserved.1 The compact Dravidians in the south, although in after-days 1 The nine principal languages of the Kolarian group are—(1) the Santál, (2) Mundári, (3) Ho, (4) Bhumij, (5) Korwa, (6) Kharria, (7) Juáng, (8) Kurku, and perhaps (9) the Savar. Some of them, however, are separated only by dialectical differences. 'The Kolarian group of languages,' writes Mr. Brandreth, has both the cerebral and dental row of letters, and also aspirated forms, which last, according to Caldwell, did not belong to early Dravidian. There is also a set of four sounds, which are perhaps peculiar to Santáli, called by Skrefsrud semi-consonants, and which, when followed by a vowel, are changed respectively into g, j, d, and b. Gender of nouns is animate and inanimate, and is distinguished by difference of pronouns, by difference of suffix of a qualifying noun in the genitive relation, and by the gender being denoted by the verb. As instances of the genitive suffix, we have in Santáli in-ren hopon "my son,", but in-ak orak "my house." There is no distinction of sex in the pronouns, but of the animate and inanimate gender. The dialects generally agree in using a short form of the third personal pronoun suffixed to denote the number, dual and plural, of the noun, and short forms of all the personal pronouns are added to the verb in certain positions to express both number and person, both as regards the subject and object, if of the animate gender; the inanimate gender being indicated by the omission of these suffixes. No other group of languages, apparently, has such a logical classification of its nouns as that shown by the genders of both the South Indian groups. The genitive in the Kolarian group of the full personal pronouns is used for the possessive pronoun, which again takes all the post-positions, the genitive relation being thus indicated by the genitive suffix twice repeated. The Kolarian languages generally express grammatical relations by suffixes, and add the post-positions directly to the root, without the intervention of an VOL. VI. E |