Ethnography Castes And Tribes

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Excerpt from Ethnography: Castes and Tribes In the present day it is represented by the wild tribes of the Central Belt, and in a higher state of culture by the population ofthe southern portions of the Peninsula. On philological grounds, the people south of the Belt are distinguished from those further north. The former, known as Dravidian, seem always to have kept to their present localities, except in a few cases where tribes have migrated into the Belt within historic times. The other race, to which the title of koi or Munda, is generally attached, is not known south of the forest Belt, in which it is at the present time concentrated under its distinctive tribal appellations. Formerly, however, it was spread over the whole of the great plains of Upper India, and, according to recent philological discoveries, it is akin, at least in language, to communities now settled on the borders of Assam, and far to the east of the Bay of Bengal. Some investigators, indeed, spread its former habitat over a still wider area. In the east and north-east of India, however, its identity has been obscured, if not obliterated, by the successive immigra tions of people of Mongoloidic race from eastern Tibet and the head waters of the great Chinese rivers, whose main streams of migration have sought the sea by the valleys of the Irawadi, Salwln and Mekhong. In the Gangetic plain the type is traceable throughout the population, slightly, indeed, along the Jamna, but more distinctly as the east is approached, and almost everywhere more prevalent as the social position is lower. This graduation is due to miscegenation between the K6], who, as far as ethnography is concerned, may be considered the autochthonous inhabitant of these tracts, and a taller and fairer race, which entered India by the passes of the North-west or the plains of Baluchistan. More than one such race are known to history, but in most cases their impact upon India was sharp but short; not, at any rate, of a character to leave a permanent impression upon the population. Such, for instance, was the connection of the Macedonians with the Panjab. More durable though still in few cases amounting to settlement or colonisation, were the principalities set up from time to time in the North-west by scions of the race or races termed Scythian, of whom more will be said below. The only immigrating race of practical importance in connection with the present subject, is that of the Aryas, whose advent and progress are indirectly, and to a great extent conjecturally, revealed in the collection of their invocations handed down from perhaps as early as 3000 B C, in the Rgveda and the sacerdotal literature appended to it at later dates. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.