It is necessary, once more, to remind the reader that the peninsula of India has an area and population roughly equal to the area and population of Europe without Russia. Everyone who has learnt geography at school is familiar with the great triangle, its base in the soaring Himalayan heights in the north, its apex jutting into the Indian Ocean, and marked by the satellite island of Ceylon. To the north, then, is the great mountain barrier, a tangled mass of snowy peaks, glaciers and snowfields, separating the sunny plains of India proper from the plateaux of Central Asia. Beneath them lie wide river basins, sandy and dry as unirrigated Egypt to the west; moist, warm, and waterlogged to the east. To the south of the valleys of the Indus and the Ganges is the central plateau, home of many aboriginal races. This rises on the west into a castellated rampart of hills facing the Arabian Sea, and on the south slopes away into green undulating uplands. So much, at least, of geographical description must be given as a clue to the distribution of the peoples of India. Along the Himalayas, growing stronger in numbers as we go eastwards, are races mostly of a Mongolian type, mingled with purely Indian elements. In the Panjab and the United Provinces, sending offshoots southwards along the well-watered west coast, are the peoples in whom the traces of Aryan immigration are most visible. In Bengal we find a duskier race, provisionally termed Mongolo-Dravidian, but with a strong infusion, in the upper classes, of western blood. In the south are a still darker population almost wholly Dravidian. It is in the most ancient part of India, in the high plateau of the Deccan, that there still dwell the peoples who are probably the aborigines of the land and use the most purely Indian languages, the various Dravidian dialects. The geologically recent valleys of the Indus and Ganges are the home of races, mingled with aboriginal peoples, whose language and physical features show that in them is a strong strain of immigrant blood.

On the Himalayan slopes, in Assam, and especially in Burma, are Tibeto-Burman peoples, with something of a Japanese aspect. Intermingled with all these, in forests and on rough and hardly accessible hills, are scattered many groups of semi-savage folk, of whom little was known till the gradual spread of British rule carried the administrator, the missionary, and finally the anthropologist, into regions once considered unfit for the presence of civilised men. So far, it may be said, the distribution of Indian humanity is not very unlike that of the races of Europe. Even this very crude summary, it is true, shows at least three great groups of languages, Dravidian in the south, Indo-European in the west and north-west, Tibeto-Burman in the north and the north-east. There are in fact five separate families of human speech which have their homes in India; the Aryan, the Dravidian, the Munda, the Mon-Khmer, and the Tibeto-Chinese. The lateral spread of these is, of course, no real indication of the present habitat of five different races of men. But they do indicate the existence, in varying degrees of purity, of five different origins, of which the Dravidian and Munda alone can be said to be purely indigenous and confined to the Indian peninsula. Nowhere is it more easy than in India to see how languages spread from race to race, from tribe to tribe, with a sort of linguistic contagion; the stronger, more supple, more copious, more cultivated languages replacing and gradually destroying weaker forms of speech. Something of the same sort has occurred, and is even now happening, in Europe. But the surviving European languages are mostly sturdy and vigorous, and do not readily yield place to one another. In India the process of linguistic invasion is going on before our eyes, attendant on the gradual growth of Hindu civilisation and religion, which disdains to practise open and reasoned proselytism, but extends its borders nevertheless, and carries with it one or another of the Aryan dialects.

In spite of the spread of the stronger languages, the five great families of Indian speech remain and testify to more varied origins than those of Europe. One of the first results of familiarity with Indian peoples is a sense of their remarkable variety of aspect and culture. When the stranger lands in India, his first feeling is one of bewildering sameness; the dusky beings that surround him seem as like one another as sheep, or peas. But that sensation is merely due to the predominance of unfamiliar colour, and soon gives way to an impression of astonishing and most interesting variety. This variety is exhibited by the careful anthropometric investigations of the ethnologist. But there is more variety than average measurements show, and the rough impressions of the experienced administrator and traveller are not without their value. For instance, Sir William Hunter, in his work on The Indian Empire, classified the highlanders of Chota Nagpore as a race apart, whom he called Kolarians. Sir H. H. Risley says that "the distinction between Kolarians and Dravidians is purely linguistic, and does not correspond to any differences of physical type." As a matter of average physical measurements, this criticism is just. The average dimensions of Sonthal skulls are the same as those of other Dravidian races. But he would be a poor observer of racial characteristics, who could not pick out a typical inhabitant of Chota Nagpore from a crowd of southern Dravidians. Even in parts of Bengal where such "Kolarian" folk have settled some generations ago, and have acquired the local language and dress, they are almost as easily distinguished as a Hindu undergraduate in Cambridge. If physical characters are rightly divided into "indefinite" signs of race, which can only be described with difficulty and hesitation in ordinary language, and the "definite" signs which can be measured and reduced to figures, yet the general aspect of a tribe or caste is the first thing which strikes an experienced enquirer's eye, and leads him to make further and more detailed investigations.

So is it also with those divisions, peculiar to India, which are known to us by the Portuguese name of caste. The Indian name for caste is varna, or "colour," and physical differences between different castes were fairly obvious even before accurate averages were struck between many individual measurements. Caste has undoubtedly tended, and for similar reasons, to perpetuate such differences between classes of men as we readily recognise between different breeds of horses or cattle. The ages of men succeed one another more slowly than the generations of domestic animals, and segregation, in spite of caste rules, has probably at no time been so rigid as in the case of pure-bred animals. But there is a restriction in the matter of marriage which has been more or less efficacious, and especially so in the case of the higher castes, where the women are more carefully guarded, and pride of birth influences the future mothers of the race. In some rare instances, castes are still racial, preserved from immixture by much the same feeling which leads the white American to protect his race from a mingling of Negro or Red Indian blood. Other castes are still recognisably the result and record of such forbidden mixtures. Sometimes the resulting difference is so great as to be visible in actual measurements. Often the result is a mere peculiarity of aspect, such as enables an expert to identify a mongrel or a crossbreed among domesticated animals. In any case, once a caste is formed, it is fenced in by matrimonial rules, strict in proportion to the social status and consideration of the group. Not only, then, are the racial origins of modern India more various than those of Europe, but such varieties of colour, stature, and culture as exist tend to be perpetuated.

It has been said, somewhat paradoxically, that whereas in Europe the divisions between races of men cut perpendicularly, as it were, so as to be more or less local and geographical, in India the separating lines run horizontally, and represent social strata. This, of course, is only partly true. The ancient Hindu theory of caste assumes the existence of four great divisions of Hindu humanity, extending all over India; namely, Brahmans or priests, Kshatriyas, or warriors; VaiÇyas, or trading and professional folk; and Sudras, who are most justly and aptly to be described as "the remainder." In all parts of Hindu India may be found representatives of this ancient and theoretical division of humanity, the first two usually claiming a western origin as eagerly as some of us claim a tincture of Norman blood. But it would be incorrect to say that even the highest and purest of these four divisions is of uniform race, or anything approaching to it, all over India. A Bengali Brahman, for instance, can be more or less easily distinguished from other Bengalis, if he has the typical appearance of his caste. But he is even more easily distinguished from Brahmans of other Provinces. How much of this last difference is due to mixture of blood, how much to difference of food and climate, it is, of course, difficult to say. But certainly caste produces a difference of breed in addition to the ethnical varieties of origin which differentiate the Indian populations from those of Europe.

Thirdly, some clue to Indian racial differences may be found in the religions of the peninsula. The greatest of these is still the Indian religion par excellence, the wonderful collection of varied speculations, beliefs, and practices known to us as Hinduism, and its daughter, the religion of Buddha. The latter has spread far and wide, has subjugated Ceylon and Burma, and is the leading religion of the Far East. At one time, it was supposed to be entirely or nearly extinct in India, although students had discovered traces of its influence in the Vishnuvite sects of Hinduism. Recent researches have shown that an almost unaltered form of Buddhism survives in the very bosom of Hinduism, and is practised under Hindu names among certain castes of Bengal and Orissa. It is to be noted that the investigations into these survivals have been for the most part conducted by Bengali Hindus, among whom is springing up a school of ethnologists and comparative linguists, who only need a better knowledge and understanding of European methods to be invaluable aids to western research in such matters. In Bengal, a work of purely anthropological interest has actually been published in the vernacular, an interesting account of the Chakmas, a Tibeto-Burman but partly Hinduised race on the eastern border of Bengal. Closely akin to the lower forms of Hinduism, and often subtly blending with them, are many Animistic religions, most of them professed by aboriginal tribes, speaking one or other of the aboriginal languages.

Islam and Christianity are, of course, imported and proselytising religions, and yield few if any clues to racial or social origins. Many Muhammadans profess to be, and not a few are, of authentic foreign origin. But during the seven hundred years of Muslim rule in India, there was much intermarriage with native races, and even more conversion. It is curious that, as in the case of Christianity, the conversions have been mostly among tribes and classes of the humbler sort. These were not denied admission into Hinduism, but they were only admitted on terms of social and racial degradation. Islam and Christianity alike claim to overlook the accidents of birth and status, and hence attract those to whom Hinduism only offered a place among the lowest ranks of its social hierarchy. But even in the case of the religions of Christ and Muhammad, the inveterate Indian tendency to recognise and insist on breed and social status has asserted itself again and again. Among Muhammadans, the Arabic tribal names have come to be the designations of social units which differ but little from the endogamous castes of Hinduism, and the same tendency is already evident among Christian converts. There is a marked reluctance in some quarters among ex-Hindus to intermarry with ex-Muslims, or even to participate in sacramental Communion with them.

As with caste, so with religion, the divisions are not strictly horizontal. As Christianity is not one thing all over Europe, but has differences of creed, ritual, and practice corresponding to racial differences, so the Hinduism, and even the Muhammadanism, of different provinces varies. There is no sharp boundary; there are elements in common wherever we go. But just as Dravidian temple architecture can be easily distinguished, even by the unpractised eye, from that of the edifices of the Gangetic plains, so local peculiarities of belief or ritual may come to the aid of the anthropologist, and may suggest or confirm distinctions more easily verified and more capable of scientific proof.

The study of all these matters is not without a practical and administrative interest at the present time. A hundred and fifty years ago, to the racial, tribal, and caste differences, accompanied by differences of language and religion, were added political divisions, accentuated by frequent dynastic or predatory wars. British rule has introduced two powerful unifying influences. Our system of administration, while it is adapted more or less effectively (more in some cases, less in others, according to the talent and character of local officers) to local precedents and local needs, is moulded by the great supervising and consolidating authority of the Governor-General in Council.

Secondly, higher education in India is conducted for the most part in English, and educated India, rapidly growing in numbers, has English for its second language, and is modifying local beliefs, usages, aspirations, patriotisms in accordance with ideas more or less consciously assimilated from European teachers and models. No one can deny that this new unity of India is the direct result of centralised British rule. In the far distance of time, all or nearly all India would, for a while, accept the domination of some Hindu ruler or dynasty. Under the Muhammadans, similarly, there were times when the Emperor at Delhi was the ruler of all or nearly all India. Under British rule, a much wider and more populous India, ranging from Baluchistan to Burma, and only excepting the semi-independent states which have been allowed to retain sovereign powers, is really and for the first time part of the greatest administration on earth except that of China, if we look to numbers. It is a result, as the history of British India shows, for which we cannot claim the whole credit. The direction of the great work of unification has been in British hands; it has chiefly been carried out by indigenous agency, and, in matters of detail, in deference to Indian ideas and Indian suggestions. Even fifty years ago, few Indians supposed that the wide Empire of India could be governed save under British guidance, or without the aid of British bayonets. The old habitual forces of disruption were too obvious; the distrust of one race for another was still too keenly felt to allow Indian politicians to imagine a united India under indigenous rule. But as the educated classes grow in power, in numbers, in self-reliance, and reliance on one another; as some of them are promoted to posts of higher trust and authority in India, and even in England, it is perhaps only natural that Indians should suppose that, so far as politics and administration are concerned, the old divisions and dissensions are obsolete, and that united India can in future be governed by native agency. That is not a matter with which ethnology has anything to do. It is the ethnologist's business merely to record impartially what racial, tribal, social, and religious differences still survive, and, if he can, to show how far they have been, and are being, obliterated by the spread of education, and by growing self-confidence and ambition among educated Indians. Whether the information the ethnologist collects can be put to any administrative use does not concern him, nor does he desire that his impartiality shall be affected by these considerations. But, in a little book of this kind it may not be amiss to point out that one result of British rule has been the growth of a new type of Indian, the educated Indian; who, whether he be Hindu or Muhammadan or Buddhist, is at least inclined to subordinate the old hereditary divisions to common political ambitions. These ambitions affect the fortunes and the future of some three hundred millions of humbler Indians, at present only linked by the accident of common British rule, and, so far as they are Hindus, by a common Hindu sentiment.

Plate I

Mahabrahmans
(Mirzapur district)