RACES AND PEOPLES OF ASIA. ANCIENT INHABITANTS OF ASIA.—Prehistoric times—Pithecanthropus erectus (Dub.)—Ages of stone and metals.—PRESENT INHABITANTS OF ASIA.—Races of Asia—I. Peoples of Northern Asia—Yeniseian, PalÆasiatic and Tunguse groups.—II. Peoples of Central Asia—Turkish, Mongolian, and Thibetan groups—Peoples of the south-west of Thibet and of South China (Lolo, Miao-tsÉ, Lu-tsÉ, etc.).—III. Peoples of Eastern Asia—Chinese, Coreans, and Japanese.—IV. Peoples of Indo-China—Aborigines, Mois, Kuis, Siam, Naga, etc.—More recent mixed populations: Annamese, Cambodians, Thai, etc.—V. Peoples of India—Castes—Dravidians and Kolarians—Indo-Aryans and unclassified populations—VI. Peoples of Anterior Asia—Iranians and Semites. ANCIENT INHABITANTS OF ASIA. Prehistoric Times.—It is a common practice to call Asia, or at least certain regions of Asia, “the cradle of mankind,” the “officina gentium.” The migrations and invasions of the Asiatic peoples into Europe, which took place from the most remote times, gave birth, naturally enough, to this idea among the western peoples (p. 317 et seq.). However, no serious data authorise us to say that the first man was born rather in Asia than Europe. Nowhere do we find there any traces of tertiary man.[393] EugÈne Dubois discovered, it is true, quite close to the Asiatic continent in the very uppermost tertiary beds (upper pliocene) of the Island of Java, the bones of a being which he considers as intermediate between man and the anthropoid apes, and which he has called Pithecanthropus erectus (Figs. 112 and 113). But Java belongs to-day as much to the Oceanian world as to Asia, and the Pithecanthropus is not altogether a man, either according to his discoverer or many other authorities. Some regard this being simply as a gigantic gibbon, while others (myself among the number) hold that he is a being more closely related to man than to the anthropoid apes, or even a man of a race inferior to all existing ones. If this last hypothesis be correct we must admit the existence of tertiary man in Asia, since it is highly probable that even at the end of the tertiary period the islands of Sumatra and Java were connected with the great continent by the Malay peninsula.[394] Skull of Pithecanthropus Erectus FIG. 112.—Skull of the Pithecanthropus erectus, Dub. The calvaria
(a) and the teeth (b, c) are designed by P. Moutet after the casts
and photographs of E. Dubois. The reconstruction of the rest
is made after Dubois and Manouvrier. As to quaternary man, if no bones have yet been found, tools absolutely similar to those of Europe have been noted almost everywhere in Asia; in Siberia, around Lake Baikal (Tchersky and Poliakof), and near to Tomsk in the loess, beside a dismembered and calcined skeleton of a mammoth, the remains of a pantagruelic repast of quaternary Siberians (KuznÉtzof); in Japan, in the ancient province of Jenchiou, now Osaka, the Ivate and Miaghi province, northern Nippon (S. Fuse), western Nippon (Vidal) in the country of Rikuzen, now in the province of Etzigo or Teshigo (Inuzuka); then in anterior Asia, in the grottos at the mouth of the Nahr-el-Kelb, near Beirut (Lortet); at Hannauch to the east of Tyre (Lortet and Pelagaud), in Galilee (Cazalis of Fondouce and Moretain), in Phoenicia (Zumoffen), etc.[395] In India, attention has been drawn to several palÆolithic stations in the midst of the ancient alluvia of the rivers Nerbadda, Krishna, and Godaveri (Wynn); in certain places there quartzite implements were associated with the bones of extinct animals (Equus nomadicus, Hippopotamus palÆindicus) or animals which have since emigrated into other regions (Bos palÆindicus, etc.). Single tools have been found in the beds of laterite near Madras, in Scinde, at Banda, in the central provinces (Rivett-Carnac), in the south-east of Bengal.[396] Skull of Pithecanthropus Erectus FIG. 113.—Calvaria of
Pithecanthropus, seen
from above.
(Phot. Dubois.) Monuments and objects of the polished stone and bronze periods, often confounded in Asia, have been found almost everywhere. They are connected with peoples who presented at that remote date great differences in their civilisation and probably in their physical type. The excavations of Schliemann at Hissarlik (Asia Minor) have brought to light a civilisation which appears to correspond with the end of the stone age and the beginning of the bronze epoch (2,500 years B.C.?). Prehistoric objects in polished stone and bronze have been found at other points of Asia Minor (A. Martin), in Lycaonia (Spiegelthal), in the Sinai peninsula (Bauermann and Richard), on the shores of Lake Issik-koul (Russian Turkestan). Southern Siberia, the Kirghiz steppes, north and north-western Mongolia are covered with stone circles (Kereksur), barrows, tumuli, menhirs (Kishachilo) of every form, with burial-places in which are found objects in wood, bone, bronze, copper, iron (Radloff, Potanin, Klementz). The skulls which have been taken from some of these burial-places, in the upper valley of the Yenisei, are dolichocephalic; the plaster mortuary masks found in the same region by Adrianof present a type somewhat European.[397] Polished Stone Axe, Cambodia FIG. 114.—Polished stone axe
found in Cambodia. Prehistoric
type peculiar to Indo-China. It must not be forgotten that many of these monuments date from the historic epoch and belong, as proved by the runiform inscriptions of Mongolia discovered by Yadrintsef and deciphered by Thomson, to the seventh and eighth centuries of the Christian era.[398] The kitchen-middens of Omori, near Tokio, and of several other localities in Japan examined by Morse, Milne, and Tsuboi, afford evidence of the existence in this country of a fairly civilised race which was acquainted with pottery, but employed only bone and partly polished stone implements. The excavations of ancient underground dwellings in the islands of Yezo (Morse, Tsuboi) and Saghalien (Poliakoff) lead us to believe that this race extended much farther to the north. It is possible that it was related to the men whose polished flint implements have been found in Siberia in the valley of the Tunka, in that of the Patcha, one of the tributaries of the river Amur (Uvarof), and in the shell-heaps of the Pacific coast near Vladivostok (Margaritof).[399] Polished stone hatchets have been found in the north-east of China in the vicinity of tumuli resembling the American “mounds” (Williamson); others have been picked up in the Yunnan (Sladen), and in Burma (Theobald); Moura, Jammes, and Morel exhumed in Cambodia, between Lake TonlÉ-Sap and the Mekong, side by side with objects of bronze, several polished stone implements of a peculiar type (Fig. 114), a kind of square-tongued axe (shouldered celt), which has since been found again in several other places in Indo-China as far as the upper Laos (LefÈvre-Pontalis) and Burma.[400] In the district of Somron-Sen (Cambodia), previously explored by Jammes, as well as in the neighbourhood of Saigon, Corre discovered similar implements close to shell-heaps containing, besides pottery and stone tools, human bones, but no skulls. Lastly, in India, the “cromlechs,” “mounds,” and finds of stone objects similar to those which are found in Europe, may be counted in hundreds. It is certain that the stone “circles” of the central provinces and the “Kouroumbarings” of Southern India date from a period anterior to the Aryan immigration. As in Europe, so in Asia the age of metals borders very closely on the historic period of which the Chinese annals have preserved for us a record. The monuments of Chaldea, Assyria, Asia Minor, India, and Cambodia, also reveal ethnographical facts of great interest (see, for instance, note 2, p. 419). PRESENT INHABITANTS AND RACES OF ASIA. It is impossible in the present state of our knowledge to draw up a complete table of the migrations which have taken place on the Asiatic continent in historic times. I shall mention those in connection with some peoples whose history is partially known (Chinese, Turks, Mongols, Thai). So also, in the present state of anthropological knowledge, we can only discern in the midst of the numerous Asiatic populations, in a quite general way, the elements furnished by the following eleven races:—Five races peculiar to Asia (Dravidian, Assyroid, Indo-Afghan, Ainu, Mongolian), and six races which are also met with in other parts of the world: Negrito, Indonesian, Arab, Ugrian, Turkish, and Eskimo (leaving out of account the Assyroid and Indo-Afghan races, which are found again among the Jews and the European Gypsies). I have already given (p. 285 et seq.) the principal characters of these races; it only remains to say a few words as to their geographical distribution in Asia. The Eskimo race is quartered in the north-east of the continent; that of the Ainus in Saghalien, Yezo, and perhaps in northern Japan; while the Ugrian race is represented by its Yeniseian variant. The Mongolian race (with its two secondary races, northern and southern) is found almost all over Asia. The Turkish race is limited more particularly to the inland regions of Central Asia. The Indonesians are numerous in Indo-China, and in the islands from Japan to the Asiatic Archipelago, while the Dravidians and Indo-Afghans abound in India. The latter are also met with in anterior Asia, side by side with the Assyroids and Arabs. Some representatives of the Negrito race inhabit the Malay peninsula and the Andaman Islands; the elements of this race are also found among the inhabitants of Indo-China and perhaps India. As to existing populations of the Asiatic continent, I shall rapidly pass them in review, grouping them, according to geographical region, under six heads: peoples of Northern Asia; of Central Asia; of Eastern Asia; of Indo-China; of India; and lastly, of Anterior or Western Asia. I. NORTHERN ASIA, consisting almost exclusively of Siberia, a cold country covered with dense virgin forests (taÏga) or marshy, frozen plains (tundra), harbours, in addition to Russian or Chinese colonists, only a few somewhat wretched tribes, mainly hunters, but depending partly on fishing and hoe-culture. We may group them thus:—(1) tribes of Western Siberia, having some affinities with the Samoyeds and the eastern Finns, which I shall call Yeniseians or Tubas; (2) peoples of the extreme north-east of the Asiatic continent, whom Schrenck[401] describes as PalÆasiatics; (3) the Tunguses of Eastern Siberia and Manchuria. 1. Yeniseians or Tubas.—Besides the Samoyeds of Asia, who differ from their kinsfolk in Europe only by their more Mongoloid features, the Yeniseians comprise two distinct groups of populations. In the first place the so-called Ostiaks of the Yenisei, on the right bank of this river (between Yeniseisk and Touroukhansk), probable descendants of the Kien-Kouen and the Ting-ling of the Chinese annals. It is a tribe in process of extinction, whose language differs from the Samoyed tongue and the Finnish dialects properly so called (Castren). Then come the tribes who formerly formed the Tuba nation, mentioned until the seventh century A.D. by the name of Tupo by the Chinese annalists; they inhabited the basin of the upper Yenisei, the Altai region, and north-western Mongolia, and bore the local names of Matores, Arines, Kottes, Assan, Tuba, etc. These peoples have disappeared as linguistic units,[402] but their physical type, some of their characteristic manners, as well as a few words of their language, are preserved among certain populations speaking a Turkish dialect. The Russians call these populations “Tatars”; they might more suitably be called by the name of Altaians. This ethnic group, whose physical type has been altered by intermixtures with peoples of Turkish or Mongolian race, comprises the “Tatars” of Abakan, that is to say, Katchines, Koibals (eight hundred individuals), Sagai, and Kizils; the “Tatars” of Altai and those of Chulim, among whom must be noted the “Tatars of the black forests” (ChernievyiÉ Tatary in Russian), called “Tubas” by their neighbours. The latter are mesocephalic, of medium height; they have abandoned little by little the hunting state, and become primitive cultivators of the soil; they break up the ground with the hoe, which was used by them until not very long ago to dig up edible roots, and they cut their corn with hunting-knives.[403] The Soiots or Soyons of North-western Mongolia, who call themselves Tubas, are probably the descendants of the ancient Uigurs (Turkish nation) commingled with aboriginal Yeniseians of this country and partly Mongolised about the seventeenth century. FIG. 115.—Tunguse hunter (Siberia) with ski and staff.
(Phot. ShimkiÉvich.) 2. The PalÆasiatic group should comprise, according to Schrenck, all the ancient peoples of Asia driven back at the present day towards the north-eastern extremity of the Continent. The more important of these peoples are the following:—The Chuchi (or Chukchi), numbering about 8000, are the most typical representatives of the group; they inhabit the north-east of Siberia, and the occupation of some is the breeding of reindeer, and fishing of others; however, the distinction between the nomadic and fishing Chukchi is both of an economic and ethnic order.[404] The Koriaks dwell to the south of the Chukchi, as far as Kamtchatka; they bear a close resemblance to them and speak the same language. The Eskimo of Asia, Namuollo, or Yu-Ite formerly occupied the coast of the Chukchi country, as shown by their ancient habitations excavated by Wrangel and Nordenskiold. At the present day they are not found except in isolated camps on the coast and in the islands of the Behring Sea. They differ but very little from the Eskimo of Alaska; their ornaments, however, recall rather those of the Aleuts. The Kamtchadals of the centre and west of Kamtchatka differ from the peoples just mentioned. They number 4,250 at the present day, and are becoming Russianised very rapidly. They have completely given up their language, which has no relation to any linguistic family now known, and they speak a very corrupt form of Russian. Nominally orthodox Christians, they are at bottom animists, and the anthropomorphic element, often under obscene forms, occupies a large place in their myths and legends. They are fishers and hunters. Tunguse, Full Face FIG. 116.—Same subject as Fig. 115, full face.
(Phot. ShimkiÉvich.) The Yukaghirs are the last remnants of a somewhat powerful people who formerly occupied all that part of Siberia situated to the east of the Lena, and who were composed of several tribes: Omoks, Anauls, Cheliags, etc.[405] It was believed until the last few years that even the Yukaghirs had disappeared, but quite recently Iokhelson[406] ascertained that there are at least 700 individuals, and that their language, which has no affinities with any of the Uralo-Altaic dialects, is spoken by a certain number of Tunguse-Lamuts (see p. 373), their neighbours. On the other hand, the Yukaghirs of Verkhoiansk, have adopted the Lamut dialect, and those of the banks of the Iana the Yakut tongue. By several peculiar manners and customs (classificatory system of relationship, pictography, etc.) they approach very closely certain North American Indians. Physically they resemble the Tunguse-Lamuts, though more brachycephalic and somewhat less dark-haired as a rule. Ainu with Crown of Shavings FIG. 117.—Ainu of Yezo (Japan) with crown of shavings.
(Phot. lent by Collignon.) The Ainus (Figs. 49 and 117), who are classed among the PalÆasiatics, inhabit the north and east parts of the island of Yezo, the south of Saghalien, and the three most southern islands of the Kuriles. They form a group by themselves, different from all the other peoples of Asia. Their elongated heads (ceph. index on the liv. sub. 77.8), their prominent supraciliary ridges, the development of the pilous system, the form of the nose, give to them some resemblance to the Russians, the Todas, and the Australians; but other characters (coloration of the skin, prominent cheek-bones, short stature, frequent occurrence of the os japonicum, etc.) distinguish them from these peoples and afford grounds for classing them as a separate race (see Chap. VIII.). According to Japanese historians, the Ainus or Asuma Yebissu occupied the whole of Nippon from the seventh century B.C. until the second century of the Christian era. In the seventh century A.D. they still occupied all that portion of this island situated to the north of the 38th degree of north latitude, and even in the ninth century the chronicles speak of the incursions of these “barbarians.” Thus the Ainu element enters very largely into the composition of one of the types of the Japanese people, not only at Yezo but in the north of Nippon (province of Aomori), where several Ainu words still survive in current speech. In the Kurile islands the Ainus are intermixed with the Kamtchadals and the Aleuts introduced by the Russo-American Company about the middle of the present century. It is calculated that there are about 18,500 Ainus (of whom 1,300 are in the island of Saghalien) at the present time; their number at Yezo has remained stationary for several years. The dress of the Ainus is a sort of greatcoat with broad sleeves, fastened with a girdle so that the right lappel covers the left lappel as among Turkish peoples, and contrary to the way it is done among the Chinese and Mongols. The chief occupation of the Ainus is hunting and fishing; they engage but little in agriculture. Their religion is pure animism; the word Kamui, which means spirit (like the Kami of the Japanese Shintoists), also serves to indicate everything incomprehensible, in the same way as the word “shif,” the literal meaning of which is “animal” (may this be a word corresponding to totem?). The Ainus, like most Asiatic peoples, such as the Giliaks, Tunguses, etc., have a special veneration for the bear; they organise festivals in its honour, during which a bear is killed, after having received the homage of many inaou (staffs decorated with shavings). The Ainu language is agglutinative, and has no analogy with any known language.[407] The Giliaks, who inhabit the north of Saghalien, and the mainland to the north of the mouth of the Amur, suggest by their traits sometimes the Ainus, sometimes the Tunguses, but they are brachycephalic. They are a people of fishers, living on the banks of rivers and the sea, in the winter in huts half buried in the ground, in the summer in little houses on piles. The Giliaks are readily disposed to trade, and are distinguished by their taste for ornaments. Their number hardly exceeds 5000 individuals.[408] The Tunguses, while speaking a particular language, exhibit the Mongol type, softened by intermixtures with the primitive inhabitants (PalÆasiatics?) of their territory, which extends from the Arctic Ocean to the 40th degree of north latitude, and from the Yenisei to the Pacific Ocean. Their number can hardly exceed 50,000 individuals over this immense stretch of country. They are divided into southern and northern Tunguses and maritime Tunguses or Lamuts. The river Amur forms the approximate boundary between the first two sections of Tunguses. The Lamuts occupy the shores of the sea of Okhotsk, the north-west of Kamtchatka, and extend more to the west to the river Iana. The Northern Tunguses are split up into several tribes, of which the following are the principal, going from east to west:—The Olchas or Mangoon, at the mouth of the Amur; their congeners the Oroks, in the north of the island of Saghalien; the Orochons, of a very pure Tunguse type; the Manegres (Fig. 43), and the “OlennyiÉ” Tunguses, or the Tunguses with reindeer (Figs. 115 and 116). As to the southern Tunguses, they comprise the Goldes of the lower Amur and Ussuri, of a very pure type, and having a fairly well developed ornamental art; the Oroches of the coast; and lastly the Solon-Daurs, very much intermixed with the Mongols, of which colonies exist in the Kuldja. The Manchus, reduced to a small number, belong by their dialect as well as by their physical type to the Tunguse group. They are being absorbed more and more by the Chinese, and hardly form a tenth part of the population of the country which bears their name (PozdniÉef). It is probable that the Niu-chi or Yu-chi of Shan-alin and Sien-pi on the northern border of Corea, mentioned in the Chinese annals, were Tunguse tribes. The type which predominates among the Tunguses represents the secondary race called North Mongolian and characterised by mesocephaly or a slight sub-dolichocephaly, and by a rather elongated face. The stature varies; the Orochons are of average stature and the Manchus very tall, etc.[409] II. PEOPLES OF CENTRAL ASIA.—The immense central Asiatic region, whose waters have no outlet towards the sea, is formed principally of denuded table-lands (Thibet) or of plains, sometimes grassy, sometimes desert (Mongolia, Turkestan). It is inhabited for the most part by populations which may be grouped from the linguistic point of view under three heads, Turks, Mongols, Thibetans.[410] The peoples speaking the different Turkish dialects who are called Turco-Tatars or Turanians are scattered over an immense area comprising half of Asia and a large portion of Eastern Europe, from the Arctic Ocean (Yakuts) to Kuen-lun (Polus) and Ispahan (Turkomans of Persia), from the banks of the Kolima and the Hoang-ho (Yegurs) to Central Russia (Tatars of Kasimov) and Macedonia (Osmanli Turks). All these peoples may be gathered together into three great groups: eastern, central, and western.[411] The eastern group comprises the Yakuts, who have preserved in its purity the ancient Turco-Uigurian language, but who in type, manners, and customs show the influence of contiguity with the PalÆasiatics; then the various tribes of non-Yeniseian “Tatars” (see p. 366) of Siberia, like the Altaians (called Kalmuks of Altai, although they have nothing in common with the true Kalmuks), nomads who have recently adopted settled habits, like the Teleuts (or Kara-Kalmuks), likewise nomads, or the Tatars of Siberia, divided, according to their habitat, into Tatars of the Baraba steppes, Tatars of Irtish, of Tobol, etc.[412] To this group must be added the Taranchi and other “Turks” of East Turkestan, as well as the Polus of the northern slope of the Kuen-lun, more or less mingled with Indo-Afghan elements; the Yegurs of the province of Kan-su in China, etc.[413] The central group comprises, in the first place, the Kirghiz-Kazak of the plains between the Irtish and the Caspian, with the Kara-Kirghiz of the Tian-chan mountains, typical nomads who under a Mussulman veneer have preserved many ancient Turkish animist customs;[414] then the Uzbegs and Sartes, villagers or citizens, more or less mingled with Iranian elements, of Russian Turkestan; and finally the Tatars of the Volga, or of European Russia. Among these last, the so-called Kazan Tatars, descendants of the Kipchaks, must be specially mentioned. Arriving on the banks of the Volga in the thirteenth century, they intermingled there with the Bulgarians. They differ from the Astrakhan Tatars (Figs. 107 and 108), descendants of the Turco-Mongols of the Gold horde, mixed with the Khazars, as well as from the Nogai of the Crimea,[415] representatives of whom we find also in the Caucasus, near Astrakhan, and in Lithuania, where, while remaining Mussulmans, they have adopted the language and the garb of Poles. With this group we must connect the Bashkir-Mesthcheriaks, a tribe intermixed with Turkish, Mongol, and Ugrian elements; and their congeners the Shuvashes, as well as the Kumyks, the Karachai, the Kabards, or Tatars of the Caucasus mountains, distinct from the true Kabards. The western group is composed of Turkomans of Persia (Khojars, Afshars) and Russian (Turkmen) or Afghan Turkestan (Jemshids, etc.), of Aderbaijani, Turkish-speaking Iranians of the Caucasus and Persia, and lastly the Osmanli Turks. Included under this name are subjects of the Sultan speaking the Turkish language and professing Islamism. We must distinguish among them the settled Osmanli, much intermixed, and the nomadic tribes (Turkomans, Yuruks, etc.), who exhibit several characteristics of the Turkish race. The Turkish race, so far as can be gathered from recent anthropological works, is preserved in a comparatively pure state among the Turks of the central group, but in the eastern group it has been profoundly modified in consequence of intermixtures with the Mongolian, Tunguse, and Ugrian races; as also in the western group, in which we have to take into account elements of the Assyroid, Indo-Afghan, and Arab races, and certain European races (Adriatic chiefly). The Turkish race may be thus described: Stature, above the average (1 m. 67–1 m. 68); head, hyper-brachycephalic (ceph. ind. on the liv. sub., 85 to 87), elongated oval face, non-Mongoloid eyes, but often with the external fold of eyelid (p. 78); the pilous system moderately developed; broad cheek-bones, thick lips; straight, somewhat prominent nose; tendency to obesity.[416] The Turks are essentially nomadic, and when they change their mode of life it is rather towards the chase, commerce, or trade that their efforts are directed; the true cultivators of the soil (Taranchi, Sartes, Osmanli, Volga Tatars) are Turks already powerfully affected by intermixtures. The Turkish tent is the most highly finished of transportable habitations (p. 164–166). Meat and milk products form the staple foods, as they do among all nomads. With the exception of the Christian Chuvashes and the Shaman Yakuts, all the Turks are Mussulmans; but often they are only nominally such, at bottom remaining Shamans. The veneer of Islamism becomes thinner and thinner among the Turkish peoples as we go from west to east. The Osmanlis, the most fanatical of all the Turks, are the most mixed as regards type, language, manners, and customs. It is perhaps to this mixed origin that they owe the relative stability of the state which they have founded, for no nomadic Turkish tribe has been able to create a political organism of long duration, and the vast empires of the Hiungnu, the Uigurs, the Kipchaks, have had only an ephemeral existence. 2. The Mongols[417] form an ethnic group more homogeneous as regards manners and customs and physical type than the Turks. Their name is chiefly known on account of the great empire founded by Genghis Khan, but it must be observed that the nomadic hordes united into a single body, and led to victory by this conqueror, were only very partially composed of Mongols, other nomadic peoples, and especially Turks, formed more than half of them. Hence the practice among Europeans, as among the Chinese,—a practice which is kept up to the present time,—of giving the name of one of the Turkish tribes, Ta-ta or Tatar, transformed into Tartar, to the Mongols, and extending it to many of the Mongoloid peoples, like the Tunguses for example. Three principal divisions are recognised in this group: Western Mongols or Kalmuks, the Eastern Mongols, and the Buriats.[418] The Western Mongols, who style themselves Eleuts, and whom the neighbouring peoples call Kalmuks, are scattered, owing to wars and migrations, over the immense tract lying between Siberia and Lassa, from the banks of the Hoang-ho to those of the Manich (a tributary of the Don). The more compact groups are found in European Russia (Kalmuks of Astrakhan, Figs. 20 and 44, and the Caucasus); in Dzungaria (the Torgoots) and north-western Mongolia, between Altai and Thian-Shan; lastly, in Alashan and farther to the west in the Chinese province of Kuku-Nor and northern Thibet. They number about a million. The Eastern Mongols occupy almost the whole of the region known by the name of Mongolia properly so called. In the south of this country they are broken up into a multitude of tribes (Tumets, Shakars or Tsakhar, etc.); while in the north they form a single nation, that of the Khalkhas, which has still preserved, in spite of its submission to China, some traces of its ancient political organisation. The Khalkhas number about 200,000, and the southern Mongols 500,000. The Buriats form a population sprung from the Khalkhas, intermixed at several points with various Siberian elements, Tunguse, Yakut, Russian; they occupy the steppes and forests of the province of Irkutsk, but their central seat is Transbaikal, whence they spread out even into Mongolia, into the valleys of the Orkhon and the Argun. They number about 250,000. The type of the Mongolian race is very strongly marked among most of the Kalmuks and Khalkhas; it is less distinct among the Buriats, etc. It may thus be described: Nearly average stature (1 m. 63–64); head, sub-brachycephalic (ceph. ind. on the liv. sub. 83); black straight hair, pilous system little developed; the skin of a pale-yellow or brownish hue, prominent cheek-bones, thin straight flattened nose, Mongoloid eyes (p. 77), etc. With the exception of some Buriat tribes the Mongols are typical nomadic shepherds. Their live-stock, camels, sheep, and horses supply them not only with food, the raw material for the manufacture of tents and garments, but also means of transport and fuel (camel excrement or dried dung). Unlike the nomadic Turks, who are fond of fighting, the Mongols of the present day are gentle and peaceable folk. Can this be the effect of the influence of Lama-Buddhism, which they all profess except a few small Buriat tribes, who have remained Shamans? We are inclined to believe this when we consider the important part which this religion plays in the daily life of the Mongols. 3. Thibetans.[419]—We may include under this name the non-Mongolian populations of Thibet and the surrounding countries, known by the name of Bod, or Thibetans properly so called in southern Thibet, by the name of Tanguts in the Chinese province of Kuku-Nor, of Si-fan in western Sechuen, by that of Ladaki and Champa in eastern Cashmere (province of Leh), of Gurong, Limbu, Mangar and Murmi in Nepal, of Lepchas or Rongs in Sikkin, of Bhutani in Bhotan, etc. The Abors, Mishmee, etc., of the Himalayan country who dominate Assam are also included among the Thibetans, but they approach the Indonesians in type. It is the same with the Garro and their neighbours on the east, the Khasia or Djainthia, whose language, however, differs from the Thibetan.[420] Most Thibetans are cultivators of the soil or shepherds, pillagers in case of need, and fervent votaries of numerous Lamaite-Buddhist sects, of which that of the Geluk-pa (yellow caps) represents the ruling church. Its chief, the Dalai-Lama, residing at Lassa, is at the same time the sovereign of Thibet. From the somatological point of view the Thibetans exhibit certain sufficiently marked variations. The Bothia are below the average stature (1 m. 62 or 1 m. 63); the Lepchas are short (1 m. 57); and the Thibetans of Nepal vary as regards average stature from 1 m. 59 (Mangars) to 1 m. 67 (Murmis). The head is mesocephalic (ceph. ind. 80.7 on the liv. sub.), but sub-dolichocephalic or sub-brachycephalic forms are frequently met with. As a general rule, side by side with the Mongoloid type may be seen among the Thibetans, singly or united, the traits of another type, a somewhat slender figure, thin, prominent, often aquiline nose, straight eyes with undrooping eyelids, long and sometimes wavy hair, reminding one, in short, of the Gypsy type.[421] This type, moreover, is found beyond Thibet. The Lo-lo or NÉsus, as they call themselves, of western Sechuen and the north-east of Yunnan, with whom we must connect the Kolo or Golyk of the country of Amdo (east of Thibet), perhaps represent it in its purest form, if the portrait of them drawn by Thorel is correct. With slight figure, brownish complexion, they have a straight profile, oval face, high forehead, straight and arched nose, thick beard even on the sides of the face and always frizzy or wavy hair.[422] Their language, however, fixed by a hieroglyphic mode of writing, appears to belong to the Burmese family.[423] The Lo-lo not under Chinese rule are of a gay disposition; they love dancing and singing. Woman is held among them in great respect; there are some tribes even whose chiefs belong to the weaker sex. We must connect with the Lo-lo a multitude of other tribes, less pure in type: the various Miao-tsÉ, mountaineers of the southern part of the province of Hunnan, of Kwei-chow, of the northern part of the Kwang-si, the north-west district of Kwang-tung, more or less intermixed with the Chinese; the Lissus of the Lu-tse-Kiang (Upper Salwen) and the Lantsan-Kiang (Upper Mekong), near to the new boundary of China and British India; the Mosso or Nashis of the district of Li-Kiang to the east of the Lissus, related to the latter and having an iconomatic writing; lastly, the Lu-tse or Kew-tse, who call themselves Melams or Anoogs, to the west of the Lissus and separated by an inhabited tract from the Mishmee, the Sarong and other Thibeto-Indonesian tribes. The language of the Lu-tse differs from that of any of the neighbouring peoples, and their physical type places them between the Lissus and the Indonesians, such as the Naga for example; they are short (1 m. 56 according to Roux), but strong and vigorous; their hair is frizzy.[424] The Mu-tse mentioned by Terrien de Lacouperie, the Lawa or Does described by Holt Hallet, the Muzours of T. de Lacouperie or the Musos of Archer, the Kas-Khuis of Garnier, scattered between the Mekong and the Salwen from the twentieth to the twenty-fifth degree of north latitude, are probably akin to the Lo-lo and the Mossos.[425] III. POPULATIONS OF EASTERN ASIA.—The far east of Asia is inhabited by three nations of mixed origin: Chinese, Coreans, Japanese. 1. The Chinese form by themselves alone more than the third, if not the half of the population of Asia. They occupy in a solid mass the whole of China properly so called, and stretch in isolated groups far beyond the political limits of the “eighteen provinces.” Manchuria, Southern Mongolia, Dzungaria, a portion of Eastern Turkestan and Thibet have been invaded by Chinese colonists; and outside of the Empire it is estimated there are not less than three millions of “Celestials” who have emigrated to Indo-China, Malaysia, the two Americas, and even to the islands of the Pacific Ocean and Africa. The Chinese people have sprung from manifold intermixtures, and indeed there are several types to discover in this nation, the anthropological study of which is scarcely more than outlined; as it is, however, according to historical data we may presume that five or six various elements enter into its composition. We know from the books of Shu-King that the primitive country of the Chinese was the north of the present province of Kan-su. Thence the agricultural colonists moved (about the year 2200 B.C., according to a doubtful chronology) into the fertile valley of the Houng-ho and its tributary the Wei or Hwei. Little by little, the Chinese colonists spread along other valleys, but it took them centuries to conquer the aboriginal tribes (the Djoong, the Man, the Pa, the Miao-tse). Again in the seventh century B.C. (when exact chronology commences) the territory occupied by the Chinese scarcely extended beyond the valley of the lower Yang-tsi on the south and that of the Pei-ho on the north, and comprised within these limits several aboriginal tribes like the Hoai, of the valley of the same name, or the Lai of the Shantung peninsula, who maintained their independence. However that may be, the Chinese succeeded, little by little, in driving back the first occupiers of the soil into the mountains of the west and south, where they are still found under the names of Man-tse, Miao-tse, I-gen, Mans, Thos, etc.[426] Educated Chinaman, Manchu FIG. 118.—Educated Chinaman of Manchu origin,
interpreter to Embassy, twenty-one years old, height 1 m. 75.
(Coll. Mus. Nat. Hist. Paris.) While this work of driving back was carried on in the south, the Turkish tribes, the Tunguses, the Mongols, the Manchus, invaded in turn the north of the country. Thence resulted a marked difference between the northern and the southern Chinese, while the Chinese of the central parts have perhaps best preserved the original type (Fig. 119). The Chinese of the south belong very largely to the southern Mongolian race (p. 293); they are short, sub-brachycephalic, except in Kwang-si, where mesocephaly predominates, in consequence, probably, of intermixtures with the aborigines of Indonesian race (H. Girard); while the Chinese of the north are on the contrary almost tall of stature; the head is sub-brachycephalic with a tendency towards mesocephaly in the north, towards brachycephaly in the south (Fig. 118). The skin is lighter among the former than among the latter, the face more elongated, etc. One of the peculiarities of the Chinese skull is the retreating forehead, and the contraction at the level of the temples.[427] Chinese Woman, born at Foo-chow FIG. 119.—Leao-yu-chow, Chinese woman,
born at Foo-chow, eighteen years old, height 1 m. 52.
(Coll. Mus. Nat. Hist. Paris.) The multiplicity of dialects is equally great. The Chinese of the various provinces would have long since ceased to understand one another had they not possessed as a medium of communication the common signs of the written language (p. 141), which the mandarins read in their own dialects and languages not only in China but also in Corea, in Japan, and Indo-China. We distinguish the Mandarin, or northern, dialect (with which we connect the Hakka speech employed in Kwang-tung) and that of the south, then the dialects of Fu-Kian, of Che-Kiang, etc. The peculiarities of the Chinese character—filial love, attachment to the soil, aptitude for agriculture and commerce, peaceful disposition, love of routine, respect for letters, observance of form, etc.—are sufficiently known.[428] Most of them are the corollaries of ancestor-worship, of the very rigorous patriarchal rÉgime and the constitution of the commune (p. 248), the basis of the whole social fabric of the Chinese Empire, which, let it be said by the way, exhibits less organic cohesion than is generally supposed. The frequent co-existence of belief in three religions, Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism or Foism, in one and the same individual is one of the remarkable facts of Chinese sociology. Another fact, not less interesting, is the administrative and political mechanism inspired theoretically by very wise and moral ideas, but leading in practice to peculation and carelessness on the part of public officials of which we find it difficult to form any idea in Europe. 2. The Coreans, who by their civilisation are connected with China, have in all probability sprung from the intermixture of Tunguse, Indonesian, and Japanese elements. The men are of tall stature,[429] strong, with sub-brachycephalic head (ceph. ind. on the liv. sub. 82.3, according to ElissiÉef, Koganei, and Bogdanof). The women are more puny, and are not conspicuous for beauty; they have a yellowish complexion, small eyes, prominent brow, and very small feet, but not deformed like those of the Chinese (p. 175). The Corean values only one physical charm in woman, and that is her abundant head of hair and eyebrows, “fine as a thread” (Mme. KoÏke). Besides, woman is of no account in Corean society; she is an instrument of pleasure or work; she is kept strictly apart from men, rarely leaves the house, and must veil her face. The Corean language belongs to the Uralo-Altaic family, and is closely related to the Southern Tunguse dialects. Its mode of writing, called wen-mun, differs from the Chinese, and appears either to have been invented or derived from the Sanscrit by the Buddhist monks (M. Courant). The Coreans have no state religion. Buddhism, introduced towards the close of the fourth century, has not taken root among them, and is more and more in danger of extinction. Most Coreans live in a sort of irreligion tempered with some animistic practices: sacrifices to the spirits of the forests and mountains, etc. The Corean civilisation was borrowed entire from China of the fifth or sixth century. The associative tendency, and regard for form and ceremony, are perhaps stronger in Corea than in China. Further, enslavement for debt, crime, etc., exists as a regular thing in the country.[430] 3. The Japanese exhibit, like so many other peoples, a certain diversity in their physical type; the variations fluctuate between two principal forms. The fine type (Figs. 16 and 120), which may chiefly be observed in the upper classes of society, is characterised by a tall, slim figure; a relative dolichocephaly, elongated face, straight eyes in the men, more or less oblique and Mongoloid in the women, thin, convex or straight nose, etc. The coarse type, common to the mass of the people, is marked by the following characters: a thick-set body, rounded skull, broad face with prominent cheek-bones, slightly oblique eyes, flattish nose, wide mouth (BÄlz).[431] These two types may have been the result of crossings between Mongol sub-races (northern and southern) and Indonesian or even Polynesian elements. The influence of the Ainu blood is shown only in Northern Nippon.[432] Young Japanese Women FIG. 120.—Young Japanese women taking tea; fine type.
(Phot. lent by Collignon.) In a general way the Japanese are of short stature (1 m. 59 for men, 1 m. 47 for women), rather robust and well proportioned. The colour of the skin varies from pale yellow, almost white, to brownish yellow. The Japanese have no colour in their cheeks, even when their skin is almost white; at birth there is an accumulation of pigments on the median line of the belly and pigmental spots (see p. 51). The pilous system is scantily developed, except in cases where an admixture of Ainu blood may be suspected. The head is mesaticephalic as a rule (ceph. ind. on the liv. sub. 78.2), with a tendency to brachycephaly in the gross type, to dolichocephaly in the fine type. The skull, which is capacious, exhibits two peculiarities: the os japonicum (p. 68) and the particular conformation of the upper jaw, which is very low and broad, without the canine fossa. With regard to Japanese writing, see p. 141. Tong King artisan, Son-tai FIG. 121.—Tong King artisan of Son-tai,
twenty-three years old.
(Phot. Pr. Rd. Bonaparte.) The most striking traits of the Japanese character are politeness and aptness in concealing the emotions; it must not be inferred from this that their nature is bad; on the contrary, they are honest, hard-working, cheerful, kind, and courageous (Mohnike, Mechnikof).[433] European civilisation and the reforms introduced into Japan since 1868 have appreciably modified the manners and customs, but the essential traits of the national character remain unaltered, as they were previously unmodified by the introduction of the Chinese civilisation. The ancient chivalrous spirit of the aristocracy, holding trade in contempt, still survives at the present day, and partly explains the ardour with which persons of this class have flung themselves into political life, since Japan obtained a parliamentary administration (1889). The Japanese have two religions, Shintoism, or the national worship of the Kami (native divinities), and Buddhism; but they are fundamentally very sceptical on the subject of religion.[434] The islanders of the Liu-Kiu or Loo-choo archipelago resemble the Japanese (Chamberlain), but they have a thicker beard and a darker complexion (BÄlz); they are of short stature (1 m. 58, according to Dr. Furukawa), and Wirth has even noted among them a tribe of pigmies 1 m. 30 in height in the island of Okinava. As to the natives of Formosa, the Chinese, who have colonised half of the island, divide them into Pepo-hoan (“mellowed” or tamed savages) and Sek-kuan or Che-hoan (raw or uncivilised savages). The former are met with almost everywhere, but chiefly in the north and west of the island, the latter have been driven back into the mountains of the interior and to the south coast. The Che-hoan are split up into several tribes (Atayal, Vonum in the north, Pai-wan, Sarisen, Butan in the south, Amia on the east coast, etc.), and remind us of the Indonesians by their type as well as by several customs (skull-hunting, tattooing, ear-ornaments, house in common or “Palankan”). Some of these “savages” are acquainted with agriculture, others live by the product of the chase. The languages of all these Formosans belong to the Malay family, especially approximating to the Tagal.[435] IV. POPULATIONS OF INDO-CHINA.—We must distinguish in the transgangetic peninsula the probable Aborigines and the peoples sprung from the interminglings of these aborigines with the invaders coming from the adjoining countries, and whose migrations are at least partly known to history. These mixed populations are the Annamese, the Thais, the Khmers or Cambodians, the Burmese, and the Malays. (1) The Aborigines.—The numerous populations scattered almost all over Indo-China having a right to this name may be mustered into eight groups, of which I proceed to give a short account. a. The Mois.—We designate by this name the numerous so-called “savage tribes” dispersed over the table-lands and mountains between the Mekong and the Annamese coast, from the frontiers of Yun-nan to Cochin-China (district of Baria). In spite of the various names given to the Mois by the adjoining nations (they are called Mois in Annam, Peu-nongs in Cambodia, Khas in Laos, etc.), and of the multitude of tribes into which they are divided (the Mo, the Sas, the Bruns, the Bolovens, the LovÉ, the Bannars, the RdÉ, the LatÉ, the Thioma, the Trao, etc.), the Mois exhibit a remarkable uniformity in physical type and manners (NeÏs). They are as a rule short (1 m. 57), and dolichocephalic (ceph. ind. on the liv. sub. 77); their skin is tan-like white in colour, reddish; their hair is more or less wavy, they have straight eyes, etc. In short, they differ as much from the Annamese as the Thai, and in all probability belong for the most part to the Indonesian race. Hunters or primitive husbandmen (the crop is gathered by picking with the hand the rice from the stalk; the cooking of the rice is effected in bamboos, which roast on the fire, etc.), they go almost naked and use only primitive arms, spears, poisoned arrows, etc. They are of fairly peaceful habits.[436] b. The Kuis.—This name distinguishes two ethnic groups of Indo-China: one in the south-east of Siam and the north-west of Cambodia, the other in the country of Kieng-Tung or Xieng-Tong (Shan States, under British protection). The former appear to be aborigines like the Mois; the latter are simply a branch of the Lo-lo or Mosso (see p. 381). The Kuis of Cambodia are in stature under the average (1 m. 63), sub-brachycephalic (ceph. ind. on the liv. sub. 82), and have a darker skin than the Laotians (Harmand). Nearly all of them can speak Cambodian and are forgetting their mother-tongue; they have the reputation of being skilful smiths.[437] FIG. 122.—Khamti of Lower Burma, Assam frontier.
(Coll. Ind. Mus., London.) c. The Mons or Talaing are the remnants of a population which formerly occupied the whole of lower Burma, and have been driven back into the unhealthy region of the deltas of the Irrawaddy, Sittong, and Salwen rivers; their territory has mostly been taken by a population sprung from the intermingling of the Mons with the Burmese. The three groups of tribes which we have just enumerated speak monosyllabic dialects correlated as regards their vocabularies, at least so far as the words indicating numbers, the parts of the body, trades, etc., are concerned. These dialects further present analogies with the Khmer (p. 398) and Khasia languages (p. 380).[438] d. The Tziam or Chiam, on the other hand, are closely allied to the Malaysian linguistic family. Their language, fixed by writing of Indian origin, reminds us of the dialects of the Philippines. About 130,000 in number, they inhabit the province of Binh-Tuan and several other points of Southern Annam, as well as Cochin-China (province of Baria, etc.) and Cambodia. They represent all that remains of a once powerful people, the founders of the empire of Champa, which extended over the whole of Annam, as it now is, and the southern part of Tong King. A section of the Tziam are Mussulmans, but the majority are animist. The physical type is handsome; nose almost aquiline, eyes without the Mongoloid fold, wavy or frizzy hair, dark skin. Contrary to what exists among other peoples of Indo-China, among the Tziams it is the woman who asks the hand in marriage.[439] e. The Karens, who inhabit the upper valley of the Me Ping and the mountainous districts of Arakan, Pegu, and Tenasserim, the country between the Sittong and the Salwen (red Karens), probably came into Burma at a later date than the Mons; they maintain that they came thither from Yunnan about the fifth century of the present era. In stature they are under the average (1 m. 64, according to Mason), and they exhibit traits intermediate between those of the Malays and the Thai (see below). Numbering about a million, they are speedily becoming civilised while striving at the same time to preserve their independence.[440] The Khyens or Chin of the mountains of Arakan and the Tung-tu of Tenasserim are Karens crossed with Burmese and Shans (p. 401). The Lemets, the Does, and the Khmus of Fr. Garnier (Kamu and Kamet of MacLeod) who inhabit the east of Luang-Prabang (French Laos), and perhaps the Lavas or Does of H. Hallet, mountaineers of West Siam, are related to the Karens or Khyens. f. The Nagas of Manipur and the mountains extending to the north (Patkoi, Barai) of this country are Indonesians more or less pure both in physical type (Frontispiece and Fig. 17) and manners and customs. They may be sub-divided into Angami, Kanpui, etc., wearing the petticoat or apron, of the west; into Lhota, Ho, etc., wearing the plaid, of the centre; and into Nangta, or naked, of the east. Various ethnic peculiarities, skull-hunting and multicoloured hair or feather ornaments, long shields (Frontispiece), breast-plates, method of weaving, and houses in common (Morong), connect them with the Dyaks and other Indonesians. Tattooing prevails only among the tribes with a monarchical organisation (Klemm). The Lushai, who live at the south of Manipur, are Nagas mixed with Kyens and Burmese of Arakan. They may be sub-divided into several tribes: the Kuki, subject to the English, very short (medium height 1 m. 57); the Lushai properly so called, partly in subjection (41,600 in Assam), somewhat slender (1 m. 63), with brown skin, flat nose, prominent cheek-bones, husbandmen;[441] the Saks, Kamis, and Shendons or Shaws. West of the Lushai dwell the Tippera and the Mrows, tribes of short stature (1 m. 59), still more pronouncedly intermingled with the Burmese.[442] Black Sakai of Gunong-Inas FIG. 123.—Black Sakai of Gunong-Inas
(Perak, Malay Peninsula).
(Phot. Lapicque.) g. The Selungs are also regarded as Indonesians; numbering but a thousand in all, they live in their canoes in the Mergui archipelago, wandering from island to island like veritable gypsies of the sea, after the manner of the Orang-Sletar of the Straits of Singapore, now quite disappeared. In the same category we may also place the natives of the Nicobar islands, though among the latter we must distinguish (1) the Nicobarese of the small islands and the coasts of Great Nicobar who have intermixed with the Malays, and (2) the Shom-Pen of the interior of the latter island, savages of a somewhat pure Indonesian type.[443] h. We must also include in this long list of the aboriginal peoples of Indo-China the Negritoes,[444] belonging to a distinct race, chiefly characterised by short stature, black skin, and frizzy or woolly hair (see p. 288). As genuine representatives of this race, only three tribes are known: the Aeta, who inhabit the Philippine islands (p. 483); the Sakai of the interior of the Malay peninsula; and the Minkopis of the Andaman islands. The Minkopis or Andamanese (Fig. 124), of very short stature (1 m. 49), sub-brachycephalic (ceph. ind. 82.6 average on the skull and on the liv. sub.), are in the lowest scale of civilisation. They live in “chongs”—small roofs on four stakes (p. 160), go naked, and procure the strict necessaries of life by hunting, making use of a peculiar kind of bow (p. 263). In number they scarcely exceed five thousand (E. Reclus). i. The pure Sakai, Semangs or Menik (as for example those of Gunong-Inas, Fig. 123) are the same height as the Minkopis (1 m. 49), but their head is less round and their face more angular than those of the latter; they live likewise by hunting and by the gathering of honey, camphor, india-rubber, and other products of tropical forests, which they exchange with the Malays for tools, arms, etc. Several populations of the Malay peninsula, particularly the Mintra, the Jakhuns of Jokol, are Sakai-Malay half-breeds, as is shown by the light colour of their skin, their stature, higher than that of the Sakai, but still very short (1 m. 54), their frizzy hair, etc. 2. Let us pass on to the mixed populations of Indo-China, springing from the probable cross-breeds of the autochthones and the invaders. Chief, Middle Andaman FIG. 124.—Negrito chief of Middle Andaman,
height 1 m. 49; cephalic ind. 83.4.
(Phot. Lapicque.) The Cambodians or Khmers have the first place by seniority. At the present day they inhabit Cambodia, the adjoining parts of Siam, and the south of Cochin-China, but they formerly extended much farther. Two centuries ago, before the arrival of the Annamese, they occupied the whole of Cochin-China, while to-day they are found in any considerable number only in the unhealthy and marshy regions of the Rach-gia, Soktrang, and Tra-Vinh districts, where their number equals or exceeds that of the Annamese. It may be conjectured that the Khmers have sprung from the intermixing of the Malays and Kuis, with an infusion of Hindu blood at least in the higher classes of society. The Cambodians are taller (1 m. 65) than the Annamese and the Thai, but almost as brachycephalic (ceph. ind. on the liv. sub. 83.6); their eyes are rarely oblique, their hair is often wavy, etc. This population has preserved much of its primitive savagery in spite of the influence of several successive civilisations, of which remain the splendid monuments of Angkor-Vat, Angkor-Tom, etc.[445] The population which chronologically succeeds the Cambodians is that of the Annamese (Fig. 121), the inhabitants of the delta in Tong King, of the coast in Annam, and most of Cochin-China. Some Annamese colonies are also found in Cambodia, in Laos, and among the Mois. The Annamese people, fifteen to seventeen millions strong at the present time, is the outcome of numerous interminglings. Of western origin, according to its traditions, that is to say akin to the Thai peoples, it came at an early period into the country which it now occupies. It found already installed there the Mois, the Khmers, and the Malays, which it succeeded in assimilating or pushing back into the mountains and the unhealthy regions; but it has had to support in its turn the continual immigrations of the Chinese who brought their civilisation to it. In spite of these complex interminglings the Annamese type is very uniform (Harmand). The men are short in stature (1 m. 58), with slender limbs, brachycephalic head (ceph. ind. 82.8), of angular visage with prominent cheek-bones, and Mongoloid eyes. The Annamese of Tong King are a little taller (1 m. 59) and darker than those of Cochin-China and Annam (height 1 m. 57); they have also a broader and flatter nose, the result perhaps of intermixture with the Thos mountaineers (p. 401) who live near them.[446] The social life of the Annamese is modelled on that of the Chinese; the village community and the patriarchal family form the base of it, in the same way as ancestor-worship is the religious foundation. Annamese Buddhism is only a colourless copy of Chinese Foism and has no great hold of the people. Very docile, the Annamese are intelligent, cheerful, and well gifted, without being exempt from certain defects of character, common to all Asiatics of the far East, such as dissimulation, hypocrisy, and perfidy. The Burmese or Mramma made a descent on Indo-China perhaps at the same time as the Annamese, from their original country, which is supposed to be the mountains of the south-east of Thibet. To-day they occupy Upper Burma, Pegu, and Arakan. In the last-mentioned country they bear the name of Mag or Arakanese, and differ a little from the true Burmese of Upper Burma, who are the purest representatives of the Burmese people. Like the Annamese, they have attained a certain degree of civilisation, mainly due to the influence of India. We find existing among them monogamy, the order of castes, and Buddhism of the south but slightly altered. The Mag are mesocephalic (ceph. ind. 81.8) and of short stature (1 m. 61).[447] The Thai.—The numerous peoples speaking different Thai dialects were the last arrivals in Indo-China. Their migrations may be followed from the first century B.C., when the Pa-y tribes came from Sechuen into Western Yunnan to found there the kingdom of Luh-Tchao. Another kingdom, that of Muang-ling, was founded more to the south-west in Upper Burma, etc. The recent researches of Terrien de Lacouperie, Colquhoun, Baber, Hosie, Labarth, Billet, H. Hollet, Bourne, Deblenne, and of so many others besides, enable us to show the relations which existed between these various Thai peoples and to assign the limits with sufficient exactitude to their habitat, which extends from Kwei-chow to Cambodia, between the 14th and the 26th degrees of N. latitude.[448] Four principal Thai peoples may be distinguished in this territory: the Thos-Muong in the north-east (Tong King and China), the Shans in the north-west (Upper Burma), the Laotians in the south-east (French Laos), and the Siamese in the south-west (Siam). We put together, under the name of Thos-Muong, all the natives of Upper Tong King and the Tong King hinterland (except the mountain summits occupied by the Mans, allied probably to the Lo-lo), as well as the primitive inhabitants of Kwang-si, Southern Kwei-chow, and Eastern Yunnan, now driven back to the mountains. The Thos inhabiting Tong King to the east of the Red River (basin of the Claire River), are sub-brachycephalic (ceph. ind. 82.5), of lofty stature (1 m. 67),[449] having elongated face, straight non-Mongoloid eyes, and brownish complexion. They partly recall the Indonesians, and partly the still mysterious race to which the Lo-lo belong (p. 381). They are husbandmen, living in houses on piles, and wearing a very picturesque costume different from that of their ancient masters the Annamese. The Muongs of Tong King to the west of the Red River (basin of the Black River), the Pueun and the Pu-Thai of Annamese Laos resemble them both in type and in language, which is a Thai dialect very much altered by Chinese and Annamese. The Tu-jen, the Pe-miao, the Pa-i, forming two-thirds of the population of Kwang-si, and found in the south of Kwei-chow and the north-west of Kwang-tung, as well as the Pe-jen or Minkia of Yunnan, are Thos slightly crossed with Chinese blood in the same way as the Nongs of Tong King, the neighbours of the Thos. Most of these peoples have a special kind of writing, recalling that of the Laotians. The latter, as well as the Shans, differ somewhat from the Thos in regard to type, in which we may discern interminglings with the Indonesians, Malays, Mois, and Burmese. Among the Shans we must distinguish the Khamti (Fig. 122), a very pure race, and the Sing-po with the Kackyen or Katchin, somewhat intermixed with the Burmese, both of them races of mountaineers of the northern parts of Upper Burma, between the Lu-Kiang (upper Salwen) and the Lohit-Brahmaputra. The upper valley of the latter river is inhabited by the Assamese or Ahoms, cross-breeds between the Shans and Hindus, speaking a particular dialect of the Hindi language. The Laotians are sub-brachycephalic (83.6) and of short stature (1 m. 59); those of the north tattoo their bodies like the Shans. They are husbandmen, shepherds, and hunters.[450] It is perhaps among the Siamese that the primitive Thai type has been most changed by intermixture with the Khmers, Kuis, Hindus, and Malays. In stature above the average (1 m. 61), very brachycephalic (ceph. ind. 85.5) with olive complexion, they have prominent cheek-bones, lozenge-shaped face, and short flattish nose. They are fervent votaries of southern Buddhism, and are the most civilised of the Thai. They have succeeded in preserving their relative independence and forming a state in which several reforms of European character have been attempted in recent times. V. THE POPULATION OF INDIA represents about a third of the inhabitants of Asia (287,223,431 inhabitants according to the census of 1891). It is sub-divided into a hundred tribes or distinct peoples, but this multiplicity of ethnic groups is rather apparent than real, and they may easily be incorporated into a small number of somatic races or linguistic families; these groups frequently represent castes alone. Caste is indeed an institution peculiar to India. Of ancient origin, this institution has developed very considerably, assuming the most varied forms. Springing from a Hindu or Brahman source, it penetrated little by little the other ethnic and religious groups of the peninsula, and one might say that it is the basis of the social organisation for four-fifths of the population of India, despite of the fact that its power is declining at the present day beneath the strong hand of British rule. About 2000 castes may be enumerated at the present day, but year by year new ones are being called into existence as a certain number disappear.[451] Gurkha, Nepal FIG. 125.—Gurkha of the Kus or Khas tribe, Nepal;
mixed Indo-Thibetan type.
(Coll. Ind. Mus., London.) The names of these castes are derived either from hereditary occupations (tanners, husbandmen, etc.); from a geographical source (Pathani, etc.), or a genealogical one—from a supposed common ancestor; or, especially among the Dravidians, from objects or animals singled out as totems (p. 247). The essential characteristics of all castes, persisting amid every change of form, are endogamy within themselves and the regulation forbidding them to come into contact one with another and partake of food together (SÉnart). Endogamy within the limits of the caste implies, as a corollary, exogamy among the sections of the caste. The typical form of these sections is the “gotra,” an eponymous group reputed to be descended from a common ancestor, usually from a rishi, a priest or legendary saint. Outside of this endogamic rule marriage is forbidden in all castes between relatives to the sixth degree on the paternal side and to the fourth degree on the maternal side. Caste has no religious character; men of different creeds may belong to it. It is ruled by a chief and a council (panchÂyet), and has not limits as rigid as is commonly supposed; the way is smoothed by compromises and liberal interpretations of rules for rich and clever people to pass from a lower to a higher caste. In this way or some other a man may rise from one caste to another: in Mirzapur many Ghonds and Korvars have become Rajputs, etc. (Crooke). Employment is by no means the criterion of caste, as is very often supposed. “Those who have seen Brahmans,” says SÉnart, “girdled with the sacred cord, offer water to travellers in the railway stations of India, who have seen them drilling among the sepoys of the Anglo-Indian army, are prepared for surprises of this kind.”[452] And in conclusion the castes do not always agree with ethnic and somatic divisions.[453] Paniyan Men and Children, Malabar FIG. 126.—Group of Paniyan men and children of Malabar.
(Phot. Thurston.) Side by side with caste another characteristic institution of the Cisgangetic Aryan or Aryanised peoples must be noted; it is the village (grama) with common proprietorship of the soil and family communities, on which I cannot dilate for want of space (see p. 247). Young Irula Girl FIG. 127.—Young Irula girl.
(Phot. Thurston.) India was the cradle of two great religions which have become international, Brahmanism and Buddhism. This fact deserves to be borne in mind on account of the impress left on these two religions by the national Hindu character. The foundation of both is formed of those characteristically Hindu beliefs,—the ideas of metempsychosis, final deliverance, and the doctrine of the moral world, which form a contrast with the Semitic religions. Brahmanism is professed by about three-fourths (72 per cent.) of the inhabitants of India, while Buddhism and its derivative Jainism only number, apart from the island of Ceylon, three per cent. of the total population of the peninsula. The most widespread religion after Brahmanism is Islamism (20 per cent. of the whole population of India). Santal, Bhagalpur Hills FIG. 128.—Santal of the Bhagalpur hills.
(Coll. India Museum, London.) From the somatological point of view it may be affirmed to-day, after the excellent works of Risley, Crooke, Thurston, Sarasin, Schmidt, Jagor, Mantegazza, etc., that the variety of types found in the country is due to the crossing of two indigenous races, Indo-Afghan and Melano-Indian or Dravidian, with the admixture here and there of foreign elements: Turkish and Mongol in the north, Indonesian in the east, Arab and Assyroid in the west, and perhaps the Negritoid element in the centre. The Indo-Afghan race, of high stature, with light brown or tanned complexion, long face, wavy or straight hair, prominent and thin nose, dolichocephalic head, predominates in the north-west of India; the Melano-Indian or Dravidian race, also dolichocephalic but of short stature, with dark brown or black complexion, wavy or frizzy hair, is chiefly found in the south. In it two sub-races may be distinguished: a platyrhinian one, with broad flat nose, rounded face, found in the mountainous regions of Western Bengal, Oudh and Orissa, also at several points of Rajputana and Gujarat, then in Southern India, and in the central provinces to the south of the rivers Narbada and Mahanadi. The other sub-race, leptorhinian, with narrow prominent nose, and elongated face may be noted in some particular groups, especially among the Nairs, the Telugus, and the Tamils.[454] 1. Melano-Indians or Dravidians.—This group, at once somatological and linguistic, includes two sub-divisions, based on differences of language: the division of Kolarians, and that of Dravidians properly so called. a. Kolarians.[455]—The numerous tribes speaking the languages of the Kol family and belonging to the platyrhinian variety of the Melano-Indian race, more or less modified by interminglings, occupy the mountainous regions of Bengal and the provinces of the north-west. Certain of these tribes, of the purest type, like the Juang or Patua of Keunjhar and Dhenkanal (Orissa), are distinguished by very short stature (1 m. 57), zygomatic arches projecting outwards, and flat face, as well as by certain ethnic characters; they go nearly naked, live on the products of the chase and the fruits and roots gathered; they also practise a little primitive cultivation by burning the forests, etc. The Kharia of Lohardaga (Chota Nagpur), who resemble the Juang in type, language, and tattooings (three lines above the nose, etc.), are partly civilised; some cultivate the ground with a plough, have a rudimentary social constitution, etc. The other Kols are, for the most part, still further advanced. Such are the Santals or Sonthals (Fig. 128) of Western Bengal, of Northern Orissa, and of Bhagalpur, who call themselves “Hor”; the Munda or Horo-hu of Chota Nagpur; the Ho or Lurka-Kols of the district of Singbhum (Bengal); lastly, the Bhumij of Western Bengal, all probably sections of one and the same people, formerly much more numerous.[456] The Kols of the north-west provinces (height 1 m. 64; ceph. ind. 73.2, according to Risley and Crooke) are closely allied to the groups which I have just mentioned. The Savaras or Saoras, scattered over Orissa, Chota Nagpur, Western Bengal, and as far as the province of Madras, speak a language which Cunningham, Cust, and Fr. MÜller consider Kolarian, while, according to Dalton, it belongs to the Dravidian family properly so called. Physically, they resemble the MalÉ Dravidians, and exhibit the tolerably pure type of the platyrhinian sub-race of the Melano-Indians.[457] The same doubt exists in regard to the linguistic affinities of the Bhils of Central India and the north-west provinces. b. Dravidians properly so called.—They may be divided into two groups, those of the north and those of the south. Dravidians of the North.—These are in the first place the MalÉ (plural Maler) or Asal Paharia of the Rajmahal hills (Bengal), probably one of the sections of the Savara people (see above);[458] the Oraons (523,000 in 1891), several tribes of which are also found in the north-west of Chota Nagpur; lastly, the Gonds (three millions) of the Mahadeo mountains and part of the central provinces situated farther south, between the rivers Indravati and Seleru, tributaries of the Godavari. To the east of the Gonds dwell the Khands and the Khonds (600,000), who have spread into Orissa. All these tribes have scarcely got beyond the stage of hunters or primitive husbandmen, who set their forests on fire in order to sow among the ashes. In this respect the Korwa of Sarguja, of Jashpur (Bengal), and Mirzapur (north-west province) resemble them, if they are not even more uncivilised. They are unacquainted with clothes of any kind, obtain fire by sawing one piece of wood with another, and have an animistic religion much less developed than that of the Gonds or Oraons.[459] Dravidians of the South.—To the south of the Godavari dwell five black, half-civilised peoples, having a particular form of writing, professing Brahmanism, and showing an intermingling of two varieties of the Melano-Indian race. Side by side with them, and among them, are found a number of small tribes more or less uncivilised and animistic, having somatic types of considerable variety. The five half-civilised Dravidian peoples are the Telingas or Telugus of the Coromandel coast, of Nizam and Jarpur (some twenty millions); the Kanaras of the Mysore table-land (about ten millions); the Malayalim of the Malabar coast (nearly six millions); the Tulus of Mangalore (350,000); lastly, the Tamils, occupying the rest of Southern India and the north of Ceylon (about fifteen millions). As to the uncivilised tribes, some occupy the Anamalli hills (the Kader, the Madavars), others inhabit Travancore (Pulaya, Paligars, Tir, Shanar, etc.). Also to be noted are the Choligha, at the foot of the Mysore hills, the Paniyans (Fig. 126) of VaÏnad or Vinad (Malabar coast), very short (1 m. 57), dolichocephalic (ceph. ind. on the liv. sub. 74), and very platyrhine (nas. ind. 95.1); lastly, the very interesting tribes of the Nilgiri hills; the Irulas (Fig. 127) and, above these, the Kurumbas (Fig. 8), on the southern and northern slopes; the Badagas, the Kotas, and the Todas on the plateau crowning these heights.[460] The Kurumbas and the Irulas (58,503 in 1891) are of short stature (1 m. 58 and 1 m. 60), dolichocephalic (ceph. ind. on the liv. sub. 75.8), and platyrhine (nas. ind. 87 and 85). They are the half-savage tribes of the jungles. As to the tribes of the plateau, they are distinguished according to their occupation and type. The Badagas (29,613 in 1891) are husbandmen, the Kotas (1,201) are artisans, and the Todas (Figs. 7, 129, and 130) shepherds. The two former approximate to the other Dravidians in type; they are of average height (1 m. 64 and 1 m. 63), hyper-dolichocephalic (ceph. ind. on the liv. sub. 71.7 and 74.1), and mesorhine (nas. ind. 75.6). But the Todas present a particular type: high stature (1 m. 70), associated with dolichocephaly (ceph. ind. on the liv. sub. 73.1) and mesorhiny (nas. ind. 74.9), somewhat light tint of skin, and the pilous system very developed (Figs. 129 and 130). In short, they appear to belong to the Indo-Afghan race, with perhaps an admixture of the Assyroid race. Besides, a number of customs and manners (group marriage, aversion to milk, rude polytheism, etc.) differentiate them from the other populations of India. They are a very small tribe, which, however, increases from year to year (693 individuals in 1871, 736 in 1891). Old Toda Man, Nilgiri Hills FIG. 129.—An old Toda man of Nilgiri hills.
(Phot. Thurston.) 2. The Aryans of India form the greatest portion of the population to the north of the Nerbada and Mahanadi; they speak different dialects of the neo-Hindu language (ancient Bracha language, branch of the Prakrit or corrupt vulgar Sanscrit). The following are the principal dialects: the Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Guzrati, and Sindi. We distinguish several ethnic groups by these dialects, or the generic names designating aggregations of castes: Brahmans, Rajputs (10 1/2 millions), Jats and Gujars (9 millions altogether), Katis (42,000); or by their religion, as the Sikhs, renowned for their warlike disposition, and recognising, at least theoretically, no castes.[461] The root-stock of all these populations is formed by the Indo-Afghan race. This race we find again in almost a pure state among the Sikhs (stature 1 m. 71, ceph. ind. in the liv. sub. 72.7, nas. ind. on the liv. sub. 68.8), and a little weakened among the Punjabi (height, 1 m. 68, ceph. ind. 74.9, nas. ind. 70.2). Among the Hindus of Behar, of the north-west provinces and Oudh, among the Mahratis between the river Tapti and Goa, the type is still more changed in consequence of interminglings with the Dravidians; the stature becomes shorter (1 m. 63 and 1 m. 64), the head rounder (ceph. ind. 75.7), the nose broader (nas. ind. 80.5 and 74), the complexion darker, etc.[462] With the Indo-Aryans are grouped, according to their type and language, the Kafirs or Siahposh of Kafiristan, and the Dardi or Dardu, occupying the countries situated more to the east, between the Pamirs on the north, Kashmir on the south, Kafiristan to the west, and Baltistan to the east—that is to say, Chitral, Dardistan (Yassin, Hunza, Nagar), Gilghit, Chilas, Kohistan. The Dardis are divided into four castes or tribes (Biddulph); that of the Chins, forming the majority of the people, is distinguished by its short stature and its dark complexion, and recalls the Hindus of the north-west provinces (Ujfalvy); while another tribe, called Yeshkhun, speaks a language which, according to Biddulph, has affinities with the Turkish languages, and, according to Leitner, is a non-Aryan agglutinative language presenting analogies with Dravidian dialects. The Yeshkhuns inhabit Dardistan. Biddulph affirms that one may often encounter among them individuals with light and especially red hair. The forty-four Yeshkhuns and Chins measured by Ujfalvy were below the average height (1 m. 61), dolichocephalic (ceph. ind. 75.8), with black wavy hair, fine shaped nose, and rather dark skin; while nineteen “Turki-Dardi” of Hunza-Nagar and Yassin measured by Risley and Capus give a stature above the average (1 m. 69), and the cephalic index almost mesocephalic (77). They are thus closely allied to the Chitrali (stature 1 m. 67, ceph. ind. 76.9 from six subjects only, measured by Risley).[463] Most of the Dardu tribes are endogamous; polygamy is general. In certain tribes there are to be found survivals of polyandry and of the matriarchate.[464] Group of Todas, Nilgiri Hills FIG. 130.—Group of Todas of Nilgiri Hills.
(Phot. lent by Deyrolle.) The Baltis, neighbours of the Dardus on the east, speaking a Thibetan dialect, and the Pakhpuluk of the other side of the Kara-Korum (upper valley of the Karakash), speaking a Turkish tongue (Forsyth), are a mixture of Indo-Aryan and Turkish races. On the other hand, in the Himalayan region, the Nepalese (the Kulu-Lahuli and Paharias on the west, the Khas, the Mangars and other Gurkhas, Fig. 125, on the east), speaking a neo-Hindu language, have sprung from the intermingling of Indo-Afghan and Mongolic races (by the Thibetans). There are in India other peoples among whom linguistic or somatological affinities with the Indo-Aryans are found. Such are the Nairs of Malabar, a conglomerate of various castes and tribes, well known by their marriage customs (p. 232), many of these tribes forming a contrast with the Dravidians by their fine type, their light complexion, their thin and prominent nose.[465] Singhalese of Candy, Ceylon FIG. 131.—Singhalese of Candy, Ceylon,
twenty-seven years old; ceph. ind. 72.4.
(Phot. Delisle.) Singhalese, Profile View FIG. 132.—Same subject as Fig. 131, seen in profile.
(Phot. Delisle.) The Singhalese (Figs. 131 and 132) of the south of Ceylon speak a fundamentally Aryan language. They have certain traits in common with the Indo-Afghans and the Assyroids, but their type has been affected by the neighbourhood of a small mysterious tribe, that of the Veddahs (Figs. 5, 6, and 133), driven back into the mountains of the south-west of Ceylon. This is the remnant of a very primitive population whose physical type approximates nearest to the platyrhine variety of the Dravidian race, at the same time presenting certain peculiarities. The Veddahs are monogamous; they live in caves or under shelters of boughs (p. 160), hiding themselves even from the Singhalese.[466] Singhalese of Candy, Ceylon FIG. 133.—Tutti, Veddah woman of the village of Kolonggala, Ceylon;
twenty-eight years old, height 1 m. 39.
(Phot. Brothers Sarasin.) VI. PEOPLES OF ANTERIOR ASIA.—The multitude of peoples, tribes, castes, colonies, and religious brotherhoods of Iran, Arabia, Syria, and Asia Minor, this crossing-place of ethnic migrations, are chiefly composed in various degrees of the three races—Indo-Afghan, Assyroid, and Arab, with the addition of some other foreign races, Turkish, Negro, Adriatic, Mongolic, etc. From the linguistic point of view, this multitude may perhaps be reduced to two great groups: the Eranians or Iranians and the Semites, if we exclude some peoples whose linguistic affinities have not yet been established. 1. The Iranians or Eranians occupy the Iranian plateau and the adjoining regions, especially to the east. They speak different languages of the Eranian branch of the Aryan linguistic family. In physical composition the main characters are supplied by the Assyroid race (Fig. 22) with admixture of Turkish elements in Persia and Turkey, Indo-Afghan elements in Afghanistan, and Arab and Negroid elements in the south of Persia and Baluchistan. Among Iranian peoples the first place, as regards number and the part played in history, belongs to the Persians. They may be divided into three geographical groups. If within the approximate limits of Persia of the present day a line be drawn running from Astrabad to Yezd and thence towards Kerman, we shall have on the east the habitat of the Tajiks, on the west that of the Hajemis (between Teheran and Ispahan[467]), and that of the Parsis or Pharsis (between Ispahan and the Persian Gulf). The Tajiks, moreover, spread beyond the frontiers of Persia into Western Afghanistan, the north-west of Baluchistan, Afghan Turkestan and Russian Turkestan, as far as the Pamirs (Galcha), and perhaps even beyond. In fact, the Polu and other “Turanians” of the northern slope of the Kuen Lun, while speaking a Turkish language, bear a physical resemblance to the Tajiks (Prjevalsky). Like the Sartes, settled inhabitants of Russian Turkestan, and the Tats of the south-west shore of the Caspian, and the Aderbaijani of the Caucasus, they are Persians more or less crossed with Turks, whose language they speak. The Tajiks are brachycephalic (ceph. ind. 84.9), above the average height (1 m. 69), and show traces of intermixture with the Turkish race,[468] while the Hajemis (Fig. 22), and in some measure the Parsis, who are dolichocephalic (77.9), and of average height (1 m. 65), are of the Assyroid or Indo-Afghan type. The Parsis are not very numerous in Persia. Most of them emigrated into India after the destruction of the empire of the Sassanides (in 634); they form there an important and very rich community (89,900 individuals in 1891), having still preserved their ancient Zoroastrian religion. This community, if chiefly composed of bankers, has also many men of letters. The education of women in it is specially looked after, the first woman to obtain the diploma of Doctor in Medicine in India being a Parsi.[469] Physically they are of the mixed Indo-Assyroid type, the head sub-brachycephalic (ceph. ind. 82, according to Ujfalvy). After the Persians come the Pathan Afghans[470] or Pashtu. They form the agricultural population of Afghanistan, and are divided into Duranis (in the west and south of the country), Ghilzis (in the east), and into several other less important tribes: the Swatis, the Khostis, the Waziris, the Kakars, etc. The Afghans of India and the Indo-Afghan frontier are divided into several tribes, of which the principal ones are the Afridis near the Khyber pass and the Yusafzais near Peshawar.[471] The Baluchis or Biloch of Baluchistan and Western India speak an Eranian dialect akin to Persian; physically they belong to the Indo-Afghan race, but mixed with the Arabs on the south and the Jats and the Hindus on the east, with the Turks on the north and the Negroes on the south-west. The Mekrani of the coast of Baluchistan and partly of Persia are a mixture of Indo-Afghan, Assyroid, and Negro races (Fig. 134). The Rinds (“Braves”) of the same coast of Mekran, who claim to be pure Baluchis, are only Arabs of the Kahtan tribe.[472] The nomadic Brahuis of Eastern Baluchistan, especially those of the environs of Kelat, resemble the Iranians. It is said that their language has some affinities with the Dravidian dialect. In reality, the ethnic place of this population, predominant in Baluchistan, is yet to be determined. FIG. 134.—Natives of Mekran (Baluchistan):
on the right, Afghan type; on the left, the same with Negro intermixture.
(Phot. Lapicque.) With the Iranian group it is customary to connect, especially from linguistic considerations, the Kurds, the Armenians, and the Ossets (p. 356). The first-mentioned people, influenced here and there by interminglings with the Turks, physically resemble the Hajemis: sub-dolichocephalic head, 78.5 when it is not deformed (p. 176), height above the average (1 m. 68), aquiline nose, etc. They occupy in a more or less compact mass the border-lands between Persia and Asia Minor; but they are found in isolated groups from the Turkmenian steppes (to the north of Persia) to the centre of Asia Minor (to the north-west of Lake TÚz-gÓl). As to the Armenians or Hai, they are found in a compact body only around Lake Van and Mount Ararat, the rest being scattered over all the towns of the south-west of Asia, the Caucasus, the south of Russia, and even Galicia and Transylvania. It is a very mixed and heterogeneous ethnic group as regards physical type. The stature varies from 1 m. 63 to 1 m. 69 according to different localities, but the cephalic index is nearly uniformly brachycephalic (85 to 87). The predominant features are however formed by the Indo-Afghan, Assyroid, and perhaps Turkish and Adriatic races. Their language differs appreciably from the other Eranian tongues.[473] 2. The Semite linguistic group is represented by Arabs, Syrians, and Jews. The Arabs occupy, besides Arabia, a portion of Mesopotamia, the shores of the Red Sea, the eastern coast of the Persian Gulf, and the north of Africa. The pure type, characterised by dolichocephaly (ceph. ind. 70), prominence of the occiput, elongated face, aquiline nose, slim body, etc., is still preserved in the south of Arabia among the Ariba Arabs, among the mountaineers of Hadramaout and Yemen (country of the ancient Himyarites or Sabeans), and among the Bedouins, descendants of the Ismaelites of the interior of Central and Northern Arabia; but the tribes which have drawn nearer the coast or the valleys of Mesopotamia show signs of interminglings with populations of a predominant Assyroid or Turkish type, without taking into account, as at Haza and on the coast of Yemen, the Negro and Ethiopic influence. Typical nomads, having in the religion founded by Mahomet a national bond of union, the Arabs make their influence widely felt over the world. Traces of the Arab type are met with not only over the whole of Northern Africa (see p. 432), but also in Asia Minor, the Caucasus, Western Persia, in India; while numerous traces of the Arab language[474] and civilisation are found in Europe (Malta, Spain), in China, Central Asia, and in the Asiatic Archipelago. The Melkits and the Wahabits are two religious sects of Arabs. The people of Syria and Palestine, known by the name of Syrians in the towns, of Kufar in the country, is the product of the interminglings of Arabs with descendants of Phoenicians and with Jews. It also forms the basis of numerous ethnic groups connected solely by religion, and of constituent elements often very heterogeneous: such are the Maronites of Western Lebanon, the Nestorians, the Druzes of Hermon and Djebel Hauran (Kurdish elements), among whom woman occupies a higher position than among other Asiatics; the Metouali (Shiah sect) of Tyre; the Nazareans or Ansarieh, who perhaps represent, along with the Takhtaji (Gypsy elements), the Kizilbashes and the Yezides or Yezdi (Kurdish elements) of Mesopotamia, the remains of the primitive population of Asia Minor, akin, according to Luschan, to the Armenians.[475] The Jews are not very numerous (250,000) in Asia, and are found scattered in small groups throughout the world. Even in the country which was formerly a Jewish State, Palestine, they scarcely exceed 75,000 in number at the present day. They are found in compact groups only in the neighbourhood of Damascus, at Jerusalem, and at the foot of the mountain-chain of Safed. It is well known that to-day the Jews are scattered over the whole earth. Their total number is estimated at eight millions, of which the half is in Russia and Rumania, a third in Germany and Austria, and a sixth in the rest of the world, even as far as Australia. The great majority of Jews are unacquainted with Hebrew, which is a dead language; they speak, according to the country they inhabit, particular kinds of jargon, the most common of which is the Judeo-German. Physically the Jews present two different types, one of which approximates to the Arab race (Fig. 21), the other to the Assyroid. Sometimes these types are modified by the addition of elements of the populations in the midst of which they dwell;[476] but, even in these cases, many traits, such as the convex nose, vivacity of eye, frequency of erythrism (p. 50), frizzy hair, thick under lip, inferiority of the thoracic perimeter, etc., show a remarkable persistence. The Arab type is common among the Spanish Jews who practise the Sefardi rite, among the native Jews of the Caucasus, very brachycephalic however (85.5 ceph. ind., according to Erckert and Chantre),[477] and among those of Palestine, while the Assyroid type dominates among the Jews of Asia Minor, Bosnia, and Germany. These last, like the Jews of Slav countries, practise the Askenazi rite. The Jews of Bosnia, called Spaniols, coming from Spain by Constantinople, are under average height (1 m. 63) and mesocephalic (ceph. ind. 80.1, Gluck); those of Galicia, Western Russia, and Russian Poland are shorter (1 m. 61 and 62) and sub-brachycephalic (ceph. ind. 82); those of England are of the same stature (1 m. 62), but mesocephalic (ceph. ind. 80).[478] Along with the Jews we must put another people, also dispersed over nearly the whole earth, and of Asiatic origin, probably from India, to judge by the affinities of its language with the Hindu dialects—the Gypsies. They are found in India (Banjars, Nats, etc.), Persia and Russian Turkestan (Luli, Mazang, Kara-Luli, etc.), in Asia Minor (where are also found their congeners, the Yuruks); then in Syria (Chingane), in Egypt (Phagari, Nuri, etc.), and all over Europe, with the exception, it is said, of Sweden and Norway; they are found in considerable numbers in Rumania (200,000), Turkey, Hungary, and the south-west of Russia. In all they number nearly a million. The pure so-called “Black Gypsies” are of the Indo-Afghan race (stature 1 m. 72, ceph. ind. on the liv. sub. 76.8), but very often they have intermingled with the populations in the midst of which they dwell.[479]
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