CHAPTER I. motest past nondescripts from the unknown south and west of a bygone world may have been driven in rude craft by the south-west monsoon from the southern and Indian oceans towards the western coasts of the Peninsula and Dekhan. Meantime, tides of Turanian invasion may have been driven by the chilly blasts of the north-east monsoon, through the eastern Himalayas down the valley of the Brahmaputra. Finally, in a later age the Aryans on the north-west seem to have entered the Punjab and prepared for the invasion of Hindustan. These collisions of rival races were doubtless followed by those intermittent wars for land and subsistence, which seem to have characterized the progress of the human race from the earliest age of stone and iron. Invaders from the sea would drive the inhabitants of the coast into the interior. Immigrants from upper Asia would drive the inhabitants of the fertile plains into the hills and jungles. The territories occupied by the several bands of invaders would be constantly exposed to the ravages and outrages of marauders on the border. Thus the entire Indian continent would be filled with strife and anarchy; and men would secure their harvests, not merely by the ploughshare and the reaping-hook, but by the sword, the spear, and the bow. Kolarians, or aborigines. The races who occupied India prior to the Vedic Aryans have been excluded from the division of the ancient history into Vedic and Brahmanic times. Indeed they have no history apart from Vedic and Brahmanic traditions. The remains of so-called aboriginal races may be treasured up as memorials of primitive man, but they furnish few data which are available for the purposes of history. For ages their relics have been turning to dust in CHAPTER I. caves or cromlechs, or lying buried beneath the shapeless mounds which cover the sites of departed cities. A few dry bones, a few weapons of stone and rusted metal, a scattering of nameless implements and ornaments, are occasionally discovered amongst the debris of ancient settlements and forgotten battle-fields, which for ages have passed into oblivion. But such vestiges of the past can only interest the antiquarian, and throw no light upon religious or political culture. In the course of ages many of the primitive races may have been incorporated in the general population, and form in the present day the lower strata of the Hindú social system. Others, again, are still undergoing the gradual process of being Hinduized, although they are not as yet recognized as forming a part of the Hindú population. Living representatives of primitive races are still, however, lingering in secluded and difficult regions, but they have long ceased to play any important part in the annals of humanity. They represent the human race in its earliest childhood; and their pleasures and ideas are those of children modified more or less by the intercourse of the sexes. They may open up new fields of labour to the philanthropist and the missionary; they may be received into the Brahmanical pale, or be induced to accept Islam or Christianity; but their intellectual life has ebbed away, perchance never to be restored. In the later annals of India some of the tribes occasionally rise to the surface, and then drop back into their old obscurity; and it will accordingly suffice to describe them as they individually appear. For the convenience of refer CHAPTER I. ence ence they are best generalized under the term of Kolarians. Dravidians: But there is one important race who can neither be referred to an Aryan or Kolarian origin; who ́ must have occupied a prominent position in the old Indian world which has passed away, and may yet have a high destiny to fulfil in the India which is to be. This is the great Dravidian race of the southern Peninsula. The Dravidians apparently entered India long before the Aryans, but it is impossible to say by what route. Their cradle was probably in some distant region in upper Asia. There they seem to have overflowed their ancient limits, and moved in successive waves of immigra tion into Hindustan. Their subsequent history is A broad light has been recently thrown upon the pre-Aryan tribes by Colonel Dalton's valuable work, entitled "Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal." As far back as 1866 Dr Fayrer, of Indian celebrity, proposed a grand scheme for bringing together in one exhibition at Calcutta, typical examples of the races of the old world. It is much to be regretted that this scheme could not be realized, but so many difficulties were raised that the British Government declined to accept the responsibilities of the exhibition. The fullest information, however, respecting these tribes was collected from the local officers by the British Government, and entrusted to the editorship of Colonel Dalton, who has spent the greater portion of a long service in Assam and Chota Nagpore, the most interesting fields of ethnographical research in all Bengal. In 1872 Colonel Dalton produced his handsome volume, which is not only a treasury of authentic information, but is illustrated by a series of lithograph portraits of the principal tribes copied from excellent photographs taken on the spot. Colonel Dalton comprises all the non-Aryan tribes under two heads, namely:1. The Kolarian, or those who speak a language allied with that of the Kols, Santals, Mandas, and their cognates. 2. The Dravidian, or those who speak a language allied with the Tamil or Telugu. Colonel Dalton also treats of an important people, numbering several millions, who are certainly non-Aryan, but who have lost their language and traditions, and hava ao largely adopted Hindú customs and religion that they can only be called Hinduized aborigines, The question as to the origin of the Dravidian people is still open to discussion. Dr Caldwell, who has spent many years in the south of India, speaks of them as of Turanian affinities, who entered India probably earlier than the Arvane, but across the lower Indus. Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian of South Indian Family of Languages, by the Rev. R. Caldwell. nearly a blank; but they may perhaps be traced CHAPTER I. through the Dekhan on their way to the Peninsula, where they became fused into separate nationalities, each having its own language and institutions, so that it is difficult to say how far they may be referred to the same parent stem. In ancient times they established empires which were once the centres of wealth and civilization, but which only appear on the page of history when their political power was drawing to a close. In the present day they cover an area corresponding to the limits of the Madras presidency. They are represented by the Telugu, the Tamil, the Kanarese, and the Malayalam speaking people of the Peninsula. Their political life has stagnated under Brahmanical oppression and Mussulman rule; but they are already quickening into new energy under the healthy stimulus of western culture. The Dravidian people are indeed endowed with a latent vitality which stands out in marked contrast to the lassitude of the Bengalee; and when they have thrown off the spiritual thraldom of the Bráhmans, and subordinated their caste system to the interests of the common weal, they will begin to play an important part in the regeneration of the Indian world. ligion. The religion of the Dravidian race has long Dravidian rebeen crusted over by Brahmanism, but still the old faiths are sufficiently perceptible. The people worship guardian deities of the village and household; and every man has his own patron god. The serpent is everywhere respected, and more or less propitiated. The linga too is regarded as a symbol of the power of reproduction, and emblem of the supreme being; and it would thus appear that much CHAPTER I. of the Dravidian religion was originally based upon ideas associated with the sexes. Traces of the lings worship are still lingering throughout the greater part of India, but they are already dying away before the development of spiritual ideas; and but little now remains beyond an archaic symbolism, which has ceased to exercise any unhallowed influence upon the masses." their origin. The invasion of the Aryans is a still more important stand-point in the history of India. This Vedic Aryans: intellectual people migrated from the cold region of Iran or Aryana, and were a cognate race with the ancient Persians. They were, in fact, an offshoot of the same Indo-European stem, which sent forth other branches under the names of Greeks, Italians, Germans, Slaves, and Celts, to conquer the western world. They originally settled in the Punjab, but subsequently crossed the river Saraswatí, which separates the Punjab from Hindustan, and began to colonize the upper valleys of the Ganges and Jumna. During this advance they encountered many non The religion of the Dravidian people, which lies under the crust of Brahmanism, is interesting from its extreme simplicity. "Snake worship," says Dr Balfour, "is general throughout Peninsular India, both of the sculptured form and of the living creature. The sculpture is invariably of the form of the Nág or cobra, and almost every hamlet has its serpent deity. Sometimes this is a single snake, the hood of the cobra being spread open. Occasionally the sculptured figures are nine in number, and this form is called the 'Nao nág,' and is intended to represent a parent and eight of its young; but the prevailing form is that of two snakes twining in the manner of the Esculapian rod." Speaking of the village gods, Colonel Meadows Taylor says: "The worship of Gráma Devatas, or village divinities, is universal all over the Dekhan, and indeed, I believe, throughout India. These divinities have no temples nor priests. Sacrifice and oblation are made to them at sowing time and harvest, for rain or fair weather, in time of cholera, malignant fever, or other disease or pestilence. The Nág is always one of the Gráma Devatas, the rest being known by local names. The Gráma Devatas are known as heaps of stones, generally in a grove or quiet spot near every village, and are smeared some with black and some with red colour." See Fergusson's Tree and Serpent Worship, Appendix D. |