CHAPTER I

Transcriber's Note:

Apparent typographical errors have been corrected, and the use of

hyphens has been normalized.

The author does not identify the transliteration scheme(s) used for

Indian words in the text. Macrons (as in "ā") are used extensively and

there is some use of the "diacritic dot" (as in "ṇ").

Text in italics is indicated by _underscores_ and text in black-letter

font is indicated by +plus signs+. Small capitals have been replaced by

full capitals.

The Cambridge Manuals of Science and Literature

THE PEOPLES OF INDIA

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

+London+: FETTER LANE, E.C.

C. F. CLAY, MANAGER

[Illustration: university crest]

+Edinburgh+: 100, PRINCES STREET

+Berlin+: A. ASHER AND CO.

+Leipzig+: F. A. BROCKHAUS

+New York+: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

+Bombay and Calcutta+: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.

_All rights reserved_

[Illustration:

Brāhmans

(_Mirzapur district_)]

[Illustration: title page

THE PEOPLES OF INDIA

BY

J. D. ANDERSON, M.A.

Teacher of Bengali in the

University of Cambridge, formerly

of the Indian Civil Service

Cambridge:

at the University Press

1913]

+Cambridge+:

PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A.

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

_With the exception of the coat of arms at the foot, the design on the

title page is a reproduction of one used by the earliest known Cambridge

printer, John Siberch, 1521_

PREFACE

The writing of this little book has been delayed by the hope I once

cherished of incorporating in it some of the results of the Indian

Census of 1911. This desire was inevitable in the case of a retired

Indian official, who, like most of his kind, has taken a small part in

one or more of the decennial numberings of the Indian people. In this

country, a Census affords material chiefly for the calculations and

theories of the statistician, and the Registrar-General is not regarded

as an expert in Anthropology or Linguistics. But in India the case is

very different. If the district officer is always glad to learn as much

as possible of the people with whom he is brought into contact, his

official duties often reveal only the seamy side of Indian life, and it

is only when he is in camp, or snatching a rare and hurried holiday in

shooting, that he gets to see something of the people otherwise than as

litigants or payers of revenue. A census is an agreeable and welcome

opportunity for looking at India from another and more genially human

point of view. In the first place, it is one of the least expensive of

official operations, since it is chiefly performed by unpaid and

volunteer agency. Hence the official, a little weary of litigants,

touts, pleaders, and subordinates, who, however amiable in their private

lives, are apt to be indolent and obstructive in office, is glad to make

acquaintance with new friends, who, for the most part, take an

intelligent and amused interest in the unfamiliar task of numbering. For

many busy weeks before the actual counting takes place, the district

officer has to ride far and near, to satisfy himself that all necessary

preparations have duly been made, to issue the instructions that may be

called for by the zeal, inquisitiveness or density of his volunteer

colleagues. In the process, he has many pleasant and some amusing

experiences. On one occasion I rode into a little village on the

north-eastern frontier, inhabited by semi-savage Tibeto-Burmese people.

Official orders as to the numbering of all the house in legible figures

had apparently not been obeyed. I simulated wrath and disappointment,

but the worthy headman on whom I vented my (purely official) indignation

was not dismayed. "Bring out your drums!" he shouted. Every householder

produced the family kettle-drum, on the head of which the number of his

house had been duly inscribed in large figures. There was no paper in

the village, but parchment was invented before paper, and the headman

deserved the commendation I was glad to bestow. On another occasion, I

found a house numbered indeed, but grievously dilapidated and obviously

deserted. "Why is this empty house numbered?" I asked. "It is haunted by

a ghost, sir," answered the enumerator. I confess I felt sorry not to

allow him to include this ghostly visitant in a census of living men.

Other incidents, more ethnologically important than these, will

frequently occur. In any case the Census Report of an Indian province is

by far the most interesting official document in existence, and each

census adds something to our knowledge of Indian humanity, if only

because each Census Commissioner, always an officer of unusual ability

and attainments, looks at his task from a point of view somewhat

different from that of his predecessors, and stamps his individuality on

the work of his subordinates. Those who have read Mr E. A. Gait's

article on _Caste_ in the _Dictionary of Ethics and Religion_ will

expect the census of 1911 to contain new views and fresh information as

to the actual working of the caste system in various provinces, and its

relation to the religious ideas of the people.

* * * * *

It was natural, then, that I should wish to learn from a new tapping of

the source from which has been compiled, for the most part, the ethnical

portion of the first volume of the Imperial Gazetteer of India, which

has been my chief authority in compiling this little book. But I know

not when Mr Gait's Report for all India will be ready, and even the

Provincial Reports come but slowly from the Press. Most of them are full

of the most interesting and valuable information, but it takes time to

assimilate so much new matter, and, in any case, not much of it could

have been utilized for so small and elementary a book. Hence I have

simply to state my debt to the late Sir H. H. Risley and Mr E. A. Gait

for the chapter on Race and Caste; to Sir G. A. Grierson for the chapter

on Languages, and to Mr William Crooke for enabling me further to

summarise his masterly summary of what is known about Indian Religions.

It is a particular pleasure to acknowledge my indebtedness to my friend

Sir G. A. Grierson. Years ago, when we were young men, it was known that

in him the Indian Civil Service possessed a scholar and a linguist of

most unusual industry and ability. But few knew that there was

germinating in his mind the scheme for the great _Linguistic Survey of

India_, the most remarkable feat of administrative scholarship, perhaps,

that has ever been attempted, a feat that has won him the _Prix Volney_

and I know not what other appreciations of his work in France and

Germany. His learning and linguistic skill are widely known, but I must

seize the opportunity to tell of another feature of his achievement. Of

course no man knows more than a few of the hundreds of Indian languages,

but there is one man who knows something of the working and mechanism of

them all, and that is Sir G. A. Grierson. I had the privilege of helping

him with part of the Bodo volume of his _Survey_, having had occasion to

learn one or two Tibeto-Burman languages in the course of official duty.

The practised ease with which he acquired the syntactical and phonetic

peculiarities of languages with which he had no previous acquaintance

was the most surprising and delightful intellectual performance I have

ever witnessed.

I have ventured occasionally to enliven my chiefly borrowed narrative

with personal ideas or reminiscences. Such digressions have however been

few and brief, and I do not think I need apologise for them.

I have to thank Miss Lilian Whitehouse and my son, Lieut. M. A.

Anderson, R.E., for the two diagrammatic maps which will, I hope, clear

up any geographical difficulties created by a necessarily brief account

of a large and complicated subject.

I owe the illustrations of caste types to the kindness of Mr William

Crooke. They are from photographs of inhabitants of one single district

of the United Provinces and are interesting as showing how in a single

small area racial differences show themselves in such a way as to be

recognisable by the most careless observer. They prove once more how

stratified Indian humanity has become under the influence of caste rules

of marriages.

J. D. A.

_September, 1913._

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

PREFACE v

INTRODUCTION 1

I. RACE AND CASTE 13

II. THE LANGUAGES OF INDIA 54

III. THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA 81

BIBLIOGRAPHY 113

INDEX 115

ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATE

Brāhmans (_Mirzapur district_) _Frontispiece_

I. Mahābrāhmans (_Mirzapur district_) _To face page_ 12

II. Kāyasthas—the writer caste (_Mirzapur

district_) " 24

III. Dharkārs (_Mirzapur district_) " 36

IV. Banjara women (_Mirzapur district_) " 48

V. Seoris or Savaras (_Mirzapur district_) " 60

VI. A Bhuiyār (_Mirzapur district_) " 72

VII. A Ghāsiya (_Mirzapur district_) " 84

MAPS

The Indian Empire—Distribution of Population _At end of book_

The Indian Empire—Distribution of Prevailing

Languages "

INTRODUCTION

It is necessary, once more, to remind the reader that the peninsula of

India has an area and population roughly equal to the area and

population of Europe without Russia. Everyone who has learnt geography

at school is familiar with the great triangle, its base in the soaring

Himalayan heights in the north, its apex jutting into the Indian Ocean,

and marked by the satellite island of Ceylon. To the north, then, is the

great mountain barrier, a tangled mass of snowy peaks, glaciers and

snowfields, separating the sunny plains of India proper from the

plateaux of Central Asia. Beneath them lie wide river basins, sandy and

dry as unirrigated Egypt to the west; moist, warm, and waterlogged to

the east. To the south of the valleys of the Indus and the Ganges is the

central plateau, home of many aboriginal races. This rises on the west

into a castellated rampart of hills facing the Arabian Sea, and on the

south slopes away into green undulating uplands. So much, at least, of

geographical description must be given as a clue to the distribution of

the peoples of India. Along the Himalayas, growing stronger in numbers

as we go eastwards, are races mostly of a Mongolian type, mingled with

purely Indian elements. In the Panjāb and the United Provinces, sending

offshoots southwards along the well-watered west coast, are the peoples

in whom the traces of Aryan immigration are most visible. In Bengal we

find a duskier race, provisionally termed Mongolo-Dravidian, but with a

strong infusion, in the upper classes, of western blood. In the south

are a still darker population almost wholly Dravidian. It is in the most

ancient part of India, in the high plateau of the Deccan, that there

still dwell the peoples who are probably the aborigines of the land and

use the most purely Indian languages, the various Dravidian dialects.

The geologically recent valleys of the Indus and Ganges are the home of

races, mingled with aboriginal peoples, whose language and physical

features show that in them is a strong strain of immigrant blood.

On the Himalayan slopes, in Assam, and especially in Burma, are

Tibeto-Burman peoples, with something of a Japanese aspect. Intermingled

with all these, in forests and on rough and hardly accessible hills, are

scattered many groups of semi-savage folk, of whom little was known till

the gradual spread of British rule carried the administrator, the

missionary, and finally the anthropologist, into regions once considered

unfit for the presence of civilised men.

So far, it may be said, the distribution of Indian humanity is not very

unlike that of the races of Europe. Even this very crude summary, it is

true, shows at least three great groups of languages, Dravidian in the

south, Indo-European in the west and north-west, Tibeto-Burman in the

north and the north-east. There are in fact five separate families of

human speech which have their homes in India; the Aryan, the Dravidian,

the Mundā, the Mon-Khmer, and the Tibeto-Chinese. The lateral spread of

these is, of course, no real indication of the present habitat of five

different races of men. But they do indicate the existence, in varying

degrees of purity, of five different origins, of which the Dravidian and

Mundā alone can be said to be purely indigenous and confined to the

Indian peninsula. Nowhere is it more easy than in India to see how

languages spread from race to race, from tribe to tribe, with a sort of

linguistic contagion; the stronger, more supple, more copious, more

cultivated languages replacing and gradually destroying weaker forms of

speech. Something of the same sort has occurred, and is even now

happening, in Europe. But the surviving European languages are mostly

sturdy and vigorous, and do not readily yield place to one another. In

India the process of linguistic invasion is going on before our eyes,

attendant on the gradual growth of Hindu civilisation and religion,

which disdains to practise open and reasoned proselytism, but extends

its borders nevertheless, and carries with it one or another of the

Aryan dialects.

In spite of the spread of the stronger languages, the five great

families of Indian speech remain and testify to more varied origins than

those of Europe. One of the first results of familiarity with Indian

peoples is a sense of their remarkable variety of aspect and culture.

When the stranger lands in India, his first feeling is one of

bewildering sameness; the dusky beings that surround him seem as like

one another as sheep, or peas. But that sensation is merely due to the

predominance of unfamiliar colour, and soon gives way to an impression

of astonishing and most interesting variety. This variety is exhibited

by the careful anthropometric investigations of the ethnologist. But

there is more variety than average measurements show, and the rough

impressions of the experienced administrator and traveller are not

without their value. For instance, Sir William Hunter, in his work on

_The Indian Empire_, classified the highlanders of Chota Nagpore as a

race apart, whom he called Kolārians. Sir H. H. Risley says that "the

distinction between Kolārians and Dravidians is purely linguistic, and

does not correspond to any differences of physical type." As a matter of

average physical measurements, this criticism is just. The average

dimensions of Sonthal skulls are the same as those of other Dravidian

races. But he would be a poor observer of racial characteristics, who

could not pick out a typical inhabitant of Chota Nagpore from a crowd of

southern Dravidians. Even in parts of Bengal where such "Kolārian" folk

have settled some generations ago, and have acquired the local language

and dress, they are almost as easily distinguished as a Hindu

undergraduate in Cambridge. If physical characters are rightly divided

into "indefinite" signs of race, which can only be described with

difficulty and hesitation in ordinary language, and the "definite" signs

which can be measured and reduced to figures, yet the general aspect of

a tribe or caste is the first thing which strikes an experienced

enquirer's eye, and leads him to make further and more detailed

investigations.

So is it also with those divisions, peculiar to India, which are known

to us by the Portuguese name of _caste_. The Indian name for caste is

_varna_, or "colour," and physical differences between different castes

were fairly obvious even before accurate averages were struck between

many individual measurements. Caste has undoubtedly tended, and for

similar reasons, to perpetuate such differences between classes of men

as we readily recognise between different breeds of horses or cattle.

The ages of men succeed one another more slowly than the generations of

domestic animals, and segregation, in spite of caste rules, has probably

at no time been so rigid as in the case of pure-bred animals. But there

is a restriction in the matter of marriage which has been more or less

efficacious, and especially so in the case of the higher castes, where

the women are more carefully guarded, and pride of birth influences the

future mothers of the race. In some rare instances, castes are still

racial, preserved from immixture by much the same feeling which leads

the white American to protect his race from a mingling of Negro or Red

Indian blood. Other castes are still recognisably the result and record

of such forbidden mixtures. Sometimes the resulting difference is so

great as to be visible in actual measurements. Often the result is a

mere peculiarity of aspect, such as enables an expert to identify a

mongrel or a crossbreed among domesticated animals. In any case, once a

caste is formed, it is fenced in by matrimonial rules, strict in

proportion to the social status and consideration of the group. Not

only, then, are the racial origins of modern India more various than

those of Europe, but such varieties of colour, stature, and culture as

exist tend to be perpetuated.

It has been said, somewhat paradoxically, that whereas in Europe the

divisions between races of men cut perpendicularly, as it were, so as to

be more or less local and geographical, in India the separating lines

run horizontally, and represent social strata. This, of course, is only

partly true. The ancient Hindu theory of caste assumes the existence of

four great divisions of Hindu humanity, extending all over India;

namely, Brāhmans or priests, Kshatriyas, or warriors; Vaiçyas, or

trading and professional folk; and Sūdras, who are most justly and aptly

to be described as "the remainder." In all parts of Hindu India may be

found representatives of this ancient and theoretical division of

humanity, the first two usually claiming a western origin as eagerly as

some of us claim a tincture of Norman blood. But it would be incorrect

to say that even the highest and purest of these four divisions is of

uniform race, or anything approaching to it, all over India. A Bengali

Brāhman, for instance, can be more or less easily distinguished from

other Bengalis, if he has the typical appearance of his caste. But he is

even more easily distinguished from Brāhmans of other Provinces. How

much of this last difference is due to mixture of blood, how much to

difference of food and climate, it is, of course, difficult to say. But

certainly caste produces a difference of breed in addition to the

ethnical varieties of origin which differentiate the Indian populations

from those of Europe.

Thirdly, some clue to Indian racial differences may be found in the

religions of the peninsula. The greatest of these is still the Indian

religion _par excellence_, the wonderful collection of varied

speculations, beliefs, and practices known to us as Hinduism, and its

daughter, the religion of Buddha. The latter has spread far and wide,

has subjugated Ceylon and Burma, and is the leading religion of the Far

East. At one time, it was supposed to be entirely or nearly extinct in

India, although students had discovered traces of its influence in the

Vishnuvite sects of Hinduism. Recent researches have shown that an

almost unaltered form of Buddhism survives in the very bosom of

Hinduism, and is practised under Hindu names among certain castes of

Bengal and Orissa. It is to be noted that the investigations into these

survivals have been for the most part conducted by Bengali Hindus, among

whom is springing up a school of ethnologists and comparative linguists,

who only need a better knowledge and understanding of European methods

to be invaluable aids to western research in such matters. In Bengal, a

work of purely anthropological interest has actually been published in

the vernacular, an interesting account of the Chakmas, a Tibeto-Burman

but partly Hinduised race on the eastern border of Bengal. Closely akin

to the lower forms of Hinduism, and often subtly blending with them, are

many Animistic religions, most of them professed by aboriginal tribes,

speaking one or other of the aboriginal languages.

Islam and Christianity are, of course, imported and proselytising

religions, and yield few if any clues to racial or social origins. Many

Muhammadans profess to be, and not a few are, of authentic foreign

origin. But during the seven hundred years of Muslim rule in India,

there was much intermarriage with native races, and even more

conversion. It is curious that, as in the case of Christianity, the

conversions have been mostly among tribes and classes of the humbler

sort. These were not denied admission into Hinduism, but they were only

admitted on terms of social and racial degradation. Islam and

Christianity alike claim to overlook the accidents of birth and status,

and hence attract those to whom Hinduism only offered a place among the

lowest ranks of its social hierarchy. But even in the case of the

religions of Christ and Muhammad, the inveterate Indian tendency to

recognise and insist on breed and social status has asserted itself

again and again. Among Muhammadans, the Arabic tribal names have come to

be the designations of social units which differ but little from the

endogamous castes of Hinduism, and the same tendency is already evident

among Christian converts. There is a marked reluctance in some quarters

among ex-Hindus to intermarry with ex-Muslims, or even to participate in

sacramental Communion with them.

As with caste, so with religion, the divisions are not strictly

horizontal. As Christianity is not one thing all over Europe, but has

differences of creed, ritual, and practice corresponding to racial

differences, so the Hinduism, and even the Muhammadanism, of different

provinces varies. There is no sharp boundary; there are elements in

common wherever we go. But just as Dravidian temple architecture can be

easily distinguished, even by the unpractised eye, from that of the

edifices of the Gangetic plains, so local peculiarities of belief or

ritual may come to the aid of the anthropologist, and may suggest or

confirm distinctions more easily verified and more capable of scientific

proof.

The study of all these matters is not without a practical and

administrative interest at the present time. A hundred and fifty years

ago, to the racial, tribal, and caste differences, accompanied by

differences of language and religion, were added political divisions,

accentuated by frequent dynastic or predatory wars. British rule

has introduced two powerful unifying influences. Our system of

administration, while it is adapted more or less effectively (more in

some cases, less in others, according to the talent and character of

local officers) to local precedents and local needs, is moulded by the

great supervising and consolidating authority of the Governor-General in

Council.

Secondly, higher education in India is conducted for the most part in

English, and educated India, rapidly growing in numbers, has English for

its second language, and is modifying local beliefs, usages,

aspirations, patriotisms in accordance with ideas more or less

consciously assimilated from European teachers and models. No one can

deny that this new unity of India is the direct result of centralised

British rule. In the far distance of time, all or nearly all India

would, for a while, accept the domination of some Hindu ruler or

dynasty. Under the Muhammadans, similarly, there were times when the

Emperor at Delhi was the ruler of all or nearly all India. Under British

rule, a much wider and more populous India, ranging from Baluchistan to

Burma, and only excepting the semi-independent states which have been

allowed to retain sovereign powers, is really and for the first time

part of the greatest administration on earth except that of China, if we

look to numbers. It is a result, as the history of British India shows,

for which we cannot claim the whole credit. The direction of the great

work of unification has been in British hands; it has chiefly been

carried out by indigenous agency, and, in matters of detail, in

deference to Indian ideas and Indian suggestions. Even fifty years ago,

few Indians supposed that the wide Empire of India could be governed

save under British guidance, or without the aid of British bayonets. The

old habitual forces of disruption were too obvious; the distrust of one

race for another was still too keenly felt to allow Indian politicians

to imagine a united India under indigenous rule. But as the educated

classes grow in power, in numbers, in self-reliance, and reliance on one

another; as some of them are promoted to posts of higher trust and

authority in India, and even in England, it is perhaps only natural that

Indians should suppose that, so far as politics and administration are

concerned, the old divisions and dissensions are obsolete, and that

united India can in future be governed by native agency. That is not a

matter with which ethnology has anything to do. It is the ethnologist's

business merely to record impartially what racial, tribal, social, and

religious differences still survive, and, if he can, to show how far

they have been, and are being, obliterated by the spread of education,

and by growing self-confidence and ambition among educated Indians.

Whether the information the ethnologist collects can be put to any

administrative use does not concern him, nor does he desire that his

impartiality shall be affected by these considerations. But, in a little

book of this kind it may not be amiss to point out that one result of

British rule has been the growth of a new type of Indian, the educated

Indian; who, whether he be Hindu or Muhammadan or Buddhist, is at least

inclined to subordinate the old hereditary divisions to common political

ambitions. These ambitions affect the fortunes and the future of some

three hundred millions of humbler Indians, at present only linked by the

accident of common British rule, and, so far as they are Hindus, by a

common Hindu sentiment.

[Illustration: _Plate I_

Mahābrāhmans

(_Mirzapur district_)]

In the following chapters, it will be my business to tell, as briefly

and clearly as possible, of (1) the Ethnology and Castes of the Indian

Peoples; (2) the Languages of India; (3) the Religions of India. I hope

what I have already said will sufficiently show why these three subjects

are treated in this order.

CHAPTER I

RACE AND CASTE

Curiously enough, the systematic enquiry into the physical

race-characteristics of the Indian peoples was due to a daring assertion

by Mr Nesfield, of the Indian Educational Service, to the effect that,

so far as physical signs go, there is practically only one Indian race

and one Indian caste. This was a hasty but quite natural generalisation

from experience of a part of India, the United Provinces, which is in

the heart of the Aryan settlement in the Gangetic _do-āb_ (the area

between "two rivers"). Here caste has long been a settled institution,

and innumerable sub-castes, professional or the result of outcasting,

have come into existence. Mr Nesfield was driven by his local

observations to assert the unity of one great Indian race; he denied the

truth of "the modern doctrine which divides the population of India into

Aryan and aboriginal": he sturdily declared that it was impossible to

distinguish a scavenger from a Brāhman, save by costume and other

artificial and accidental marks. Even in the United Provinces this

uncompromising statement awoke dissent. In other parts of India, as, for

instance, on the north-eastern frontier, the crowded home of many races

and languages, dissent was eager and loud. It was evident, on the face

of it, that Mr Nesfield's new dogma was based on too limited a study.

Caste, for him, was a mere matter of hereditary function and profession;

since most castes in the sacred "midland" of Hinduism have assumed that

guise. There is no reason to suppose that castes have usually or even

often been formed as professional guilds. They come into being for many

reasons, some of which will be presently stated; and in civilised

communities, where the division of labour and specialisation of

professional skill are well established, a caste gradually assumes some

distinctive means of livelihood. But on the borders of Hinduism, where

the Hindu social system is still assimilating new races, instances

abound of racial castes, tribal castes, perhaps even (though this is a

more doubtful matter) totemistic castes.

Those who had the widest experience of the Peninsula were convinced that

its races were at least as varied as those of Europe: those who, like Mr

Nesfield, had made a close study of one limited tract, might have

continued to believe that under the superficial distinctions of caste

and class lay a real unity of race. But Mr (afterwards Sir H. H.) Risley

had spent the early years of his Indian service among the Dravidian

tribes of Chota Nagpore, and was aware that they differ more widely from

the people Mr Nesfield had studied than an Englishman differs from a

Turk. The difference, indeed, was almost as great as that between a

European and a Chinaman. Could such differences be registered and

described in such a way as to convince minds accustomed to scientific

accuracy in statement? Mr Risley thought he saw his way to an

ethnological classification of Indian races and castes by means of the

then comparatively new methods of anthropometry. In 1891, he published

in the _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_ a paper which marked

the beginning of systematic ethnological studies in India. It contained

a summary of the measurements of eighty-nine castes and tribes of

Bengal, the United Provinces, and Bihār. It dealt, therefore, with the

great alluvial plain, created by the Ganges and Indus, which lies

between the Himalayas and the _massif central_ of the Deccan. Here is

the home of the Aryan immigrants, where the great Indo-European

languages are spoken by communities as numerous as the larger European

nations. Anthropometry showed in the plainest, the most incontrovertible

way, that the caste system of marriages had sorted out men into classes

possessing definite and recognisable physical characteristics. There

were local differences, and caste differences. It only remained to

extend anthropometrical measurements to other parts of India to prove

that the many languages and religious beliefs of India are associated

with an even greater variety of physical qualities. Such enquiries are

still in progress, but many notable results have already been obtained,

especially by Mr Edgar Thurston, in his now famous investigations into

Dravidian ethnography.

The most important and significant measurement is that of the shape of

the head. It is, of course, impossible to take a man at random and to

say with certainty that the excessive length or breadth of his skull

proves him to belong to a given race. But the average skull-measurements

of a race are distinctive, and confirm, on the whole, the impressions

created by general aspect, colour, language and other vaguer

indications. The general result is as follows. At either end of the

Himalayan range, in Baluchistan on the west, and in Assam and Burma on

the east, broad heads prevail. Broad too are the heads of the mostly

Mongolian races inhabiting the valleys of the southern slopes of the

Himalayas, and in a belt of country running down the western coast at

least as far south as Coorg. In the Panjāb, Rājputānā, and the United

Provinces, tracts where the climate is dry and healthy, where great

summer heat is compensated for by a bracing winter, where wheat is for

the most part the staple food, long heads predominate. In Bihār,

travelling eastwards, medium heads are most common. In the damp and

steamy delta of Bengal, inhabited by over forty millions of rather dusky

rice-eating people, there is a marked tendency towards the Mongolian

brachy-cephaly of Tibeto-Burman races. It is visible among the

Muhammadans and Chandāls of Eastern Bengal, people who are probably

indigenous in this tract, it is more marked among the Kāyasthas, the

writer-caste of Bengal, which claims a western and Aryan origin. It

reaches its maximum development among the Bengali Brāhmans. South of the

Vindhya mountains, where the population is chiefly Dravidian, with a

comparatively small and ancient mixture of northern blood, the prevalent

type is mainly long-headed or medium-headed. The coast-population has

been much affected by foreign influences. On the east coast Malayan,

Indo-Chinese and even Portuguese settlers have altered the local type.

On the west coast, Arab, Persian, African, European, and Jewish

immigrants have mingled with local races, and have changed their

physiognomy, stature, and character of mind and body.

It is still a moot point, which the Mendelists may some day settle for

us, whether head-form is a true hereditary race-characteristic, whether

the osseous structure of the body generally is not a result of climate,

food and other such circumstances of environment. Yet the shape of the

head as shown by average measurements does mark off races of men which

are separated by other differences than those of habitat. They do

correspond to those vaguer yet unmistakeable characteristics which

enable us to tell one race from another. The Mongolian, even when he

settles in the plains of Assam, Bengal, or Burma and takes to a diet of

rice and fish, keeps his round head and his smooth hairless face. The

Aryan of the north-west has a markedly long head, which, in his case,

goes with a fair complexion and luxuriant beard. The Dravidian, darkest

of Indian races, with a tendency to crinkly or curly hair, has also a

long or medium head. The mixed races of Bengal have, it is not

surprising to find, medium heads, which tend in the upper castes to

become broad.

Another significant index to race is the measurement of the nose. The

results of nose-measurements roughly divide the peoples of India into

three classes—those having narrow or fine noses (leptorrhine), in which

the width is less than 70 per cent. of the height; those having medium

noses (mesorrhine), with an average index of from 70 to 85; and

broad-nosed (platyrrhine) people, the width of whose noses exceed 85 per

cent. Here we get a physical means of distinguishing between the

long-headed people of north-western India, fair and stalwart, and the

almost equally long-headed dusky folk of the south. For the average nose

of southern India, in Madras, the Central Provinces, and Chota Nagpore,

is broad. In the Panjāb and Baluchistan we get fine noses of what, to us

Europeans, seems an aristocratic type. In Afghanistan, noses are so long

and hooked as to give the tall and vigorous Afghan a Jewish aspect. In

the rest of India, and especially down the west coast, noses are of

medium type. A still more interesting discovery is the fact that

anywhere outside the Aryan tracts of the north-west, the broad nose is a

distinct sign of aboriginal blood. In Bengal, for instance, the lower

castes have broad noses. The priestly and writer castes, for all their

broad heads, have fine noses, which support their claim to a western

origin. Roughly speaking, the broad nose goes with primitive forms of

social organisation, with totemistic exogamous clans. Finer noses are

usually associated with communities of a more modern type; and above

these again come social units, castes and tribes, which claim descent

from eponymous saints and heroes.

A third physical measurement enables us to effect a further sorting out

of Indian races. What is called the "flatness" of the Mongolian face is

plain to the most careless observer. This is due chiefly to the

formation of the cheekbone, and its relation to the socket of the eye

and the root of the nose. This can be measured and expressed in figures,

with the result that the Mongoloid people of the north-east and the

Himalayan region can be definitely distinguished from the broad-headed

races of Baluchistan, Bombay, and Coorg.

Finally, it is possible to arrive at the average stature of various

Indian races and communities. The tallest races are found in the

north-west, in Baluchistan, the Panjāb and Rājputānā. A progressive

diminution is seen as we go down the valley of the Ganges, until we find

very short folk among the Assam hill tribes. The Dravidians of the south

are shorter than the Aryans of the north. The smallest Indian tribe is

that of the Negritos of the Andaman Islands, whose average height is

only 4 feet 10½ inches.

From a careful comparison of these measurements, Sir Herbert Risley

arrived at the classification of Indian humanity, which, for the moment,

is the accepted division, into seven main physical types. Beginning with

the north-western frontier, these are as follows:—

(1) The _Turko-Iranian_ type, which comprises the Baloches, Brāhuis and

Afghans of Baluchistan and the north-west Frontier Province. These are

probably the result of a fusion of Turkī and Persian blood, and are all

Muhammadans. The general aspect is wholly different from that of other

Indian races, and no one who has ever seen an Afghan or Baloch, with his

long Jewish nose and plentiful hair and beard, can ever confuse this

type with any other. In temperament also these men of the border differ

from other Indians. They are a fierce and warlike race, engaged in

constant blood-feuds with one another.

(2) The _Indo-Aryan_ type, with its home in the Panjāb, Rājputānā and

Kashmir, has as its most conspicuous members the Rājputs, Khattris and

Jāts. These, in all but colour (and even in colour they are hardly more

dusky than the races round the Mediterranean) closely resemble the

well-bred European in type. In stature they are tall, their complexion

is fair; "eyes dark; hair on face plentiful; head long; nose narrow and

prominent, but not specially long." One significant peculiarity of this

group is that there is little difference in physical character between

the upper and lower classes. This, as we shall presently see, is what we

should expect from what is known of the history of these peoples. The

upper social ranks probably represent the blood, but little diluted with

indigenous mixture, of the Aryan immigrants. Even in the lower classes,

the typical Aryan characteristics are now so prominent that any

indigenous strain that exists is no longer noticeable in average

measurements. Only in height, a quality especially sensitive to

differences of food and sanitation, are the lower castes inferior. Here

we get a remarkable modern instance of transformation of type. The

preaching of the Sikh reformers, involving a change of food and the

inculcation of martial discipline and fervour, has converted the

despised scavenging Chuhrā into the soldierly Mazhabi, once a

redoubtable foe of the English, and now one of the finest soldiers in

the British army.

(3) The _Scytho-Dravidian_ type, including the Marāthā Brāhmans, the

Kunbīs, and the Coorgs of western India. These peoples differ from the

Turko-Iranian races in being shorter, in having longer heads, higher

noses, and flatter faces.

(4) The _Aryo-Dravidian_ or Hindostāni type, which exists in the United

Provinces, in parts of Rājputānā, and in Bihār. This type appears to be

due to a mixture of Indo-Aryan and Dravidian strains. The higher classes

resemble Indo-Aryans, the lower have a distinctly Dravidian aspect. Yet,

even to the eye, they form a type apart and are easily recognised. In

this type, the average nose-index corresponds exactly to social status.

The noses grow broader as we go downwards in the social scale.

(5) The very interesting _Mongolo-Dravidian_ or _Bengali_ type which is

found in Bengal and Orissa. Here Aryan influences may still be detected

in the upper classes, but there has been extensive mingling with

Tibeto-Burman and Dravidian peoples, and other aboriginal inhabitants.

The main distinguishing feature is the broad head, which is most

conspicuous in the upper classes. It is shared equally by the Bengali

Brāhman, who claims a western origin, and the Chittagong Mag, whose

Tibeto-Burman origin is not denied. The Brāhman, on the other hand,

inherits a fine and narrow nose, which may very well be due to

Indo-Aryan ancestry. Recent investigations tend to show that Buddhism

survived till a comparatively recent date in Bengal. Hence, no doubt, a

temporary disregard of caste restrictions and a freer mixture with local

strains.

(6) The _Mongoloid_ type of the Himalayas, Nepāl, Assam, and Burma. "The

head is broad: complexion dark, with a yellowish tinge; hair on face

scanty; stature short or below average; nose fine to broad; face

characteristically flat; eyelids often oblique." Here we have races

which, if somewhat dark, correspond to the ideas most of us entertain

about the external aspect and temperament of the Siamese or Japanese. In

intellectual ability, and what we may call the artistic faculty, they

are inferior to the Bengali. Most Europeans, however (or is it,

therefore?) find them among the most congenial of Indian races. They are

social, good-natured, straightforward people. In the western Himalayas,

there has been intermixture with Aryan invaders, as in the Kangra Valley

and Nepāl, and the ruling dynasties claim Rājput origin, for the

Indo-Aryans loved to settle in the cool hills, much as the Anglo-Indian

does to this day. But on the mountainous frontiers of North-East Bengal

and Assam, the Mongoloid peoples have remained undisturbed till our own

time. Linguistically, this group is peculiarly interesting, since they

speak many tongues, many of which still remain to be recorded and

studied by European scholars.

(7) The _Dravidian_ type, which extends from Ceylon to the valley of the

Ganges and covers all South-Eastern India. It is found in Madras,

Hyderabad, the Central Provinces, most of Central India, and Chota

Nagpore. Its purest representatives dwell on the Malabar coast and in

Chota Nagpore. Here we have probably the original inhabitants of India,

now modified in some degree by an infiltration of Aryan, Scythian and

Mongoloid elements. "The stature is short or below mean; the complexion

very dark, approaching black; hair plentiful, with an occasional

tendency to curl; eyes dark; head long; nose very broad, sometimes

depressed at the root, but not so as to make the face appear flat."

[Illustration: _Plate II_

Kāyasthas—the writer caste

(_Mirzapur district_)]

It must, of course, be understood, that these types and the names

allotted to them merely show that in certain areas the average

characteristics of the peoples dwelling there can be sufficiently

separated to be recognisable not only by eye but by the callipers of the

anthropologist. The names, it will be noticed, in some cases, imply

theories as to the origin of the races thus grouped together. These

theories are partly based on measurements, partly on tradition, partly

on linguistic considerations. It remains for me to state, very rapidly,

what these theories are.

That the Dravidians are the oldest race in India is rendered _primâ

facie_ probable by the fact that they inhabit the southernmost part of

the peninsula, between races who can with some certainty be called

invaders—and the deep sea. There is a remarkable uniformity of physical

characteristics among the lower specimens of this type. They have in

common an animistic religion, their distinctive language, their peculiar

stone monuments, and a primitive system of totemism. They do not

resemble Europeans on the one hand, or the races of the Far East on the

other. Until proof to the contrary is forthcoming they may well be

regarded as the autochthones of India.

There is more room for difference of opinion as to the origins of the

brilliant and highly civilised Indo-Aryans of the Panjāb and Rājputānā.

As I have said before, we have here a population closely resembling that

of modern Europe in many respects. I might have added that it still more

closely resembles the Europe of the Roman empire. Nowhere else in Hindu

India does caste sit so lightly, or approach so nearly to the social

classes of Europe. Though there are rules, or rather customs, forbidding

intermarriage between different castes, yet these are mitigated by the

custom, not unknown to ourselves, of _hypergamy_. This simply means that

a man may take a wife from a lower caste, but will not give his

daughters to men of that caste. The result is a uniformity of physical

type found nowhere else in India. Moreover these people speak a language

of the Indo-European family, and have many words and idioms in common

with ourselves. The present theory of their origin is simply that they

are in the bulk immigrants into India, immigrants who came into the land

from the north-west with their herds and families, as the Jews entered

into and possessed Palestine.

One chief objection to this theory is that the lands through which they

must have passed are in no way fitted to be an _officina gentium_, being

now dry, barren, and all but deserted. But abundant indications remain

to show that the climate of South-Eastern Persia and the tracts to the

north has changed within comparatively recent times. The relics of

crowded populations and ancient civilisations abound in regions now

sandy desert, and there is evidence in the tales told by Greek and

Chinese travellers that the Panjāb itself, most of it comparatively

arid, was once well wooded. The theory then is that the homogeneous and

handsome population of the Panjāb and Rājputānā represents the almost

pure descendants of Aryan settlers, who carried the Indo-European

languages now prevailing over Northern India, just as our own emigrants

took the English language to America.

But we have also to account for the Aryo-Dravidians who inhabit the

sacred "midland" country of Hinduism, and here we have Dr Hoernle's now

famous theory, remarkably confirmed by the researches of Sir George

Grierson's _Linguistic Survey_. This theory supposes that a second swarm

of Aryan-speaking people, perhaps driven forward by the change of

climate in central Asia, entered India through the high and difficult

passes of Gilgit and Chitral, and established themselves in the fertile

plains between the Ganges and the Jumna. They followed a route which

made it impossible for their women to accompany them. They took to

themselves wives from the daughters of dusky Dravidian aborigines. Here,

by contact with a different, and in their sentiment, inferior race,

caste came into being. Here most of the Vedic hymns were composed. Here,

by a blending of imported and indigenous religious ideals, the ritual

and usages of Hindu religion came into being, to spread in altered forms

east and west and south. The necessity for this second hypothesis is

twofold. It accounts for the marked ethnical barrier which separates

western from eastern Hindustan. Elsewhere the various types melt

imperceptibly into one another. Here alone is a definite racial border

line. Again, the theory accounts for the fact that the Vedic hymns

contain no description whatever of the earlier Aryan migration, and for

the fact that the inhabitants of the middle land always felt a dislike

for the early immigrants as men of low culture and barbarous manners.

For the present, at all events, and perhaps for all time, Dr Hoernle's

ingenious theory holds the field.

No special theory is required to account for the physical and mental

qualities of the Mongolo-Dravidians of Bengal. No doubt the original

population was Dravidian with a strong intermixture of Tibeto-Burmese

blood, especially in the east and north-east. But the Hindu religion,

developed in the sacred Midlands round Benares, spread to Bengal,

bringing with it the Indo-European speech which in medieval times became

the copious and supple Bengali tongue. From the west too came what we in

Europe would call the gentry, the priestly and professional castes.

These have acquired most of the local physical characters, dusky skin,

low stature, round heads. But in nearly all cases, the fineness and

sharp outline of the nose shows their aristocratic origin, and in some

instances a Bengali Brāhman has all the physical distinction of a

western priest or sage.

When we turn to the Scytho-Dravidian group we have again to fall back on

records of ancient invasions from the north. Ancient some of them were,

but far less ancient than the settlement of the Aryans in the

north-west. The Sakas have provided India with one of its many

chronological eras; they founded dynasties which have left coins behind

them, they have left vague but widely spread traditions. They were what

we Europeans call Scythians. They were known to the Persians, the

Parthians, and the Chinese. Their original home seems to have been in

the south of China, a land of pre-eminently round-headed races. We know

that they established their dominion over portions of the Panjāb, Sind,

Gujarāt, Rājputānā and Central India. If they have left traces of their

settlement on their descendants we may reasonably expect to find

round-headed races and tribes in regions mostly surrounded by

long-headed peoples. Such a zone of broad-headed people does in fact

extend from the western Panjāb right through the Deccan, till it finally

ends in Coorg. Sir H. H. Risley's theory is that the Scythians first

occupied the great grazing country of the western Panjāb, and finding

their progress eastwards blocked by the Indo-Aryans, turned southwards,

mingled with the Dravidians, and became the ancestors of the warlike

Marātha race. Such an origin forms a tempting explanation of the

well-known predatory habits of the Marātha hordes, and of their frequent

raids all over the peninsula under the decaying administration of the

later Mogul Emperors. It is an interesting and fascinating speculation,

since it accounts not only for the physical aspect of the Marāthas but

for their characteristic political genius, for their wide-ranging

forays, their guerilla warfare, their unscrupulous dealings, their

inveterate love of intrigue, their clannish habits.

I must here boldly borrow Sir H. H. Risley's summary of the historical

record of Scythian invasions into India, since that is the main

justification for his theory. "In the time of the Achaemenian kings of

Persia," he says, "the Scythians, who were known to the Chinese as Sse,

occupied the regions lying between the lower course of the Sillis or

Jaxartes and Lake Balkash. The fragments of early Scythian history which

may be collected from classical writers are supplemented by the Chinese

annals, which tell us how the Sse, originally located in southern China,

occupied Sogdiana and Trans-oxiana at the time of the establishment of

the Graeco-Bactrian monarchy. Dislodged from these regions by the

Yueh-chi, who had themselves been put to flight by the Huns, the Sse

invaded Bactriana, an enterprise in which they were frequently allied

with the Parthians. To this circumstance, Ujfalvy says may be due the

resemblance which exists between the Scythian coins of India and those

of the Parthian kings. At a later period, the Yueh-chi made a further

advance, and drove the Sse or Sakas out of Bactriana, whereupon the

latter crossed the Paropamisus and took possession of the country called

after them Sakastān, comprising Segistān, Arachosia, and Drangiana. But

they were left in possession only for a hundred years, for about 25 B.C.

the Yueh-chi disturbed them afresh. A body of Scythians then emigrated

eastwards, and founded a kingdom in the western portion of the Panjāb.

The route they followed in their advance upon India is uncertain; but to

a people of their habits it would seem that a march through Baluchistan

would have presented no serious difficulties.

"The Yueh-chi, afterwards known as the Tokhari, were a power in Central

Asia and the north-west of India for more than five centuries, from 130

B.C. The Hindus called them Sakas and Turushkas, but their kings seem to

have known no other dynastic title than that of Kushan. The Chinese

annals tell us how Kitolo, chief of the Little Kushans, whose name is

identified with the Kidara of the coins, giving way before the incursion

of the Ephthalites, crossed the Paropamisus, and founded, in the year

425 of our era, the kingdom of Gandhāra, of which, in the time of his

son, Peshawar became the capital. About the same time, the Ephthalites

or Ye-tha-i-li-to of the Chinese annals, driven out of their territory

by the Yuan-yuan, started westward, and overran in succession Sogdiana,

Khwarizan (Khiva), Bactriana, and finally the north-west portion of

India. Their movements reached India in the reign of Skanda Gupta

(452-80) and brought about the disruption of the Gupta empire. The

Ephthalites were known in India as Huns. The leader of the invasion of

India, who succeeded in snatching Gandhāra from the Kushans and

established his capital at Sākala, is called by the Chinese Laelih, and

inscriptions enable us to identify him with the original Lakhan

Udayāditya of the coins. His son Toramāna (490-515) took possession of

Gujarāt, Rājputānā, and part of the Ganges valley, and in this way the

Huns acquired a portion of the ancient Gupta kingdom. Toramāna's

successor, Mihirakula (515-44), eventually succumbed to the combined

attack of the Hindu princes of Mālwā and Magadha."

I now come to the ethnography as distinguished from the ethnology of

India. Of anthropometry and the lessons to be learnt from it, I have no

personal experience, and have had to borrow my materials at second-hand.

But with the great system of caste, its workings, its manifold

ramifications, everyone who has lived in India has come into more or

less close contact. How important caste is in the social life of the

country may be easily inferred from this little fact. I once asked the

late Navin Chandra Sen, then the most popular of Bengali poets, if he

would attempt a definition of what a Hindu is. After many suggestions,

all of which had to be abandoned on closer examination, the poet came to

the conclusion that a Hindu is (1) one who is born in India of Indian

parents on both sides, and (2) accepts and obeys the rules of caste.

Hinduism is, roughly speaking, the religion of the Aryo-Dravidians, the

upper and fairer classes among whom regarded the aborigines,

matrimonially, much as white Americans regard their negro fellow

citizens. It has spread over nearly the whole of India and is still

spreading, usually but not always, carrying with it one of the

Indo-European languages of India. It is the religion and social system

of races and classes which consider themselves intrinsically superior,

and practise a traditional kind of eugenics, of race preservation.

Humbler or more barbarous races are admitted on various conditions into

caste, sometimes into higher, sometimes into lower positions. The

process is one of that kind of "legal fiction" with which students of

Roman law are familiar. It is a process of unification and, at the same

time, of social segregation. I have already alluded to the suggestion

that caste-divisions are horizontal, as it were, compared with the

geographical divisions of races. But it is always dangerous to make

general statements about three hundred millions of people scattered over

so large an area as India. There are Brāhmans in every part of India,

and these usually trace their origin back to the sacred midland where

Hinduism came into being. They may be, and probably are, the descendants

of the missionaries by whom the religion of the Hindus is, imperceptibly

and without open proselytism, spread abroad. Something corresponding to

a warrior caste and a caste of scribes is to be found in most provinces,

and many of these either claim to be migrants, or have been admitted by

adoption into the privileges of warrior or writer blood.

But there are many castes which are purely local, even in name, and are

not found elsewhere than in the places where they were admitted into the

Hindu community. Many closely printed pages in the Census Reports of

each province and state enumerate and describe the thousands of castes

revealed by the numbering of the people. It is, of course, only possible

to give a very vague and general idea of some of the classes into which

the castes of India may conveniently be divided.

I am tempted here to borrow Sir Herbert Risley's definition of caste.

But it is a highly abstract definition, and one that cannot be easily

carried in the head, even by those who have a practical and familiar

acquaintance with members of Indian castes. Roughly a caste is a group

of human beings who may not intermarry, or (usually) eat, with members

of any other caste. There are also sub-castes which are also endogamous.

Very frequently, especially in the parts of India where caste is already

an institution of immemorial antiquity, a caste has allotted to it a

profession or occupation.

Before we discuss castes properly so called, it is convenient to speak

of the tribes of India, since tribes have a tendency to become castes

when they come under the pervasive influence of Hindu social ideas. In

the south of India are Dravidian tribes, of which the best example are

the tribes of Chota Nagpore. These are divided into a number of

exogamous groups or clans, calling themselves by the name of an animal

or plant, which may be regarded as their totem. The Khonds of Orissa,

who once bore an evil name for their practice of human sacrifices to

propitiate the earth-goddess, are divided into fifty _gochis_ or

exogamous clans, each of which bears the name of a village, and believes

itself to be descended from a common ancestor. These _gochis_ are the

nearest known approach to the local exogamous tribe which Mr McLennan

and the French sociologists believe to be the earliest form of human

society.

The Mongoloid tribes of Assam are much of the same kind, but in many

cases, as among the head-hunting Nagas, live at perpetual warfare with

one another. In such cases they usually capture their wives in war. It

is interesting to note that when population grows too dense for the

profitable pursuit of the chase, their principal means of livelihood,

such a tribe breaks up into two or more "villages," which immediately

begin waging war with one another, which is quite what a French

sociologist would expect them to do. I can tell of a case within my own

experience in which the headman of a parent village invited the chief of

a colony village (his own nephew) to a feast and palaver with his young

warriors. The guests were all treacherously put to the sword, as a means

of acquiring heads and concubines. I could not get the headman to see

that he had been guilty of an atrocious crime. For him, it was lawful

strategy. And indeed Naga warfare is merely a series of artfully planned

ambushes in which not a few of our own officers perished before we

undertook the direct administration of the Naga Hills. Sir H. Risley

remarks of this group of tribes that "no very clear traces of totemism

have been discovered among them." Subsequent enquiries, however, show

that totemistic clans do exist in some of the Assam tribes.

[Illustration: _Plate III_

Dharkārs

(_Mirzapur district_)]

Of the Turko-Iranian tribes of the north-western frontier I need not

speak at any length, since these tribes are all sturdy followers of the

Prophet, and save that they are under British rule can hardly be said to

belong to India at all. There is no likelihood that they will ever be

received into the tolerant bosom of Hinduism, since, to the Indian

proper, the Baloch and the Afghan are disagreeable and swaggering

caterans, who have an innate scorn for the typical Hindu hierarchy of

caste. Among these tribes it is martial ability and valour that win a

man consideration and wives.

Let us now turn to caste properly so called, the traditional social

divisions of the Hindus. And first it is necessary to say something of

the ancient Hindu theory of what caste is, and how it came into

existence.

As with the Hebrews, the religious literature of India contains a vast

mass of what can only be called law, and perhaps, the most famous of

Indian law books is the Institutes of Manu, a compilation of rules

relating to magic, religion, law, custom, ritual and metaphysics. Even

to this day, these branches of speculation and enquiry, so distinct to

western imaginations, are apt to be confused together as a result of the

pantheistic feeling which pervades Hinduism. The Institutes is a

comparatively modern book, but it repeats ideas which are found in a

more or less explicit form in early authorities[1]. In this book we are

told that in the beginning of things the Pan-theos who "contains all

created things and is inconceivable" produced by effort of thought a

golden egg, from which he himself was born as Brahmā, the creator of the

known universe. From his mouth, his arms, his thighs, and his feet

respectively he created the four great leading castes, the Brāhman, the

Kshatriya, the Vaiçya, and the Sūdra. These were, briefly, the priests,

the warriors and gentlefolk, the traders, and the servile classes of

human society. The other castes were gradually formed, the theory

states, by intermarriages between these. The three higher castes were

allowed to take wives from lower castes. When the caste of the mother

was next below that of the father, the child took the caste of his

mother and no new caste was formed. But where the difference of

condition was greater than this, new castes were formed, lower than

those of either parent. Some discrepancies of rank produced unions which

were regarded as peculiarly offensive to human feelings and as

tantamount to incestuous intercourse. These resulted in very degraded

castes. Where the father married beneath him, the marriage was described

as _anuloma_ or "with the hair." When a woman was guilty of a

_mésalliance_, the marriage was called _pratiloma_ or "against the

hair." The most disgraceful union of this kind was that between a

Brāhman woman and a Sūdra man, the resulting offspring being relegated

to the caste of Chandāl. The unfortunate Chandāl is described as "that

lowest of mortals," and is condemned, as Sir H. Risley says, to live

outside the village, to clothe himself in the garments of the dead, to

eat from broken dishes, to execute criminals, and to carry out the

corpses of friendless men.

The most superficial acquaintance with existing caste divisions shows

that this theory is not so much a hypothesis as a fanciful fiction. In

eastern Bengal, for instance, the Chandāl is evidently a Mongoloid

aboriginal, with a considerable strain of Dravidian and perhaps even of

Aryan blood. Yet the fiction shows plainly enough the estimation in

which one of the numerically largest divisions of local society is held.

Some thirty years ago, when I was a young magistrate, a comely Chandāl

girl appeared before me, her face streaming with blood from a scalp

wound. She asserted gravely that a Sūdra of higher caste had struck her

on the head with a stick, because he had found her reading a book as she

sat in the doorway of her father's cottage. I was disinclined to believe

this story, but her assailant was promptly sent for, and being brought

straight to me, admitted the truth of the charge, and seemed surprised

at my indignation at a cowardly assault.

As an attempt to account for the origin and explain the nature of caste

the theory of Manu is obviously a failure. But it contains a picture of

the early castes. It is also interesting because the idea of four

original _varnas_ or "colours" of men may have been borrowed from the

old Persian social organisation. The early scriptures, the Vedas, show

that this conception of four original castes was not brought to India by

Aryan immigrants. But when caste came into being as a result of the

contact of Aryan settlers with Dravidian aborigines, this mythological

explanation, which gave such conspicuous eminence to priests and

warriors, an eminence already conceded to them on account of the

importance of their functions, was readily accepted as a convincing

explanation of the hereditary differences between men in society, a

difference not merely of function, but of colour, aspect, gesture,

speech, breeding, and intelligence. It is necessary to mention this

theory, however briefly, since it still holds ground, except among those

Indians who have had a European education and even among them has the

interest of early and sacred associations which, in Europe, belongs to

the cosmological speculations of the book of Genesis.

What, next, are castes as they appear to the eye of the European

ethnologist, free from preconceived prejudice, and only anxious to come

as near the truth as is possible in his dealings with ancient

institutions round which has gathered a vast mass of venerable

superstition and religious speculation? In the first place, castes are

often still recognisably _tribes_. Sometimes the leading men of an

aboriginal tribe will acquire sufficient wealth and social consideration

to wish to obtain the stamp of recognition as reputable Hindus. They

will call themselves, for example, and induce their neighbours and the

priests of these to call them, Rājputs. They may not at first succeed in

intermarrying with true hereditary Rājputs, but in time they will be

just Rājputs like any other Rājputs. Or, again, a number of non-Hindus,

animists, will join one of the many Hindu sects or fraternities and will

intermarry with Vaishnavas, Lingayats, Rāmayats, or other devotees of

some favourite deity. Or again, a whole tribe or a considerable portion

of a tribe, usually one of some political importance, will enter

Hinduism by means of some plausible fiction. The instance quoted by Sir

H. Risley is that of the Koches of north-eastern Bengal. These people

are Tibeto-Burmans and until recent times spoke a dialect of the

agglutinative Bodo language. They now call themselves Rājbansis, "of

royal birth," or Bhāngā Kshatriyas, "broken warriors," names which

enable them to claim an origin from the traditional dispersion of the

Aryan warrior caste by the hero Parasu Rāma, "Rāma of the battle axe."

They claim descent from the epic monarch Dasarath, father of Rāma, have

their own Brāahmins, and have begun to adopt the Brāhminical system of

exogamous _gotras_. But, as Sir H. Risley remarks, they are in a

transitional state, since they have all hit upon the same _gotra_, and

are therefore compelled to marry within it, except in the rare instances

in which they contract unions with Bengali women.

A still more interesting, because more recent, instance of this sort is

that of the Meithei, now known to Hindus as Manipuris. In the

Mahābhāarata is told the tale of how the hero Arjuna wandered from his

brethren into Southern and Eastern India, and, among other adventures,

met (as Æneas with Dido) with Chitrangadā, the fair daughter of the King

of Manipur, somewhere near the eastern coast. Some 150 years ago, the

then king of the beautiful valley of Imphāl, between Assam and Burma,

was thinking of becoming a Muhammadan, by way of courting the favour of

the Muhammadan rulers of Bengal. But Hindu priests persuaded him that a

better way of linking his fortunes with those of India, rather than with

Ava (with whose royal family his dynasty had usually intermarried), was

by becoming Hindu with all his people. Imphāl was identified with

Manipur, and many of the Meithei race became Vishnuvite Hindus with

their ruler, though they retain their primitive Tibeto-Burman language.

I may mention a little personal reminiscence to show how completely the

change by fictitious adoption was accepted in Bengal. In 1891, my old

friend and chief, Mr Quinton, with all his staff, was treacherously

murdered at Manipur. Subsequently when I was magistrate of Chittagong, I

found that my head clerk, an extremely mild and intelligent Bengali

Kāyastha, had celebrated the easily suppressed mutiny at Manipur by

writing a drama based on the ancient legend of Arjuna's amours with

Chitrangadā!

Sometimes an aboriginal tribe will become a Hindu caste without losing

its old tribal designation. They will worship Hindu gods without daring

wholly to neglect tribal deities, which, as might perhaps be expected,

are left chiefly to the women of the tribe. Such a tribe will rapidly

assimilate itself to the beliefs and practices of Hindu neighbours, and

finally only its name and (except in case of occasional intermarriage

with other castes) its physical aspect will remain to testify to its

origin.

Castes are at present classified as follows:

(1) What Sir H. Risley calls _the tribal type_, instances of which have

been given above. Such tribal castes abound in all parts of India. It is

not improbable that the great Sūdra division of Hindu tradition was

originally the whole mass of Dravidian aboriginals as they came into

contact with Aryan immigrants, and were conceded a subordinate place in

their social system. It would be useless to give a list of the names of

such castes, but I cannot refrain from mentioning the excellent Doms of

the Assam Valley, whose name unfortunately associates them with very

different people in India proper. They are obviously of Tibeto-Burman

origin, and deserve closer study than they receive. Their long thatched

places of worship, true synagogues for meeting together and curiously

unlike the tiny _cellæ_ of Hindu temples, are among the most conspicuous

features of Assam villages. They have no idols, and place a _puthi_, a

holy book, on what may pass for the village altar. They are vaguely

Hinduised, but will humbly declare "_āmi hindu na hô_," "we are not

Hindu folk." Yet they are well on their way towards acceptance into

caste, and have already a strong infusion of Hindu blood.

Other border races, though they are still too savage and independent to

become Hindu, are marked down for absorption. Such, for instance, are

the Daflas of the northern border of Assam, cousins of the Abors to whom

attention has been drawn by recent events. The Daflas are still frankly

animistic; their love of strong spirits and other intoxicants, their

addiction to their favourite diet of roast pork, their extremely

uncleanly habits and barbarous speech, all make them very offensive to

the gentle vegetarian Hindus their neighbours. But it happens that the

tribal costume closely resembles the traditional dress of Mahādēva, the

Destroyer, the most active and formidable member of the Hindu Trinity,

and already some Hindus speak of these genial Highlanders as Siva-bansa,

as "of Siva's race." Many other examples, with interesting details of

fictional methods, will be found in Mr E. A. Gait's admirable _History

of Assam_.

(2) _The functional or occupational type_ of caste. This is the form of

caste best known to Europeans, because, since the first European

missionaries and traders visited those parts of India where the caste

system has had the longest opportunity to evolve, they came most into

contact with this, which is probably the oldest and most elaborated form

of caste. The Hindu theory of caste encouraged the adoption of special

occupations, and now the evolution has proceeded so far that change of

occupation may usually result in a change of caste. A remarkable

instance of this is found in the Marāthi districts of the Central

Provinces. Here is a separate and newly formed caste of village servants

called Gārpagāri, "hail-averters," whose business it is to protect the

village crops from hailstorms. Shepherds who take to tillage break away

from their pastoral brethren, and so on. Even those who retain their

traditional occupations are wont to adopt more seemly-sounding names

than those that belong to their trade. I have known barbers who called

themselves Chandra-vaidyas[2], which is a promotion more subtle than a

mere ascent to the status of "hair-dresser," and washermen who have

followed suit by dubbing themselves Sukla-vaidya, a word of which

"white-worker" is a crude but sufficiently suggestive translation.

(3) The _sectarian type_ is a singularly interesting example of the

strong social influence of Hindu sentiment. Nearly all new Hindu sects

begin by renouncing caste in the enthusiastic following of some single

deity, some new explanation of the mysteries of life, and love, and

death. These sects are usually the followers of some reforming theorist,

whose leadership is apt to become hereditary. Such sects almost always

believe that all men are equal, or at all events, that all who accept

their doctrines are equal. One of my most interesting recollections is

of a now distant interview with a buxom middle-aged lady, the hereditary

leader of the Kartā-bhajās of Central Bengal. She sat unveiled, and was

accessible to all who, like myself, were interested in the community

over which she exercised a firm but good-natured control. It is a

picturesque detail that her chosen seat when receiving visitors was an

ancient European four-poster bedstead. Her followers (and revenues) were

growing rapidly, increased chiefly by the democratic instinct which,

even in India, revolts against social prestige. But it would seem that

when such a sect grows and spreads, the old separatist ideas reassert

themselves, and the sect breaks up into smaller endogamous communities,

whose status depends on the original position of the members in

Hinduism. The most remarkable instance of this kind is furnished by the

great Lingayat caste of Bombay, which contains over two and a half

millions of members. In the twelfth century the Lingayats were a sect

who believed in the equality of all men. In Mr P. J. Mead's Bombay

Census Report for 1911 is a very interesting account of the present

condition of the Lingayats, an account which shows how the scholar, the

linguist, and the administrator can work together to find materials for

the anthropologist. Dr Fleet's examination of ancient inscriptions has

thrown much light on the origin of the sect, but the author of the

Report holds that there may be some reason to think that the sect is

much older than is commonly supposed. In any case, they are already

divided into three great groups, comprising many subdivisions.

(4) _Castes formed by crossing_ come aptly to show that there was some

basis for Manu's theory of caste after all. Castes, nowadays, increase

by fission, by throwing off sub-castes, and one species of these

sub-castes is created by mixed marriages. This tendency, curiously

enough, is most evident in Dravidian tribes, such as the Mundās, which

are not yet wholly Hinduised, but have been affected by Hindu example.

So far as I know, these mixed castes do not occur among the Mongoloid

peoples, and I have come across cases where a member of an aboriginal

tribe has been accepted into the caste of a Hindu girl he has married.

In one case, within my own experience, the bridegroom had begun as an

animist, had become Christian, and finally entered by marriage into the

quite respectable Koch caste. One interesting caste in Bengal, that of

the Shāgirdpeshas, owes its origin to concubinage with the so-called

slaves, the women of tenants surrounding a homestead who pay their rent

in service. This, it will be observed, is a caste of illegitimacy, in

which the relationship between the legitimate and illegitimate children

of a man of good caste is recognised, but the two are not allowed to eat

together. The classical instance of a mixed caste is the Khas of Nepāl,

said to be the result of very ancient intermarriages between Rājput or

Brāhman immigrants and the Mongolian "daughters of men."

[Illustration: _Plate IV_

Banjara women

(_Mirzapur district_)]

(5) _Castes of the national type._ This somewhat daring title we owe to

the great authority of Sir H. Risley. As one instance, he mentions the

Newārs, a Mongoloid people, who were once the ruling race in Nepāl, till

the Gurkha invasion in 1769, and have now become a caste. Other

instances might be found on the north-eastern frontier. But the people

Sir Herbert Risley had in mind when he invented this term was

undoubtedly the remarkable Marātha race, once the most daring warriors

and freebooters in India, and now the rivals of the Bengalis in

intellectual ability, and probably more than their equals in political

sagacity. Sir Rāmkrishna Gopāl Bhandārkar is our authority for the

statement that the Rattas were a tribe who held political supremacy in

the Deccan from the earliest days. In time they became Mahā-rattas,

"Great Rattas," and the land in which they lived was called Mahārattha,

which, by a common linguistic habit of mankind, was Sanskritised into

Mahā-rāshtra. Their marriage customs show marked traces of totemistic

institutions. An extremely interesting account of the present condition

of this warlike and enterprising race will be found at pp. 289, 290 of

the Bombay Census Report for 1911. It neither supports nor discourages

Sir H. Risley's ingenious theory of the Scythic origin of the Marāthas,

which is at least a theory which recognises the respect in which our

ancestors held their martial prowess and talents[3].

(6) _Castes formed by migration._ These are new castes which serve to

enforce the warning against a too ready acceptance of the definition of

caste as a "horizontal" division of humanity. It is a method of forming

new communities of Hindus which is very easily intelligible to us,

seeing that our own race is split into sections only differing from

castes in not being strictly endogamous, such as Anglo-Indians,

Australians, New Zealanders, and so forth. Members leave home and settle

among strangers. They are assumed to have formed foreign habits, eaten

strange food, worshipped alien gods, and have a difficulty—an expensive

difficulty—in finding wives in the parent caste. After a time they marry

only among themselves, become a sub-caste, and are often known by some

territorial name, Bārendra, Rārhi, or what not. Such seemingly are the

remarkable Nāmbudri Brāhmans of Malabar, and the Rārhi Brāhmans of

Bengal. Sometimes change of habitat brings about loss of rank, sometimes

promotion. These are matters on which the Census Reports now being

published are full of interesting details. But they are matters which

are not easily summarised. No doubt Mr Gait's Report on the combined

results of Census operations in India will show the progress of castes

of this type during the last ten years.

(7) _Castes formed by changes of custom._ This is a fruitful cause of

new divisions of Hindu society. It is, for the moment, more than usually

operative, owing to the spread of education, and often represents a

difference of social opinion which corresponds, more or less closely, to

Conservative and Radical ideas among ourselves. It evidently was always

a cause of fissiparous tendencies. The most notable instance is the

distinction between Jāts and Rājputs, both apparently sprung from the

same stock, but separated socially, amongst other causes, by the fact

that the former practise and the latter abjure infant marriages.

* * * * *

This is a very rapid and highly summarised account of the races and

castes of India. There are many obvious omissions. Nothing has been said

of the Sikhs, little or nothing about the numerous races of the

north-eastern frontier. But enough has been said to give a fair general

impression of what the physical characters of the Indian peoples are,

and what kind of institution caste is in its practical working. More

might have been said about totemistic clans, but on this subject those

who would pursue their studies further have only to turn to Dr J. G.

Frazer's work on the subject. In the next chapter, I have to borrow my

materials from Sir G. A. Grierson, and show how the peoples of India are

divided by differences of language. On the whole, those linguistic

divisions correspond with remarkable accuracy to the orographical and

climatic structure of the country and the racial divisions which we owe

to the learning and ingenuity of Sir H. H. Risley. Where there are great

open plains, watered and fertilised by mighty rivers, we get large

populations speaking the great literary languages of India. In the

rugged recesses of the mountains we find small communities, divided from

one another by physical obstacles which have produced rigid local

patriotisms and enmities, and a wonderful variety of savage speeches.

The linguist has usually worked independently of the ethnologist, and

has come to his own unprejudiced conclusions. It is interesting to find

how closely the results of their separate enquiries agree.

_Postscript._

Sir H. H. Risley's theory as to the Scythian origin of the Marāthas has

not passed unquestioned, and those who wish to see a brief and clear

account of the latest theories on the subject should read Mr Crooke's

paper on "Rājputs and Marāthas" in Vol. XL. (January—June, 1910) of the

_Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute_. Mr Crooke, who gives

copious references to the latest literature on the subject, holds that

"the theory that a Hun or Scythian element is to be traced in the

population of the Deccan is inconsistent with the facts of tribal

history, so far as they can now be ascertained." Mr Crooke thinks that

the anthropometrical facts can be explained otherwise than by Saka

invasion and an infusion of Scythian blood. "The presence of a

brachycephalic strain," he says, "in Southern and Western India need not

necessarily imply a Mongoloid invasion from Central Asia. The western

coast was always open to the entry of foreign races. Intercourse with

the Persian Gulf existed from a very early period, and Mongoloid Akkads

or the short-headed races from Baluchistan may have made their way along

the coast or by sea into Southern and Western India. But it is more

probable that this strain reached India in prehistoric times, and that

the present population is the result of the secular intermingling of

various race types, rather than of events within the historical period."

Mr Crooke's view is supported by the recently issued Census Report of

the Bombay Presidency, which says, "the term Marātha is derived by some

from two Sanskrit words, _mahā_, 'great,' and _rathi_, 'a warrior.'"

According to Sir Rāmkrishna Gopāl Bhandārkar it is derived from Rattas,

a tribe which held political supremacy in the Deccan from the remotest

time. "The Rattas called themselves Mahā Rattas or Great Rattas, and

thus the country in which they lived came to be called Mahārāttha, the

Sanskrit of which is Mahā-rāshtra."

Indigenous names are frequently Sanskritised, much as we turn French

_chaussée_ into "causeway." Sometimes the change is so complete that the

original cannot be identified. In some cases the alteration is easily

recognised. In Northern Bengal, for instance, is the river _Ti-stā_, a

name which belongs to a large group of Tibeto-Burman river names

beginning with _Ti-_, or _Di-_, such as _Ti-pai_, _Di-bru_, _Di-kho_,

_Di-sāng_, etc., etc. Hindus say the name _Ti-stā_ is either a

corruption of Sanskrit _Tri-srotas_, "having three streams," or of

Tṛṣṇā, "thirst." Etymology and legend, in fact, give but doubtful

guidance to the ethnologist, and the best hope of acquiring some real

knowledge of Rājput and Marātha origins lies in the possible discovery

of coins and inscriptions in the absence of direct historical records.

[1] The actual date is very uncertain. Dr Burnell thinks the book was

composed so late as A.D. 500, but it was probably much older.

[2] "Moon-physicians," an allusion to the crescent-shaped brass basin of

the barber, such as the helmet of Don Quixote, familiar to us all.

[3] But see the postscript to this chapter.