Neither is it a difficulty,[35] it rather appears to me in accordance with tradition, that if this surmise be correct, the earliest arrival in the Indian Peninsula should have been of those who took the longest route. For it is natural to suppose that the proscribed and weakest races, e.g. the Canaanitish, would have been the first to depart, and to depart by the north-east and west, the more powerful families having passed down and closed the south-east exit by way of the lower valleys of the Euphrates. These latter would have spread themselves out in the direction of India leisurely and at a subsequent period.
Following these lines of migration, the Aryan at some period came upon the black Turanian race (vide infra, [Chap. v.]); and Mr Hunter (p. 110) records the embittered feelings with which the recollection of the strife remained in tradition. Why should this have been? It might suffice to say, in consistency with what has already been advanced, that this was their first encounter, the first check in their advance.
Another solution seems to me equally ready to hand, and to solve so much more. But first, how does Mr Hunter account for this bitter feeling? He suggests contempt for their “uncouth talk,” “their gross habits of eating,” -will not this explain something of their animosity?
I must here remark that although scientific inquiry takes designations of its own, in order the more conveniently to express its distinctions, yet whether we accept the ethnological or philological demarcations of mankind, it is curious how inevitably, as I think De Maistre remarked, we are led back to Shem, Ham, and Japhet. And this is as true now after a half century of scientific progress, as it was when De Maistre wrote. Without asserting that the divisions may ever be distinctly traced with the minuteness of Bochart in his “Geog. Sacra,” I still say, that the broad lines of the traditional apportionment of the world, and the three-fold or four-fold division of the race indicated in Scripture, is seen behind the ultimate divisions into which science is brought to separate mankind, whether into Caucasian, Ethiopian, Mongol, with two intermediate varieties, as by Blumenbach; or into Australioid, Negroid, Mongoloid, and Xanthochroic, as by Huxley; or into Brace’s division into Aryan, Semitic, Turanian, and Hamitic. Behind these various systems, as behind a grill, we seem to see the forms and faces of the progenitors of the human race discernible, but their existence not capable of contact and actual demonstration, because of the intercepting bars and lattice work.[36]
I have spoken above of a three-fold and four-fold division as equally indicated in Scripture, and I think, from non-observance of this, the close approximation of these systems to Genesis is not sufficiently recognised. I refer to the three progenital races, and the Canaanite marked off and distinguished from the rest by a curse. I shall enlarge upon this point in another chapter ([Chap. v]).
I will only observe now that I do not venture to say that the Canaanite is co-extensive with the Turanian, which is more a philological than an ethnological division of mankind, or that their characteristics in all respects correspond.[37] I limit my argument now to indicating the correspondence between the Canaanite and the aboriginal tribes in India.
This correspondence I find not only in the features already noted—their blackness and their intellectual inferiority—but in their enslavement to the superior races of mankind whenever they came into contact and collision with them. Is not this everywhere also the mark of the Turanian race? are not these conflicts in primitive life always with the Turanian race? and are they not in Asia, as in Africa, in a state of subjugation or dependence?
At any rate, this is the condition in which we find the Turanian in India, so fully expressed in their name of “Sudras.”[38]
Against this literal fulfilment of Gen. ix. 25—“Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be to his brethren”—as regards the Indian Sudra, the text in Gen. x. 19—“And the limits of Chanaan were from Sidon ... to Gaza ... even to Sesa”—may be objected. But I construe this text only to refer to Chanaan proper, and to be spoken rather with reference to the limits of the Promised Land and the Hebrews, than to the allocation of the tribes of Chanaan; for the text immediately preceding seems to me to have its significance—viz. Gen. x. 18,[39] where it is said in a marked manner, and of the descendants of Chanaan alone, “The families of the Canaanites were spread abroad.” But if we are to suppose the whole descent of Chanaan to have been confined between the limits of Sidon and Sesa, it could hardly have been said to have had the diffusion of the other Hamitic races, and the families of the Chanaanites will not have been “spread abroad” in any noticeable or striking manner. It appears to me, also, that it may be proved in another way. St Paul, Acts xiii. 19, says that God destroyed seven nations in the land of Chanaan, whereas Gen. x. enumerates eleven.
Again, Kalisch (“Hist. and Crit. Com. on Old Testament,” trans. 1858) makes it a difficulty against Gen. ix. that “Canaan should not only fall into the hands of Shem, i.e. the people of Israel, but also of Japhet” (i. 226).