The ordinary rural population of Persia are called the Tadchiks. They are diligent agriculturists, and devoted likewise to commercial pursuits. In the latter capacity they are often met from Constantinople to China. Their language is usually the modern Persian, an Aryac dialect which has departed from the original inflectional standard almost as much as the modern English. Those who live in Kaschgar, however, speak Turkish, while retaining the physical traits of their Aryac ancestry.
Modern Persian has developed an interesting literature, consisting chiefly of poetry and works of imagination.
The Afghans and Beluchis are the nearest related to the Indian stock. Their dialects are derived from the Sanscrit, and in appearance they resemble the Indo-Aryans rather than the Persian. The assertion of some ethnographers that they are of Semitic affinities has been disproved. They are, however, mixed with Semitic and Dravidian blood. Although historically established about their present locality since the days of Alexander the Great, they retain faint traditions that their ancestors came from the west, which has led some to suppose them of Syrian extraction.[111] In religion they are generally fanatical Mohammedans, and their nationality is a loose federation of independent clans.
The Indic branch of this colony entered Hindostan as late as 2000-1500 B. C. Its language was then as closely akin to the Bactrian as, say, Italian and French are to-day. Its members were roving herdsmen, and first occupied the valleys of the Punjaub, driving before them the Dravidas, a non-Aryac folk, who had occupied the land. The priestly class of these colonists were called Brahmans, their dialect Sanscrit, and in this we have preserved from that remote epoch many religious chants called the Rig Veda, committed to writing probably about 500 B. C. The original tongue soon split up into many dialects, as the Pali, the Prakrit and the modern Hindoostantee.
The population of the Indian peninsula to-day, who speak these dialects and are more or less of Aryac blood, numbers nearly a hundred million. They include the Rajpoots, the Djats, the Hindoos, the Hunzas, and numerous other tribes and castes. The ubiquitous gipsies or Romany are a wandering branch of these who left India as late as the twelfth or thirteenth century, and have been roving over Europe ever since.
The earliest Indo-Aryans had undoubtedly retained many pure Aryac traits. They were of medium height, oval faces, handsome regular features, symmetrical in body, the skull dolichocephalic (about 77), the complexion brunette but not brown, the eyes hazel, the hair wavy. This is the type of the highest Brahmans to-day, and throughout all their history they have exercised the utmost care to preserve it intact. The institution of castes was undoubtedly established with this object in view, the word for “caste,” varna, in Sanscrit meaning “color.”
The mental aptitudes of the Indic immigrants are seen to advantage in their rapid conquest of Hindostan, in the civilization they developed, and in the vast literature which they created.[112] While in art and philosophy inferior to the Greeks, they succeeded in one point far beyond any other Aryac people, that is, in the formation of two of the most successful religions of the world, Brahmanism and Buddhism. The former, a pure pantheism, has been established nearly 4000 years, and still can claim votaries; the latter, theoretically an atheism, to-day has more believers than any other cult.
III. The Caucasic Stock.
The defiles and fastnesses of the Caucasus have been time out of mind harbors of refuge for the defeated tribes of the neighboring regions. Isolated in their secluded homes, in ceaseless warfare with their neighbors, an astonishing diversity of type and language arose. When the Romans undertook to explore these mountains, they had to call in the aid of seventy interpreters! It is not surprising, therefore, that we find communities there to-day, tribes apparently of Aryac lineage, speaking agglutinative languages, and others, of Mongolic appearance, quite unconnected with any Mongolic tongue. Divided as far as possible by linguistic resemblances, the Caucasian peoples may be placed under four groups:
1. The Lesghic, which includes the Avars, and people of Daghestan.