| Cephalic Index. | |||
| Average. | Maximum. | Minimum. | |
| Kadir | 72.9 | 80.0 | 69.1 |
| Irula, Chingleput | 73.1 | 78.6 | 68.4 |
| Kānikar | 73.4 | 78.9 | 69.1 |
| Mala Vēdan | 73.4 | 80.9 | 68.8 |
| Panaiyan | 74.0 | 81.1 | 69.4 |
| Chenchu | 74.3 | 80.5 | 64.3 |
| Shōlaga | 74.9 | 79.3 | 67.8 |
| Paliyan | 75.7 | 79.1 | 72.9 |
| Irula, Nilgiris | 75.8 | 80.9 | 70.8 |
| Kurumba | 76.5 | 83.3 | 71.8 |
It is worthy of note that Haeckel defines the nose of the Dravidian as a prominent and narrow organ. For Risley has laid down[35] that, in the Dravidian type, the nose is thick and broad, and the formula expressing the proportionate dimension (nasal index) is higher than in any known race, except the Negro; and that the typical Dravidian, as represented by the Mālē Pahāria, has a nose as broad in proportion to its length as the Negro, while this feature in the Aryan group can fairly bear comparison with the noses of sixty-eight Parisians, measured by Topinard, which gave an average of 69.4. In this connection, I may record the statistics relating to the nasal indices of various South Indian jungle tribes:—
| Nasal Index. | |||
| Average. | Maximum. | Minimum. | |
| Paniyan | 95.1 | 108.6 | 72.9 |
| Kādir | 89.8 | 115.4 | 72.9 |
| Kurumba | 86.1 | 111.1 | 70.8 |
| Shōlaga | 85.1 | 107.7 | 72.8 |
| Mala Vēdan | 84.9 | 102.6 | 71.1 |
| Irula, Nīlgiris | 84.9 | 100. | 72.3 |
| Kānikar | 84.6 | 105. | 72.3 |
| Chenchu | 81.9 | 95.7 | 68.1 |
In the following table, I have brought together, for the purpose of comparison, the average stature and nasal index of various Dravidian classes inhabiting the plains of the Telugu, Tamil, Canarese, and Malayālam countries, and jungle tribes:—
This table demonstrates very clearly an unbroken series ranging from the jungle men, short of stature and platyrhine, to the leptorhine Nāyars and other classes.
PLATE V.
DIAGRAMS OF NOSES.
In [plate V] are figured a series of triangles representing (natural size) the maxima, minima, and average nasal indices of Brāhmans of Madras city (belonging to the poorer classes), Tamil Paraiyans, and Paniyans. There is obviously far less connection between the Brāhman minimum and the Paraiyan maximum than between the Brāhman and Paraiyan maxima and the Paniyan average; and the frequent occurrence of high nasal indices, resulting from short, broad noses, in many classes has to be accounted for. Sir Alfred Lyall somewhere refers to the gradual Brāhmanising of the aboriginal non-Arayan, or casteless tribes. “They pass,” he writes, “into Brāhmanists by a natural upward transition, which leads them to adopt the religion of the castes immediately above them in the social scale of the composite population, among which they settle down; and we may reasonably guess that this process has been working for centuries.” In the Madras Census Report, 1891, Mr. H. A. Stuart states that “it has often been asserted, and is now the general belief, that the Brāhmans of the South are not pure Aryans, but are a mixed Aryan and Dravidian race. In the earliest times, the caste division was much less rigid than now, and a person of another caste could become a Brāhman by attaining the Brāhmanical standard of knowledge, and assuming Brāhmanical functions; and, when we see the Nambūdiri Brāhmans, even at the present day, contracting alliances, informal though they be, with the women of the country, it is not difficult to believe that, on their first arrival, such unions were even more common, and that the children born of them would be recognised as Brāhmans, though perhaps regarded as an inferior class. However, those Brāhmans, in whose veins mixed blood is supposed to run, are even to this day regarded as lower in the social scale, and are not allowed to mix freely with the pure Brāhman community.”