The term quasi-Pulinda now finds an explanation. The key to half the complexities of the ethnology of Hindostan lies in the fact of the Brahminical portion of the population being an invading one, whilst the degree to which it altered the physical and moral character of those who were invaded, has a great range of variation, from a general change to an inappreciable modification.
Fig. 21.
Now—where the invaded have been so little changed as to preserve both their original habits and their original language, they are full or true Pulindas; whilst, where they have lost their language, but retained enough of their habits to show their probable Pulinda relations, they are called quasi-Pulindas.
The "original[192] population of the country which now separates the nearest point of the Dioscurian area from the Seriform" must, in its earliest epoch, have been intermediate or transitional between the two stocks. However, long before the dawn of history, this was displaced. By what nations? Most probably, by one of the two following—The Turks, by means of a southern, the Persians by means of a northern extension.
UNPLACED STOCKS.
In the present state of our knowledge it is safest to leave the following stocks unplaced.
1.
ARMENIANS.
That the Armenian language has Indo-Germanic elements is undoubted. Whether, however, they are sufficient to make it Indo-Germanic is questionable.