The Vindhya Mountains, although only of moderate height, formed a wide barrier between Hindustan and the Deccan, and with their impassable ruggedness, luxuriant forests, and wild beasts afforded the aborigines a safe refuge from the northern conquerors. And thus, even in the splendid period of Brahmanism, unconquered races maintained themselves in independence in these impenetrable defiles and wild forests of the central country, and did not give up their language, their savage nature, and their rude religious cult with its human sacrifices, for the orderly life, the settled state, and the mild Brahmanic religion of the Aryan Hindu.
The alternation of highland and valley, the pleasant mixture of mountain air and tropical heat, the invigorating influence of the moisture, which the nearness of the sea, the countless streams, and the regularly recurring rains of the monsoon season spread over the whole land, produced that richness of vegetation, that fertility of soil, and that fulness and variety of every kind of natural product which even in antiquity caused India to be praised as a land of happiness and blessing, made it the aim of the world’s commerce, but at the same time aroused the cupidity of the conqueror.
Whilst the snow valleys and mountain districts of the Himalayas with their temperate climate, produce plants and cereals, fruit and forest trees corresponding to southern European species, in the plains of the Jumna and the Ganges the vegetation of the tropical climate grows along with that of the temperate zones. By the side of corn, legumes, and fruit in most luxuriant abundance there is here rice and cotton, sugar and indigo, and a wonderful southern flora of a marvellous richness of colour; and in the districts of the Deccan, where, as on the coast of Malabar, the monsoons and the mountain streams bring an abundance of moisture, the noble products of India ripen to a threefold harvest.
Here the most varied tropical plants thrive in rare abundance, here with industry three rice harvests can be obtained, here grow the sugar-cane and the pepper plant, the banana and the mango; here rise stately forests of the Indian oak, called teak, of the precious sandal-wood, of palm and fig trees with their cool shady avenues; this is the home of the betel-nut tree and the nutmeg tree; here the land is redolent of spices and sweet odours; here blooms the vari-coloured water lily, the sacred lotus plant in whose seed the form of the future plant is visible, wherefore it was to the Indian a symbol of the evolution of the world from its original germ.
The streams carry gold sand, in the mountains are diamond mines, and precious stones and crystals of the most beautiful brilliancy, the seas furnish pearls for the adornment of temples and for jewelry. A numerous fauna, particularly the cow, the horse and the elephant, has the most varied relations with man, and hence also occupies an important place in the religious conceptions of the Hindu; the goat of the Himalayas supplies the fine wool for the cashmere shawls, the musk deer gives perfume, the silkworm spins the noble thread for the most costly fabric; and the great dogs of some of the western states were trained by the Indians and Persians for the chase and for war. The bright-feathered birds (parrots), which even learn the language of man, the peacocks with their broad tails of dark blue and emerald, and the countless family of monkeys excited the admiration of Greek antiquity from Herodotus and Ctesias down to the authors of the Alexandrian period [Megasthenes]. India was always the land of wonders, where fancy established her kingdom, where legend and poetry loved to tarry.[b]
This then is the theatre of India’s history. What of the strange people who have dwelt there so little changed by time? The ethnology of the Indians has been debated fiercely and long.
THE EARLY PEOPLES OF INDIA
The population of India amounts to about a fourth part of that of the globe and consists of various races. In the Vindhyas the Munda tribes are still to be found to a great extent in their original condition and without the knowledge of the use of metal. They seem to be the original inhabitants, related to the other coloured peoples of southern Asia, and appear to have been driven from the plains into the mountains by nations who immigrated at a later period. Their religion is fetish-worship. Their clothing is limited to what is absolutely indispensable.
To them belong the Kols who inhabit the highlands of Chota Nagpur in southern Behar, northwest of Calcutta: they are divided into various sections, the Santals, the Kols of Singbum or Larka Kols, the Kols of Bhumij, and the Munda Kols south of Ranchi in the Kolhan, and others; the Khamti, a kindred people, live on the borders of further India: the Ramusi, who live between Poona and Kolapur and the Warali, southeast of Damaun (between Bombay and Surat), speak the Sanskrit tongue of the Mahrattas; the Bhils dwell in the woods on the Tapti and Nerbudda and in Guzerat, but have also adopted civilisation together with the Aryan language. The Mairs in the Aravalli hills southwest of Ajmir and the Mina in the neighbourhood of the Jumna are also Munda tribes.
The Deccan is inhabited mainly by the Dravidians, whose languages are entirely different from the Munda and Sanskrit tongues. Like the Munda they have dark skins, but with the exception of a few mountain peoples they are civilised and they possess voluminous writings. They include the Tamil in the southernmost part of the Deccan, extending from Palikat (north of Madras) to Cape Comorin and east of a line drawn to the same cape from Bangalore through Coimbatore. The Telinga or Telugu (Sanskrit, Andhra) inhabit the country between Palikat and Orissa, and are bordered on the northwest by the Mahratta country. Inscriptions tell us of Andhra kings of the first century B.C. The Telugu names of many towns on the east coast show that this people were once extended over an area which reached much further north and even to Bengal. Like the Tamil they have both a popular and a literary language. The Tulu in the neighbourhood of Mangalore, formerly also reached to the coast, where the Malabar are now to be found; the latter received Christianity from Persia at an early period and wrote their language in Syrian characters called Karshunish.