North of them are the Kanarese, inhabiting the coast and the inland districts towards Mysore, where they join uncivilised mountain peoples, the Kota, Badaga, and Koduga (Coorg). The Toda in the Nilgiris north of Coimbatore, represent the unmixed type of the race; they are taller than the other peoples and practise polyandry. Their religion consists in the fear of spirits, whose malignity is opposed by magic; the grand function of the village priest is the milking of the cows. The Uraon Kols and the Rajmahal Kols of the Lower Ganges as far as Gondwana are also of Dravidian origin. They are the pariahs of the social system; the Gonds speak Hindi, a Sanskrit language. They worship two gods, from whom proceed the good and evil in creation.
Other Dravidian peoples are the Ku or Kandhs in the mountains of Orissa, and finally, the Brahuis in the mountains of Baluchistan, south of Kelat in eastern Iran—the Ethiopians of the Greeks. Their presence in this remote territory is a token of the wide extension of the race in former times, and they perhaps migrated from the highlands of Asia.
Yet another nationality is represented by the original inhabitants of Ceylon (called in Sanskrit Sinhaladvipa, or the Island of the Sinhalas), the Vaddas, i.e. hunters, east of the Mahawalliganga who are still preserved from the admixture of foreign blood; ethnologically they show a resemblance to the ancient Dravidian peoples, but their language, the Elu, is quite peculiar to themselves.
It is supposed that about the year 2000 the immigration of Aryan (Indo-European) tribes started from the northwest. At some undefined period these Aryans formed one people with the Iranians, and their language, Sanskrit, is closely related to the Iranian. About 1500 years before Christ they had spread over the territory of the Indus, but it was not till five hundred years later that they began to conquer the plain of the Ganges, and the severe struggles which they had to sustain against the population are reflected in the epic as well as in countless legends; for in virtue of a peculiar love of the fantastic and thanks to the diligence of Brahman priests, the Aryan Indians have enveloped their ancient history in a cloud of myths and literally revelled in the construction of chronological systems covering immeasurable periods of time.
At the time of the Ophir voyage, when Solomon sent to India for ivory, apes, and peacocks, there were as yet no Aryans in southern India, for the name for apes, in Hebrew “qof,” and in Sanskrit “kapi,” cannot be an Aryan word; it first comes to hand in the latest book of the Rig-Veda, but also appears in the form “qaf” as early as the IVth Dynasty in Egypt, and the name for peacocks, “tuki,” has been borrowed from the Malabar “togei.” From an ethnological point of view the Aryans of India are not a pure race, as they appear to have been when they dwelt in the valley of the Indus; for in the Veda a contrast is often drawn between a clear complexion and the dark skin of the indigenous peoples. They must on the contrary have mixed with natives at some period when a peculiar civilisation and, in consequence, an increasing separation of the different classes was in course of development; and not only has the physical type greatly altered its original Indo-European character, but the whole civilisation of the Indians has received the stamp of southern and eastern Asia, which makes them appear to us even stranger than the Asiatic Semites or the Egyptians. This fact is often overlooked, because the use of the Aryan speech continually reminds us of the close relationship between the Indian Aryans and the Persians and Europeans. And it is not merely that the Aryans have assumed the racial marks of the Dravidian, but on the other hand the pure type of the indigenous population has only been preserved in the uncivilised mountain peoples. In later centuries the course of history introduced still further elements, as the Indo-Scythians in the northwest, the Persians and Arabians, and, finally, the Europeans, including those Mohammedans who have had so much influence on religious development.
In the territory in which the Aryan population preponderated, the Sanskrit language superseded the native one. The most widely diffused language of India is the Hindi, whose sphere is bordered in the west by the languages of the Punjab and of Sind with that of Cutch, in the south by the Guzerati language, the Mahratta, and the Telinga, and in the east by the tongues of Orissa and Bengal, to which the Asami is added. With the exception of Telinga, these are all Aryan languages.
In the north, Hindi reaches as far as the Terai, a vast prairie and forest inhabited by elephants, rhinoceros, tigers and other wild beasts, beyond which, extended over the southern slope of the Himalayas, dwells a whole series of peoples. In the high mountains and beyond them these peoples adjoin the Tibetans; the Rong or Lepcha in Sikkim, whose language, a Tibetan dialect, became known a few years ago; the Kiratis and Limbus of eastern Nepal; the Murmis and Newars in Nepal; the Kumaunis, and others.
The Mohammedan Indians have enriched Hindi with Arabic and Persian words and make use of the Arabic writing. This language which differs greatly from Hindi in grammar and syntax, is called Hindustani and is the chief speech current in India. Within the Hindi, Kellogg distinguishes eleven idioms, and these are again subdivided into dialects. Besides the Sanskrit languages already mentioned which border on Hindi, there are also some to be found in the Himalayas, especially in Kashmir and in Dardistan, a country bordered on the north by Muztagh (Karakoram), on the west by the mountain chain which divides it from the country of Chitral in the north, on the east by a similar range between the Indus and Krishnaganga, and on the northeast by the territories of Rongdo and Baltistan. According to Ujfalvy the inhabitants of the latter are also Aryans who have adopted the Tibetan language. Dardistan is inhabited by various races, who only immigrated in the Middle Ages and at a still later period, and even now are still in an unsettled condition. It was not explored till recent times by Schlagintweit, Leitner, Hayward and Biddulph. Whilst in ancient times the Darada (Dardæ) were spread over the valley of the Indus as far as the gold-fields of Thok Jalung, the name of Dard was found by Biddulph only opposite the entrance to the Kandia valley, where the Indus turns its course southward.
Another widespread people are the Shins, whose special seat is Gilgit and their language a Sanskrit tongue, closely related to those of the Punjab and Kashmir and to Hindustani. These people found their way from Shinkari between the Indus and Krishnaganga, and form the main population of the Indus valley from Ghor to Ghorband: their language has several dialects and in Baltistan they call themselves Rom, as the gypsies do.
Another daughter-language of Sanskrit is spoken by the tribes in the southwest of Dardistan, who claim to have come from Swat. This language has also different dialects as the Gowro, the Narisati and the language of the Siah-posh in Wamastan. On the other hand the people in Hunza, Nagar and Yassin speak Burishki, which Biddulph regards as the language of the Yuechi. The Yidghah, a Persian idiom, is also found in Dardistan.