Though geographically a part of Asia, the connection of India with that continent is recent as geology reckons time. Prior to the tertiary period, when the Himalayas were thrown up, the present peninsula of India was bounded on the north by the great central sea known as Tethys, while on the south it was joined to the ancient land area which stretched from Madagascar to the Malay Archipelago. No one who travels through India can fail to be struck with the extraordinary variety of its physical aspects. In the north rise the highest mountains in the world. Their summits are clothed in perennial snow and their lower slopes buried in dense forest. At their foot is an extensive plain, arid and sandy in the west and overlaid with luxuriant verdure in the east. Further south is a great central plateau, bordered on the west by the rugged outline of the Western Ghats and on the south by the rounded peaks of the Nilgiris. Between the plateau and the sea are narrow low-lying plains covered with tropical vegetation. Included within the Indian Empire are on the west, Baluchistan, a country of bare hills and rocky deserts interspersed by a few scattered oases, and the mountainous region bordering on Afghanistan; and on the east Assam with mighty rivers flowing rapidly through fertile valleys, impenetrable jungles and well-wooded hill ranges.
Every geologic epoch is represented in one part or another of India. The flora of India is more varied than that of any other area of the same extent in the Eastern Hemisphere, if not in the world; and the species of animals far surpass those found in Europe. The climate is equally diversified (India, 1911, p. 1 sq.)
The predominant density factors in India are by no means those which count for most in Western countries, where the variations in the population depend mainly on the progress made in commercial and industrial development. While in Europe, agriculture is unable to support more than 250 persons to the square mile, in India there are some purely agricultural tracts where it already supports three or even four times that number. (Indeed how high a population can be supported by agriculture when conditions are favourable, is shown by Cochin with areas here and there carrying over 2,000 and in one rural unit actually 4,090 persons to the sq. mile on land producing rice and coconuts, but principally the latter. India, 1931, p. 5). The variations in the productiveness of the land are far greater than they are in Europe; and it is the causes which produce these variations that are of the greatest, importance in determining the density. It is possible that density may, to some extent, be affected by certain economic conditions, such as the system of land tenures, the rates of rent and the standard of comfort of the people. For practical purposes density is dependent if not solely on the area under cultivation, at least on the sum total of agricultural conditions, of which that is one of the most important, which taken together determine the productiveness of the soil. As to the effect of the rainfall, although a certain amount of rain is necessary for successful cultivation, there is a point beyond which an additional quantity is no longer beneficial and may even be injurious. Provided that it is properly distributed, it appears that an annual precipitation of 40 inches is sufficient in most parts of India and that it is only when it is less than this or is badly distributed, that differences in the amount received have any marked influence on the success of cultivation and consequently on the density of population. Irrigation, where it exists, is an extremely important factor, but it affects a comparatively small area and is not to be compared in its general influence on density with the physical configuration. Crops cannot grow without a certain amount of water, but where that is forthcoming the extent of cultivation and the character of the crops are alike determined by the shape of the surface. Where it is level, practically every inch can be brought under the plough; water can be retained on the land by means of small ridges to supply the moisture during the intervals when no rain falls; there is no erosion, and permanent cultivation is possible. Where the surface is undulating, the bottoms of the slopes are extremely fertile, but on the slopes themselves cultivation is more precarious. Sometimes the natural disadvantages of sloping ground are minimised by an elaborate system of terracing, the hill-sides being laboriously cut into a series of steps, each of which is held up by a retaining wall. But these terraces are possible only where the hill-sides are not too steep and there is a sufficient depth of soil for excavation; and in a very hilly country the proportion of the total area which can be thus treated is extremely small. Numerous instances can be cited of the influence of climate. Historical conditions explain why some tracts of considerable natural fertility still remain almost uninhabited. In India the soil itself counts for very little as compared with the rainfall and the physical configuration. It is equally difficult to correlate density and crops. On the whole, however, it would seem that in most of the more densely peopled tracts rice is the predominant crop (India, 1911, p. 25 sq.)
Generally speaking the maximum density of the agricultural population can be far greater in India than in Europe, not only on account of the greater fertility of the land but on account of the diminution in the absolute necessaries of life corresponding to a less rigorous climate. The real difficulty is that to cultivate on anything like economic lines the number of individuals that can work on a given area of ground is limited. An additional complication of the problem appears in the fact that the cultivating classes in India generally lack the capital required for the extension of cultivation beyond the existing margin, particularly where the cultivation practised is already dependent on a somewhat problematical rainfall. Mechanical improvements which reduce the need for labour are a doubtful palliative, though no such doubt attaches to biological improvements, enabling a better crop to be obtained from a smaller area. Labour-saving devices will do little for a peasantry whose work takes up part only of the year and certainly they will not enable a greater number of peasants to live on the same area of land where there is neither demand nor market facilities for the minor products of agriculture which contribute to the income of the European small holder or on which, such as poultry, pigs or potatoes, he may principally depend. (India, 1931, p. 81).
The term ‘house’ in India covers the greatest diversity of dwellings. The portable screens of bamboo matting carried on a gipsy’s ass, or the camel-borne tent of a Bugti nomad are less primitive than the mere foliage wind screens of some of the Andamanese but still hardly conforming to the usual conception of a dwelling-house though this term can fairly be applied to the conical grass huts of the Chenchu and the Bhil and still more to the thatched and mat-walled dwellings, often on piles, or in trees, erected in the hills alike of Assam and of Travancore. In Bengal the thatched roof is hog-backed to increase the resistance of the gables to the roof-lifting cyclone, while on the west coast the typical Nayar house has picturesquely cocked gables on a very steeply pitched tiled roof the better to resist the torrential rain. Indeed the houses of the well-to-do in Malabar are built round an open impluvioum on to which a pillared verandah opens giving access to all the rooms, one of which is reserved as in an ancient Roman house for the lares and penates. In Upper India the mud wall and flat roof of a dry climate prevail, while the rich surround their houses of brick or stone with a walled enclosure and ensure privacy by the greatest economy in windows. Almost everywhere the tendency is apparent towards the replacement of traditional roofing materials by corrugated iron sheeting as ugly as ubiquitous. (India, 1931, p. 55).
The definition of a village as a unit is by no means always easy. The thickly populated parts of the Malabar coast and of. Bengal are often occupied by a series of homesteads, which may be grouped in villages for administrative purposes but which do not thereby acquire any of the characteristics of the compact determinate village of Upper India. The mauza, the revenue unit, is rather administrative than geographical and may consist of quite separate hamlets or even contain no houses at all. In the hills, the conditions are generally the reverse of those in the plains; that is, where the population is thickest it is found in concentrated villages, as on the N.E. Frontier, whereas when very thin it seems to be spread about in isolated homesteads or scattered hamlets as in the Simla Hills. Generally speaking, it may be said that of the total population of India, 89 per cent, is rural, more than half lives in villages with a population of under 1,000 and nearly one-third lives in villages with a population of under 500 persons. (India, 1931, p. 54 sq.). Effective congestion is as likely to be met with in villages as in cities; the essential difference is that the villager can get out of his village quickly while the inhabitants of a city cannot so easily escape. (Madras, 1931, p. 72). If village densities were calculated on the area of the inhabited site or sites, and not on that of the site plus the village lands, they would generally be greater than that of any town. (U.P., 1931, p. 123).
The distinction between a small town and a large village as far as the conditions of life or occupation of its inhabitants is concerned is often meaningless and the treatment of any place as urban rather than rural does not imply any degree of industrialisation and only the minimum degree of a corporate life distinct from that of the ordinary village such as the provision of an infrequent lamp-post. The total urban population of India is 11 per cent, of the total population. It is in the nature of things that the more varied activities of towns should attract a mixed population with less homogeneity, than the countryside. But beyond this, there appears to be a tendency for the population of towns to show different characteristics from those of rural areas in certain definite directions. It is naturally to be expected that the percentage of literacy should be greater in towns where opportunities for education are more readily available. Whereas in Bengal, Baluchistan and Assam and the Punjab the Muslim took less readily to town life then the Hindu, the case was reversed in most other parts of India. Clearly the reason has nothing to do with religion. Probably it is to be traced to historical causes and it would appear that the intrusive population is that which tends to prevail in towns. The trading classes which are often racial or religious, naturally tend to be town dwellers so that Parsis and Jews can hardly be found elsewhere, and Jains, who include large numbers of the Marwari and Kathiawari traders, are more urban than communities of other faiths. Thus too Sikhs who are rural at home, town dwellers elsewhere, whither they go generally as mechanics or artificers of some kind. In the centre of Calcutta the highest density is reached in six wards which have 112,000 per square mile. In Bombay in the Kumbharwada quarter there were 465,280 persons per square mile and in Chak No. 95 Talaq Mahal of Anwargana ward in Cawnpore a density of 786,560 persons per square mile is reached. (India, 1931, p. 49 sq).
It is hardly necessary to draw attention to the great preponderance of agriculture, whether as the principal or subsidiary occupation and for dependents no less than for earners, and of the females returned as having domestic service as a dependent occupation it is practically certain that a large proportion also help in the fields. If a comparison be made between the area of land under crops and the number of agriculturalists actually engaged in cultivation the result for British India is that for each agriculturalist there is 2.9 acres of cropped land of which 0.65 of an acre is irrigated. It seems likely therefore that the increase of agriculturalists is resulting in the extension of cultivation to areas which yield a low economic return. Industry occupies 10 per cent. of India’s workers. The increase in Transport workers is natural and expected. Communications have everywhere increased, roads are better and motor traffic has become ubiquitous. There is a general tendency towards increase in what may be described as modernised occupations. But industry in general is less specialised and functions less differentiated than in highly industrialised countries. Probably five millions may be fairly taken as the figure of organised labour in India in 1931. It has been claimed that Indian factory labour is very largely of the casual description; that it is not skilled and it is not recruited even from the hereditary trades to which it might be expected to look for its supply; that while the hereditary weaver is maintaining a precarious existence weaving khaddar at greater cost than is required for machine-made fabric, the mills producing the latter seek their labour in the casual labour market, recruiting very largely from agriculturalists who come and work in the mills for a time and then go back to their village. It is true that industrial labour is continually changing but the bulk of it is probably semi-skilled and in any case factory conditions bear little relation to hereditary handicraft. The conditions under which it lives are frequently incredibly squalid and overcrowded and there is little wonder that countrymen will not bring their wives and families to live in industrial centres if they can help it. The general result is that factory labour is largely recruited from younger sons for whom there is no land or need at home, village servants for whom there is no work and whom the village is unwilling to maintain, cultivators in debt who need cash to pay off a mortgage, ne’er-do-weels who have attracted too much attention to themselves at home, and women frequently of equivocal status.
It is simple enough when confronted with a return of Bande Mataram as a means of subsistence to allocate him to “other unclassified non-productive industries.” Should “Professional identifying witness” go into the same category or be classed with Lawyers clerks, petition writers? “Charity-receiver on burial” suggests mendicancy at first sight but probably represents a Mahabrahman. The leech, familiar in India, with his little horns and cupping tools returned his occupation as “sucking bad blood.” Setting gold nails in teeth might belong to Dentists or to makers of jewellery and ornaments. “Cradle-swinger” not only adds a touch of domesticity but indicates the extreme differentiation of function which so often characterises the life of a household in India. (India, 1931, p. 273 sq).
Agriculture is a respectable calling and it is one which at any rate can be combined with many caste occupations and many castes whose names imply some other occupation are now mainly agricultural. Apart from agriculture the abandonment of caste functions is operative in particular directions to the exclusion of others. There is no tendency for instance for other castes to encroach on the dhobi’s monopoly of washing, though all castes aim at entering the learned professions and in particular Government service, and there is a similar tendency to give up caste callings for trade. The tendency to leave caste callings for learned professions is one which is making itself severely felt by those castes, Brahmans and Kayasthas in particular, who have in the past held a virtual monopoly of them. (India, 1931, p. 296).
Certain industries have either disappeared or are in course of disappearance owing to various causes, e.g., competition from imported articles of superior make and finish, change in fashion and taste. Such in Madras are the Bangle industry, handmade paper, painted cloth manufacture, Pithwork, Indigo, the toy industry, lacquer work, boat-building, Jutka, gold and silver lace thread, crochet lace and artistic pottery. (Madras 1931, p. 242 sq.). Bengal finds that indigenous brass and bell-metal industries have been seriously affected by cheap enamel, aluminium and porcelain vessels. The use of indigenous vegetable dyes is practically extinct. (Bengal, 1931, p. 303 sq.) The manufactures of swords, daggers, spears, knives, etc., was once a thriving industry in many parts of Rajputana. Owing to foreign competition and the increasing demand for modern fire-arms, the industry is not flourishing though in Mewar the demands of tourists assist in keeping the trade alive. (Rajputana 1931, p. 94 sq).
By common consent there has been a marked rise in the general standard of living. This is evidenced in various ways. It is perhaps most apparent in the increasing use of articles which a short time back were regarded as luxuries. Diets lanterns are nowadays looked on as absolutely indispensable. The electric torchlight has achieved a tremendous popularity. Umbrellas are used habitually by persons who would not have aspired to them. Bicycles are to be found in the more remote villages. Except in the most backward parts it is becoming difficult to find a village darzi without his sewing machine. The clothes worn by all sections are more varied and usually of better quality than they used to be. Shoes are worn by an ever increasing number, and in the matter of jewellery the tendency among women of every class is towards a greater refinement. The wearing of ornaments by men is falling out of favour but wrist-watches, fountain pens and so forth are affected instead. Even among the poorer classes metal utensils have largely taken the place of the earthen vessels formerly in use and among all classes the popularity of aluminium ware is particularly marked. Such articles as tin trunks are now regarded as a sine qua non. Another sign of the times, which testifies eloquently to enlargement of ideas and higher standards of comfort, is the extent to which passenger lorries and motor services of every kind are now patronised by the rank and file of the population. Ordinary cultivators and members of the labouring classes, faced with a journey of ten or fifteen miles, think little of jumping on a lorry and paying their fare – for no stronger reason than to be quit of the trouble of walking. (Bihar and Orissa, 1931, p. 70 sq).
In the Punjab a wonderful improvement has been made in the design of houses generally. In towns the old system of building underground cellars sard khana for the excessively hot days of summer has been completely abandoned, as the adoption of pankhas, the use of ice and other cooling beverages, added to the moderate temperature of the lower storeys of houses render the underground cellar superfluous. The style of furniture used has also kept pace with the change. The village torchbearer is gradually disappearing. (Punjab, 1911, p. 26-7).
There are two main causes – the one social and the other economic – which account for the reluctance of the native of India to leave his ancestral home. The social cause, which affects chiefly the Hindus, is the caste system. The restrictions which that system involves make a man’s life very uncomfortable when he is separated from the members of his own social circle. Not only is he unable to marry beyond its limits; he may not even eat or drink with members of other groups, nor may he smoke from their huqqa. He often finds it difficult to get anyone to cook his food; and if he dies, there will be no one to perform his obsequies, and his body may have to be removed by scavengers. Nor is it only a question of the inconveniences to which a Hindu is exposed during his absence. A man who is long away from home is often looked at askance on his return; he is suspected of having broken the rules of his caste, and he may find it hard to regain his old position. The penalties which a journey across the ocean involves are well known; and on the west coast of India the crossing of certain rivers is similarly interdicted in some cases, especially where women are concerned. The economic hindrance to migration is to be found in the fact that the people of India are mainly dependent for their support on a single calling, i.e., agriculture. At the present time great changes are in progress.
Migration is of various kinds. Casual migration involves minor movements between neighbouring villages. In rural Bengal shops are practically non-existent. But hat khola, market places, are more frequently met with. Hat are scattered so profusely over the country that a cultivator in almost any district can go to one every day of the week without going more than 5 or 6 miles from home. As often as not he does not go for business. When his crops are on the ground, beyond petty repairs to his homestead, and the care of his cattle which he generally leaves to his children, he has nothing to do. He has his meal about mid-day or a little before, smokes a pipe, has a short sleep and about 3 in the afternoon sets out to whichever hat happens to be meeting. He goes mainly to meet his friends, hear the talk of the neighbourhood and find out the prices of the various commodities because such are the things that interest him. In fact the hat is as much a place of recreation as a place of trade and the cultivator has less work to do, more time to waste in company with others, than almost anywhere else in the world. (Bengal, 1911, p. 392).
Casual migration is largely associated with marriage. Both the low ratio of women to men in the north-west and the practice of hypergamy combined with a decrease in social status from west to east among Hindus of many castes results in a surplus movement of women westwards.
Temporary migration is due to the migration of coolies to meet the demand for labour on new canals and lines of railway and to journeys on business and in connection with pilgrimages, fairs, marriage ceremonies and the like. Throughout India there are sacred places where large crowds assemble on special occasions. (India, 1911, p. 90.) Religious pilgrimages play a greater feature in Indian life than in the life of any other nation. This pilgrimage habit, for in India it is nothing less, appears to be maintained by regular and hereditary canvassers attached to different shrines who go round the country inducing villagers to leave everything and embark sometimes with their families as well, on visit to distant shrines and tours of holy places which may take years to accomplish. Canvassing is not always needed to start a pilgrimage. In February 1930 the gas generated by night-soil in a trenching-ground near Delhi issued from the earth in flame and the spot promptly became the scene of a local pilgrimage to the goddess-favoured site, large numbers of people of the more ignorant classes coming and removing mephitic earth from the spot hollowed as some said, by the goddess of small pox. The goddess in this case proved obligingly susceptible of chemical analysis which showed that her ambrosial composition was 70 per cent, methane, 20 per cent, carbon-dioxide and 10 per cent. inert gases. (India, 1931, p. 384).
Periodic migration is due to the seasonal demand for labour. Of this character is the annual migration to the Sunderbans and the wheat districts of Upper India at harvest time and the extensive movement from Bihar and the United Provinces to Bengal during the cold weather month for work on the roads. The movement of graziers is a regular one. The Gaddis of the Kangra District shift lower down, in winter, owing to the intense cold at their homes and graze their cattle in the lower hills. Similarly the Afghan Powindahs, who find it difficult to earn a living or procure good fodder for their camels in the hills during the winter, leave Afghanistan in large numbers and bring merchandise to the Punjab even as far as Calcutta or Bombay and in March wend their way home. The graziers in the plains take their cattle down to the riverside tracts in the summer when the supply of fodder is restricted in the uplands. In the winter the cattle are taken to the uplands. (Punjab, 1911, p. 72).
Semi-permanent migration is found where the inhabitants of one place earn their livelihood in another but maintain their connection with their old homes, where they leave their families and to which they ultimately return. This type of migration includes many of the labourers in mills and factories in Calcutta and other big cities; clerks in Government offices and domestic servants and the ubiquitous Marwari trader and money-lender who plies his business in the remotest corners of the Empire but who in his old age almost invariably returns to his home in Rajputana.
Permanent migration is in the nature of colonisation and usually takes place when, owing to irrigation or improved communications or changed political conditions, new lands become available for occupation. A minor form of permanent migration is to be found in the practice common amongst old people, especially Hindu widows, of spending their latter days at some sacred spot, such as Benares or Brindaban. Again, the whole complexion of the population of Assam has been altered by the permanent immigrants from Mymensingh in Bengal. Where there is waste land, thither flock the Mymensinghias. In fact the way in which they have seized upon the vacant areas in the Assam Valley seems almost uncanny. Without fuss, without tumult, without undue trouble to the district revenue-staffs, a population which must amount to over half a million has transplanted itself from Bengal to the Assam Valley during the last twenty-five years.
The North Arcot district in Madras was found to contain a remarkable increase in the number of persons born in French India. They represented the party defeated in recent elections in Pondicherry who found it healthier to withdraw to British territory than to remain during the executive arbitrament and domination of their political adversaries.
An additional form of migration may be described as Daily, which is familiar enough in Bombay and in Calcutta where 26,000 living outside the city travel in daily by train alone, to say nothing of those who use cars, buses or trains. In some industrial areas it is already becoming a common practice for persons to live outside the place of employment and buses are run to neighbouring villages for labour in Assam.
Early marriage, which is almost universal, is a great deterrent at one end and immigration restrictions at the other of emigration from India. (India, 1931, p. 62 sq.) Nevertheless an emigration habit undoubtedly exists in Southern India and Ceylon and Malaya act as safety valves to Southern India. It is probable that a continuing proportion of emigration is due to a desire to escape from restrictions suffered in the homeland by the depressed classes who form the bulk of emigrants. Emigration is a great teacher of self-respect, for caste is to a large extent put away when the India emigrant crosses the sea. A man who little removed from praedial serfdom in Tanjore, finds himself treated on his own merits like every one else when he crosses the sea, paid in cash for his labours and left to his own recourses, must in the majority of cases benefit from the change and it is probably the existence of the emigration current that has contributed most to the growth of consciousness amongst the depressed classes. Labourers from well run estates generally bring back to their villages some of the ideas on cleanliness, food and comfort acquired while abroad. Emigration has no observable effect on religion. Caste rigidity undoubtedly weakens but so largely homogeneous are the contributions that here too the effect is less than might be expected. No emigrant even so far afield as Fiji severs his ties of community with the home country and on his return seeks to take a normal place in it. The effects of emigration on education are good so far as estate labour is concerned. Effects on occupation are less than might be expected. The great mass go forth to carry in their new countries the agricultural occupations they inherited at home. The contribution to domestic service is by classes contributing to it in India. The traders are those who in India would probably also have traded. The Madrasi emigrant takes his own world with him and sets it down in his new surroundings. (Madras, 1931, p. 79 sq.) Mutatio loci, non ingenii, Caelum non animum mutant. (India, 1931, p. 72).
It is a familiar experience that the ordinary untravelled European on first arriving in India, finds much difficulty in distinguishing one native of the country from another. To his untrained eye all Indians are black; all have the same cast of countenance; and all, except the ‘decently naked’ labouring classes, wear loose garments which revive dim memories of the attire of the Greeks and Romans. An observant man soon shakes off these illusions, and realises the extra ordinary diversity of the types which are to be met with everywhere in India. The first step in his education is to learn to tell a Hindu from a Muhammadan. A further stage is reached when it dawns upon him that the upper classes of Hindus are much fairer than the lower and that their features are moulded on finer, lines. Later on, if opportunity favours him, he comes to recognise at a glance the essential differences between the Punjabi and the Bengali, the Pathan and the Gurkha; the Rajput and the ‘Jungly’ tea coolie; he will no longer take a Maratha Brahman for a Madrasi; or an Oriya for a native of Kashmir. He learns, in short, to distinguish what may be called the Provincial types of the people of India, the local, racial or linguistic aggregates, which at first sight seem to correspond to the nations of Europe. But the general impressions thus formed, though accurate enough so far as they go, are wanting in scientific precision.
The modern science of ethnology endeavours to define and classify the various physical types, with reference to their distinctive characteristics in the hope that when sufficient data have been accumulated it may be possible in some measure to account for the types themselves, to determine the elements of which they are composed and thus to establish their connexion with one or other of the great families of mankind. For ethnological purposes physical characters may be said to be of two kinds, indefinite characters which can only be described in more or less appropriate language, and definite characters which admit of being measured and reduced to numerical expression. The former class, usually called descriptive or secondary characters, includes such points as the colour and texture of the skin; the colour, form and position of the eyes; the colour and character of the hair; and the form of the face and features. Conspicuous as these traits are the difficulty of observing, defining, and recording them is extreme. The difficulty which besets all attempts to classify colour is enhanced in India by the fact that for the bulk of the population the range of variation, especially in the case of the eyes and hair, is exceedingly small. The skin no doubt exhibits extreme divergences of colouring which anyone can detect at a glance. At one end of the scale we have the dead black of the Andamanese, the colour of a black-leaded stove before it has been polished, and the somewhat brighter black of the Irulas of the Nilgiri Jungles of whom it is said that charcoal leaves a white mark upon them. At the other end one may place the flushed ivory skin of the traditional Kashmiri beauty, and very light transparent brown-wheat coloured is the common vernacular description of the higher castes of Upper India which Emil Schmidt compares to milk just tinged with coffee and describes as hardly darker than is met with in members of the swarthier races of Southern Europe: Between these extremes we find countless shades of brown, darker or lighter, transparent or opaque, frequently tending towards yellow, more rarely approaching a reddish tint, and occasionally degenerating into a shade of greyish black which seems to depend on the character of the surface of the skin.
Still less variety is traceable in the character of the eyes and hair. From one end of India to the other the hair of the great mass of the population is black or dark brown, while among the higher castes the latter colour is occasionally shot through by something approaching a tawny shade. Straight hair seems on the whole to predominate but the wavy or curly character appears in much the same proportion as among the races of Europe. The Andamanese have woolly or frizzly hair, oval in section and curling on itself so tightly that it seems to grow in separate spiral tufts while in fact it is quite evenly distributed over the scalp. The eyes are almost invariably dark brown. Occasional instances of grey eyes are found among the Konkanasth Brahmans of Bombay and the combination of blue eyes, auburn hair and reddish blonde complexion is met with in the North-Western Frontier. On the Malabar coast are instances of pale blue and grey eyes combined with a dark complexion.
When we turn to the definite or anthropometric characters we find ourselves on firmer ground. Nowhere else in the world do we find the population of a large continent broken up into an infinite number of mutually exclusive aggregates, the members of which are forbidden by an inexorable social law to marry outside the group to which they themselves belong. In a society thus organised, differences of physical type, however, produced in the first instance, may be expected to manifest a high degree of persistence.
The Indian endogamous Caste with its exogamous divisions is a perfect method of preserving what is called in Genetics the ‘pure line’. The endogamy prevents external hybridisation, while the exogamy prevents the possibility of a fresh pure line arising within the old one by the isolation of any character not common to the whole line. With the preservation of the pure line the perpetuation of all characters common to it necessarily follows. (Bombay. 1921. p. 103).
The measurements themselves require a few words of explanation. Thus the form of the head is ascertained by measuring in a horizontal plane the greatest length from a definite point on the forehead (the glabella) to the back of the head, and the greatest breadth a little above the ears. The proportion of the breadth to the length is then expressed as a percentage called the cephalic index, the length being taken as 100. Heads with a breadth of 50 per cent, and over are classed as broad or brachycephalic; those with an index under 50, but not under 75, are called medium heads (meso- or mesati-cephalic); long or dolicho-cephalic heads are those in the ratio of breadth to length below 75 per cent. It may be added that neither the shape nor the size of the head seems to bear any direct relation to intellectual capacity. People with long heads cannot be said to be cleverer or more advanced in culture than people with short heads!
The proportions of the nose are determined on the same principle as those of the skull. The height and breadth are measured from certain specified points and the latter dimension is expressed as a percentage of the former. The nasal index, therefore, is simply the relation of the breadth of the nose to its height. If a man’s nose is as broad as it is high, his index is 100. The results thus obtained are grouped in three classes – narrow or fine noses (leptorrhine) in which the width is less than 70 per cent. of the height; broad noses (platyrrhine) in which the proportion rises to 85 per cent and over, and medium noses (mesorrhine) with an index of from 70 to 85. (India. 1901. I. p. 489 sq.)
For the 1931 census measurements were taken on persons belonging to at least 51 racial groups from all parts of India on 18 different characters. Besides these a large number of observations were recorded including tints of skin, eye and hair colours. For a satisfactory study of the resemblance or difference of the physical characters of two races a co-efficient known as the Co-efficient of Racial Likeness (C.R.L.) has been suggested which takes into account not only the mean characters and their standard deviations but also the numbers of the individuals and characters measured. It should not, however, be forgotten that though the method of the Co-efficient of Racial Likeness is without doubt the best available criterion of racial divergence, it is nevertheless not an absolute test but only a rough measure of how far on the given data significant resemblance or divergence can be asserted. In assigning an equal value to every one of the characters, it furthermore neglects the differences in the relative biological significance of the various characters as measures of racial difference. Other factors such as the systematic observations of non-measurable characters, should therefore be duly considered.
In the racial composition of the peoples of India we can discern; (A), a short statured long headed element with high cranial vault but faintly marked supra-orbital ridges and broad, short but ortho-gnathous face, with medium lips. The nose is prominent and long but the alae moderately spread out, giving a mesorrhine index. The colour of the skin varies from light brown in the Telugu Brahmin to a dark tawny brown among the Kalla, but the eye colour is dark brown and colour of the hair is usually black. The latter is in general straight but is inclined to waviness and the amount is moderate both on the face and body. It is found in its purest form among the Telugu Brahmins, but the Kallas of Southern Tamil country and the Illuvas of Cochin also furnish good examples. This type forms the predominant element in the greater part of the lower stratum of the population of Northern India, including to some extent the Punjab, where among the Chubra and Chamar is a small-headed, broad-nosed element which appears to be closely related to the Mediterranean stock of Europe.
On this basic substratum there appears to have superimposed:—
In the western littoral and Bengal (B) a brachycephalic element of medium stature with flattened occiput but having also high head and not infrequently receding forehead. Like the former the face is short and orthognathous but somewhat broader. The nose is long and quite often arched and convex. The skin colour varies from a pale white to light brown among the Nagas Brahmin, to tawny brown among the Kannada non-Brahmins. The colour of the eye is usually dark brown but a small per cent shows light eyes. The hair colour is black with a small proportion showing a dark brown tint. The hair is generally straight and the pilous system well developed. The Nagar Brahmin of Guzrat, the Kayastha of Bengal and the Kannada non-Brahmin are representatives of this type.
And in Northern India:—
(C) Another long-headed strain with comparatively lower but longer head and tall stature and possessing a long face and prominent narrow long nose. It its purest form it is found in the North-west Himalayan tribes like the Kaffirs and the Pathan where the skin colour is predominantly of a rosy white tint and an appreciable number have grey-blue eyes and chestnut hair. In the plains of Northern India, among the Sikhs of the Punjab and the Brahmin of the U.P. the skin colour changes to a light transparent brown. Here also there is a small proportion of people having light eyes and brownish hair. Among this type also the hair is usually straight and the pilous system well developed.
The two long-headed strains (A) and (C) show some similarity in the shape of the head. Significant differences are, however, visible not only in stature, in the absolute length and height of the cranial vault, but also in the proportions and form of the face and nose. These together with the differences in the integumentary colours mark out the long-headed people of Southern, from those of Northern India. If long and high-headedness are associated with dark hair and eyes and are the characteristics of a very early type of modern man, the type here designated as (A) must be a south-eastward drift of this race, which reached India in very early times. The other long-headed type, as history would seem to suggest, belonged to a later drift from the north-west though both may have been evolved of a common ancestral stock like the Cromagnon or some pre-Cromagnon race but were differentiated very rarely.
In addition to these three types, the aboriginal population of India discloses – (D) a short and moderately high-headed strain with very often strongly marked brow ridges, broad short face, the mouth slightly inclined forwards and small flat nose with the alae extended. The hair varies from wavy to curliness and the skin is of a shade of dark chocolate brown approaching black. This type is predominant among the aboriginal tribes of Central and Southern India, but seems also to have entered in a considerable degree in the lower stratum of the Indian population. This type is closely allied to the Veddas of Ceylon, the Toalas of Celebes, and the Sakais of the Malay Peninsula. A more primitive form of this type is seen among the aborigines of Australia, among whom some of its traits are found in an intensified form. The Bhils of the Vindhya and the Chenchus of the Farhabad Hills may be regarded as representatives of this type.
It seems probable that at a very early time this type displaced and partially intermixed with:— (E) a dark pigmy strain having spirally curved hair, remnants of which are still found among the Kadars and the Pulayans of the Perambucullan Hills but which is mostly submerged in India at the present time. Hutton has drawn attention to the presence of the negrito type among the Angairti Nagas and examination of the large series of skulls brought back by the Triangular expedition has made it quite clear that it extends beyond the Assam frontiers into the trans-Namphuk area of Burma. The Andamanese are racially homogeneous and of distinct type, characterised by a dwarfish stature, black complexion and woolly hair who have survived as a result of isolation.
The mongoloid racial strain does not appear to have entered in any considerable extent in the population of the mainlands of India. The true Mongol element as seen among the Uzbegs, still remains outside the Indian frontiers but all along the sub-Himalayan region of N.E. Kashmir to Bhutan:—
F: a brachycephalic mongoloid type, having, not improbably some affinities with the former, seems to have penetrated and constitutes to-day the main component of the population of these parts. The type that forms the dominant element in Burma is also brachycephalic but somewhat shorter in stature and having a short flat nose and a tendency to alveolar prognathism. It appears to exhibit certain affinities with the Siamese, the Malay and the Cochin Chinese.
In Assam and Northern Burma there seems to have entered:—
G: a second Mongoloid strain characterised by medium stature, longish head and medium nose, but exhibiting like (F) the typical Mongoloid characteristics of the face and eye. This element constitutes the major strain in the population of the hills and not inconsiderably of that of the Brahmaputra Valley. The Angami Nagas may be considered to be the best representatives of this type but the Mikir-Bodo group also furnishes a good example. (India. 1931. I. iii. p.v.sqq).
From the beginning of the 4th millennium B.C. North-western India seems to have been in the occupation of a long-headed race with high cranial vault, long face and narrow prominent nose. Side by side with them we find another very powerfully built race also long-headed, but with lower cranial vault, and equally long-faced and narrow nose, though the latter was not so high pitched as that of the former. A third type with broader head and apparently Armenoid affinities also existed but whose advent occurred probably somewhat later. The presence at Bayana of a small, long, and moderately high vaulted skull with prominent nose seems to indicate that a drift of this race eastwards had taken place even earlier and the whole of the Indo-Gangetic basin seems to have been occupied by it as early as these times. Later on in the Iron Age the Peninsula seems to have been occupied by a long but high-skulled race, with low broad face and nose, resembling the Combe-Capelle type. Though we have no direct evidence of the Negrito race in the old skeletal remains of India, the skull of a victim of human sacrifice found in a cairn at Jewurgi is unmistakably negroid. The Australoid type found so largely in the present day aborigines is, however, abundantly represented both in the Southern Indian and Chota Nagpur sites. The Combo Capelle type, or a race very closely allied to it, entered probably with that culture as early as Neolithic times. Mixed with the Mediterranean race which constituted the major part of the Indus Valley people in the Chalcolithic times, it forms to-day the bulk of the population of the Peninsula and a considerable portion of Northern India, in the upper classes of which there is another strain with undoubted northern affinities. It is probable that the powerfully built large-headed strain found at Mohenjo-daro forms one of the constituents of this Northern race whose advent in India appears to synchronise with the Aryan invasion.
The brachycephalic race, who form the dominant element in the population of the western and south-western parts of India as well as Bengal, must have come at an earlier period, as judged by the remains at Harappa. But that it penetrated Southern India somewhat later seems certain, as judged by the age of the Aditanallur and Raigur skeletons. When it had moved eastwards into Bengal we have no definite evidence but probably earlier than in Southern India as racial drifts along the Gangetic Valley would seem to have been easier and more rapid. The brachycephalic types in South Arabia according to Keith must have come from Persia and Baluchistan. There seems no reason to think that the Indian brachycephals with definite Armenoid affinities had a different origin. (India. 1931. I. iii pl/xix sq).
The earliest occupants of India were probably of the Negrito race but they have left little trace on the mainland of the peninsula. The proto-Australoids who followed them and whose origin must be sought in Palestine (unless the recently found remains of ‘Solo’ man in Java prove to be earlier) may claim to be the true aborigines on the ground that their racial type was ultimately fixed in India. They were followed by an early stock probably of the Mediterranean race, speaking an agglutinative tongue from which the present Austro-asiatic languages are derived, which migrated down the Ganges valley mingling no doubt with the Proto-australoids and in the van at any rate penetrating to the farthest south-east of the Asiatic continent. This early branch of the Mediterranean race may have carried with it the beginnings of culture with a rudimentary knowledge of agriculture. They may also have taken the practice of erecting rude stone monuments and perhaps of primitive navigation. This migration was followed by a later immigration of civilised Mediterraneans from the Persian Gulf, but ultimately from eastern Europe, who brought with them the knowledge of the metals but not of iron and were followed by later waves of immigrants and a generally advanced culture, which maintained a connection with the cities of Mesopotamia and evolved or developed the pre-historic civilisation of the Indus valley and in all probability a similar civilisation in the Ganges valley. All these immigrants were of the dolichocephalic type but mixed with this last race was a brachycephalic element coming ultimately from the Anatolian plateau in the form of the Armenoid branch of the Alpine-race. The civilisation which arose in India under the auspices of these races had developed by the end of the 4th millennium B.C. a high standard of comfort, art and sanitation in city life, and a religion which bears many resemblances to the earlier religions of the eastern Mediterranean. The language in use was probably Dravidian and there was a pictographic script analogous to those in use in prehistoric Mesopotamia. This civilisation was flooded in the west during the third millennium B.C. by an immigration from the Iranian plateau and the Pamirs of a brachy-cephalic race speaking perhaps an Indo-European language of the Pisacha or Dardic family, the main course of which migration went down the west of India and across the Mysore plateau to the south, missing the Malabar coast which has thus preserved much of the ancient civilisation of Dravidian speaking India. Another branch of these, fewer in number, penetrated the Ganges valley but was not strong enough to obliterate the Armenoid-Mediterranean civilisation, though it probably modified it a good deal. Meanwhile in the extreme east of India other movements were going on as there was a widespread race movement of the southern Mongoloids southwards to the Bay of Bengal and into Indonesia, which had some reflex influence on India from the east. Finally about 1,500 B.C. came the Indo-Aryan migration into the Punjab, which first occupied the area between the Indus and the Jamna and later sent colonies into Hindustan. These imposed themselves upon the surviving civilisation there which so reacted to this powerful stimulant as to produce from the combined material the philosophy, religion, art and letters that were the glory of ancient India. (India. 1931. 1. i. p. 460).
A number of successive racial intrusions have contributed to the elements now found in the Hindu religion which took its final form as the result of the impact of the social ascendancy of the Indo-European invaders of the 2nd millennium B.C. on pre-existing religious institutions. The first occupants of India were probably Negritos, and elements of their belief, perhaps including the reverence for the pipal tree and possibly a primitive phallic fertility cult, may have been perpetuated by the proto-australoids who were the next comers and probably contributed the totemic theory or at least the basis thereof. The next elements were probably of Mediterranean origin contributing a phallic and a megalithic culture and the life-essence theory but the relative positions of the Dravidian speaking Mediterranean-Armenoid, the proto-Australoid and the Munda and Mon-Khmer or Austro-asiatic races is difficult to determine and there is little material from which to draw a conclusion and many would identify the proto-Australoid and Munda racial elements. If the Munda speaking elements be distinct from the proto-Australoid, it would be conveniently orderly to suppose that the Mundas came after them with a life-essence theory and the Mediterraneans still later to develop it into reincarnation, and bringing in the worship of the Great Mother, but it is conceivable that the Mediterraneans brought both the theory and its development and the Munda came later as a barbarian invader though no doubt already in possession of the soul-matter philosophy, since at any rate the hill tribes of Assam, Burma and Indo-China appear to contain an element of Caucasian stock which penetrated to S.E. Asia before the southern migration of Mongolians of the Paroean branch and the soul-matter theory must have arisen very early in the history of the human race. Both Munda and Mediterranean must have been followed by religious elements from Asia Minor, brought via Mesopotamia by traders and settlers from the west which superseded the fertility and soul-matter cult by one of personified deities, sacrificial propitiation and a formalised worship, again with phallic elements and such institutions as that of the deva-dasi, together with astronomical lore and cults of the heavenly bodies and priestly institutions which formed the basis of modern Hinduism, the final form of which was determined by the successful conflict of this proto-Hinduism on the religious side with the imported religion of the ‘Aryan’ invaders, to whom, however, it had to concede much socially, resulting in the socio-religious position of the priestly order to familiar in India. (India. 1931. I. i. p. 393).
Four great families of human speech have their homes, as vernaculars, in India. These are the Indo-European, the Dravidian, the Austric, and the Tibeto-Chinese. If we include the territories subject to Aden, we have to add the Semitic and the Hamitic. These families will now be described in the above order. The oldest languages of India are probably those which we class as Austric. Practical reasons compel us to begin with the Indo-Aryan forms of speech, for, whether we consider the influence which they have exercised upon the development of Indian civilisation, or the total number of their speakers, they are by far the most important.
The modern Indo-Aryan vernaculars, although derived from languages which were highly synthetical in structure, are now essentially analytical. The terminals of their nouns and verbs have given place to post-positions, and to disjointed modern particles to indicate time, place, and relation.
These tongues have spread over the whole of Northern India as far as Dibrugarh in the extreme east of Assam, and reaching south to Kanara in Bombay. They have preserved their identity and have superseded, and are still superseding, the indigenous forms of speech. When an Indo-European tongue comes into contact with an uncivilised aboriginal one, it is invariably the latter which goes to the wall. The necessities of intercourse compel the aborigine to learn to use a broken ‘pigeon’ form of the language of a superior civilisation. In process of time the old aboriginal language is forgotten and dies a natural death. The reverse process, of an Aryan tongue being superseded by an aboriginal one, never occurs. In Chota Nagpur, the stronghold of Austro-Asiatic speech in India, the use of the old original language survives practically cent per cent.
The Indo-Aryan languages form one branch of the great Indo-European family of speech.
From the point of view of language, the first great division of the Indo-Europeans was into the so-called centum-speakers and satem-speakers. The former, who originally began the word for ‘hundred’ with the letter k, travelled westwards. The latter, who expressed the same idea with some word beginning with a sibilant, mostly wandered to the east, and from their language have descended the speech-families which we call Aryan, Armenian, Phrygian, Thracian, Illyrio-Albanian, and Balto-Selavonic. We have only to do with the first of these six.
One of the clans of these satem-speakers, who called themselves Aryans, migrated eastwards. In the highlands of Khokand and Badakhshan, they split up into two sections, one portion marching south, over the Hindu Kush, into the valley of the Kabul, and thence into the plains of India; and the other eastwards and westwards, towards the Pamirs and towards what is now Merv and Eastern Persia. After the separation, the common speech developed on two different lines, and became, on the one hand, the parent of the Indo-Aryan, and, on the other hand, the parent of the Eranian (often spelt ‘Iranian’) family of languages.
At the earliest period of which we have documentary evidence, we find Eranian divided into two not very different dialects, commonly called Persic and Medic. Persic was the official language of the Court of the Achaemenides, and was employed by Darius I (B.C. 522-486), in the celebrated Behistun inscription. It developed into the Middle Persian or Pahlavi of the Sassanids (third to seventh centuries A.D.), and finally became modern Persian. Persian is spoken in Baluchistan. Under Mussalman dominion it become one of the great vehicles of Indian literature, and some of the most famous Persian books, including the great lexicographical works, have been composed in Hindustan. Medic, on the other hand, was the language of the Avesta. It was spoken not only in Media (North-western Persia), but all over East Eran. From it are descended the two great Eranian languages belonging to India – Pashto and Baloch; and also, besides others, the so-called Ghalehah languages of the Pamirs and Suriqol.
Commencing from the south, the first of these is Baloch. It is in its outward shape the most archaic of all the Eranian tongues, still possessing forms which fifteen hundred years ago had already begun to decay in the cognate Persian. As its name implies, it is the principal language of Baluchistan, and is geographically split up by the Dravidian-speaking Brahuis of the central hills into two dialects – that of the north, and that of Makran in the south and west. Its southern boundary is the Arabian Sea, from near the Indus to about the fifty-eight degree of east longitude. Northwards it extends to near Quetta, and as we go westwards it is found even farther than this, up to the valley of the Helmand. The Indus valley itself is occupied by speakers of Indo-Aryan languages, but the eastern boundary of Baloch follows the course of that river at a short distance to the west up to about Dera Ghazi Khan. The northern dialect is much more rich in Indian loan-words than is Makrani, and both dialects borrow freely from Arabic and Persian, words from the former often appearing in curiously distorted forms, Baloch can hardly be called a written language, although both the Persian and the Roman alphabets have been employed for transcribing it.
To the north of Baloch lies Pashto, the main language of British and independent Afghanistan. In the latter it is not the vernacular of the Hazara country or of the tract lying to the north of the Kabul river, including Laghman and Kafiristan, but elsewhere it is in general use. It is the principal language of Swat and Buner, and of the country to the west of the Indus as far south as Dera Ismail Khan. The Indus is almost, but not quite, the eastern boundary; for, while the valley itself in its lower course is peopled by speakers of Indo-Aryan dialects, in the north Pashto has crossed the river and occupied parts of the British Districts of Hazara and Rawalpindi. As a lingua franca it is in common use still farther up the Indus, at least as far as the junction with the river Kandia where the Indus turns to the south. Pashto is spoken by Pathans, while the Hindus employ an Indo-Aryan dialect locally known as Hindko.
Pashto is a written language possessing an alphabet of its own based on that employed for Persian, and has a fairly copious literature. The rugged character of its sounds suits the nature of its speakers and of the mountains which form their home, but they are most inharmonious to the fastidious Oriental ear. Although harsh-sounding, it is a strong, virile language, which is capable of expressing any idea with neatness and accuracy. It is less archaic in its general characteristics than Baloch, and has borrowed not only much of its vocabulary, but even part of its grammar, from Indian sources. It has two recognised dialects, a north-eastern, or Pakhto, and a south-western, or Pashto, which differ little except in pronunciation, the two names being typical examples of the respective ways of uttering the same word. Each has many tribal sub-dialects, which again differ merely in the pronunciation of the vowels. There is, for instance, the Afridi sub-dialect, noted for the broad sound of its a; while the Waziris change every a to o, and every o to i.
The Pathans have been identified with the Pakthas, a tribe mentioned in the Rig-veda, and with the Paktues of Herodotus; while the Aparutai of the Father of History are probably the same as the Afridis, or, as they call themselves, Apridis.
Allied to Pashto, although quite a distinct language, is Ormuri, spoken by a small tribe settled round Kanigoram in Waziristan. It is employed by members of the Bargista tribe, who claim to be descendants, of the Barakis that accompanied Mahmud of Ghazni in his invasions of India. These Barakis are said to have taken a prominent part in the capture of the famous gates of Somnath, and, pleased at the service rendered by them, the Sultan gave them a perpetual grant of the country round Kanigoram. The language, like Pashto, belongs to the Medic branch of Eranian speech. It is even more inharmonious than Pashto, and possesses one consonant, imperfectly represented in English letters by kshr, which even Pathan mouths find difficult to pronounce.
The only other Eranian languages with which we are called upon to deal are the Ghalchah languages of the Pamirs. The home of these tongues, Wakhi, Shighni, Sariqoli, Ishkashami, and Munjani, is beyond the British frontier, but the last-named has crossed the Hindu Kush by the Dora pass, and is also spoken in the Leotkuh valley of Chitral where it is known as Yudgha. This differs considerably from the standard language of Munjan and has developed into an independent dialect. The spill of an Eranian language over the great watershed of the Hindu Kush is but a repetition of what occurred centuries ago when the Aryans first settled in the Pamirs. At that early time, if linguistic evidence may be accepted, some of these Aryans crossed the passes and settled in what is now Laghman, Kafiristan, Chitral, Gilgit, and Kashmir. They migrated at a period when all the typical characteristics of Eranian languages had not yet become fixed, and in their new home their tongue developed on its own lines, partly Eranian and partly Indo-Aryan. The Aryans of India proper, who had entered the Punjab by the valley of the Kabul, had little intercourse or sympathy with these tribes, and nicknamed them Pisachas, or flesh-eaters, and in later years gruesome traditions attached to the name.
These Pisacha (or Dardic) tribes must at one time have extended to some distance beyond their present seats. Sanskrit writers mention colonies of them in the Western Punjab and in Sind, and examples of the dialects spoken by them are found in the words which the Greeks employed to record names heard by them in North-western India, and in the versions of the inscriptions of Asoka found in the same locality. Indeed, there are traces of their influence still existing in the modern vernaculars of the Lower Indus valley. At the present day the languages are found only in the country between the Punjab and the Hindu Kush. They possess an extraordinarily archaic character. Words are still in everyday use which are almost identical with the forms they assumed in Vedic hymns, and which now survive only in a much corrupted state in the plains of India.
In their essence these languages are neither Eranian nor Indo-Aryan, but are something between both. In the southern portion of the area in which they are spoken they are much mixed with Indian idioms; and this is specially the case with Kashmiri, which has a Dardic substratum, overlaid by another language of Indian origin, which effectually conceals the original basis.
The true Dardic languages of the present day are Pashai, spoken in Laghman of Afghanistan; a number of Kafir dialects, of which the principal are Bashgali, Wai, and Kalasha; Khowar, the language of Chitral; Shina, that of Gilgit and the neighbourhood and Kashmiri. Shina is the basis of Kashmiri, and the foundation of several mixed dialects, spoken in the Indus and Swat Kohistans, which are now being superseded by Pashto. Khowar occupies a somewhat independent position in regard to the others, while the Kafir dialects differ considerably among themselves. Wasin Veri, the most western of them, in some phonetic peculiarities shows points of agreement with the purely Eranian Munjan. The Dardic languages, except Kashmiri, are without literatures. At the same time it may be remarked that the great collection of Indian folk-lore entitled the Brihat Katha, of which no copy is known to exist at the present day, is said by tradition to have been composed in a Dardic tongue.
The immigration of the Indo-Aryans through the Kabul valley from the west, was a gradual affair extending over centuries. The latest comers would not necessarily be on good terms with their predecessors, who quite possibly opposed them as intruders, nor did they speak the same language. At the earliest period of which we have any cognisance, we see the Punjab peopled by various Indo-Aryan tribes, one at enmity with another, and sometimes alluding to its opponents as a set of unintelligible barbarians.
In Sanskrit geography India is divided into the Madhyadesa, or ‘Midland’, and the rest. The Midland is constantly referred to as the true pure home of the Indo-Aryan people, the rest being, from the point of view of Sanskrit writers, more or less barbarous. The Midland extended from the Himalayas on the north to the Vindhya Hills on the south, and from Sahrind (vulgo Sirhind) in the Eastern Punjab on the west to the confluence of the Ganges and the Jumna on the east. It thus consisted of the Gangetic Doab, and of the country immediately to its north and south. The population of this tract had expanded from its original seat near the Upper Doab and the sacred river, the Saraswati. The particular Indo-Aryan dialect of these people developed into the modern language of the Midland. It also received literary culture from the most ancient times, and became fixed, in the form of Sanskrit (literally the ‘purified’ language), by the labours of grammarians, which may be said to have culminated in the work of Panini about the year 300 B.C. Sanskrit thus represents a polished form of an archaic tongue, which by Panini’s time was no longer a vernacular [1], but which, owing to political reasons and to the fact that it was the vehicle of literature, became a second language understood and used by the educated in addition to their mother tongue, and has so continued with a fluctuating popularity down to the present day. We may take the language of the Rig-veda as representing the archaic dialect of the Upper Doab, of which Sanskrit became the polished form. It was a vernacular, and, besides receiving this literary cultivation, underwent the fate of all vernaculars. Just as the spoken dialects of Italy existed side by side with Latin, and, while the evolution of Latin was arrested by its great writers, ultimately developed into the modern Romance languages, so the ancient Vedic form of speech developed first into that stage of language known as Prakrit, and then into one or more modern Indo-Aryan vernaculars. It is thus a mistake to say that any modern Indian language is derived from Sanskrit. The most that can be said is that it and Sanskrit have a common origin.
Note 1. Some scholars consider that Sanskrit was a vernacular of certain classes in Panini’s time and for long afterwards.
So far for the language of the ‘Midland’. Round it, on three sides – west, south, and east – lay a country inhabited, even in Vedic times, by other Indo-Aryan tribes. This tract included the modern Punjab, Sind, Gujarat, Rajputana and the country to its east, Oadh, and Bihar. Rajputana belongs geographically to the Midland, but it was a late conquest, and may be considered as belonging to the Outer Band. Over this band were scattered different tribes, each with its own dialect; but a comparison of the modern vernaculars shows that these outer dialects were all more closely related to each other than any of them was to the language of the Midland. In fact, at an early period of the linguistic-history of India there must have been two sets of Indo-Aryan dialects – one the language of the Midland, and the other the group of dialects forming the Outer Band. From this it has been argued that the inhabitants of the Midland represent the latest stage of Indo-Aryan immigration. The earliest arrivals spoke one dialect, and the new-comers another. The latest invaders probably entered the Punjab like a wedge, into the heart of the country already occupied by the first immigrants, forcing the latter outwards in three directions, to the east, to the south, and to the west. The next process in the geographical distribution of the Indo-Aryan languages is one of expansion. The population of the Midland increased, and exercised an important influence over the rest of India. The imperial cities of Delhi and Kanauj, and the holy city of Mathura (Muttra), the Modura He rou theou of Ptolemy, lay within its territory. With increased population and increased power it expanded and conquered the Eastern Punjab, Rajputana and Gujarat (where it reached the sea, and gained access to maritime commerce), and Oudh. With its armies and with its settlers it carried its language, and hence in all these territories we now find mixed forms of speech. The basis of each is that of the Outer Band, but its body is that of the Midland. Almost everywhere the nature of the phenomena is the same. In the country near the borders of the Midland, the Midland language has overwhelmed the ancient language, and few traces of the latter can be recognised. As we go farther from the centre, the influence of the Midland weakens and that of the Outer Band becomes stronger and stronger, till the traces of the Midland speech disappear altogether. The present language of the Eastern Punjab is closely allied to that of the Upper Doab, but it gradually becomes the Lahnda of the Western Punjab, which has nothing to do with the Midland. So the language of North-eastern Rajputana is very similar to that of Agra, but as we go south and west we see more and more of the original language of the Outer Band until it is quite prominent in Gujarat. Again, in Oudh, which was a country with a literature and history of its own, there is a mixture of the same nature, although here the Midland language has not established itself so firmly as it has in the west and south.
Finally, where possible, the inhabitants of the Outer Band also expanded to the south and east. In this way we find Marathi in the Central Provinces, Berar, and Bombay; and, to the east, Oriya, Bengali, and Assamese, all of them true Outer languages unaffected in their essence by the speech of the Midland.
The state of affairs at the present day is therefore as follows. – There is a Midland Indo-Aryan language, occupying the Gangetic Doab and the country immediately to its north and south. Round it on three sides is a band of Mixed languages, occupying the Eastern Punjab, Gujarat, Rajputana, and Oudh, with extensions to the south in Baghelkhand and Chhattisgarh. Again, beyond these, there is a band of Outer languages, occupying Kashmir, the Western Punjab, Sind (here it is broken by Gujarat), the Maratha country, Orissa, Bihar, Bengal, and Assam. To these should be added the Indo-Aryan languages of the Himalayas north of the Midland, which also belong to the Intermediate Band, being recent importations from Rajputana. The Midland language is therefore now enclosed in a ring fence of intermediate forms of speech.
The word ‘Sanskrit’ means ‘purified’. Opposed to this is the word ‘Prakrit’ or ‘natural, unartificial’. ‘Prakrit’ thus connotes the vernacular dialects of India as distinguished from the principal literary form of speech. The earliest Prakrit of which we have any cognisance is the Midland vernacular current during the Vedic period. We have no record of the contemporary Prakrits of the Outer Band. We may call all these vernaculars (including the tongue of the Midland) the Primary Prakrits of India. These Primary Prakrits were in a linguistic stage closely corresponding to that of Latin as we know it. They were synthetic languages, with fairly complicated grammars, and with no objection to harsh combinations of consonants. In the course of centuries they decayed into what are called Secondary Prakrits. Here we find the languages still synthetic, but diphthongs and harsh combinations are eschewed, till in the latest development we find a condition of almost absolute fluidity, each language becoming an emasculated collection of vowels hanging for support on an occasional consonant. This weakness brought its own nemesis and from, say, 1000 A.D. we find in existence the series of modern Indo-Aryan vernaculars, or, as they may be called, Tertiary Prakrits. Here we find the hiatus of contiguous vowels abolished by the creation of new diphthongs, declensional and conjugational terminations consisting merely of vowels worn away, and new languages appearing, no longer synthetic, but analytic, and again reverting to combinations of consonants under new forms, which had existed three thousand years ago, but which two thousand years of attrition had caused to disappear.
Returning to the Secondary Prakrits, they existed from, at least, the time of the Buddha (550 B.C.) down to about 1000 A. D. During these fifteen hundred years they passed through several stages. The earliest was that now known as Pali. Two hundred and fifty years before Christ, we find the edict of Asoka written in a form of this language, and it then had at least two dialects, and eastern and a western. In this particular stage of Pali one of the Secondary Prakrits was crystallised by the influence of Buddhism, which employed it for its sacred books. As vernaculars, the Secondary Prakrits continued the course of their development, and in a still more decayed form reached the stage of what, in various dialects, is known as The Prakrit par excellence. When we talk of Prakrits, we usually mean this later stage of the Secondary Prakrits, when they had developed beyond the stage of Pali, and before they had reached the analytic stage of the modern Indo-Aryan vernaculars.
At this stage, so far as materials are available, we notice the same grouping of the Prakrit dialects as exists among the vernaculars of the present day. We have no definite information what was the language of the Punjab; but, as for the rest of India, there was a Prakrit of the Midland, the so-called Sauraseni, called after the Sanskrit name, Surasena, of the country round Mathura (Muttra). It was close to the great kingdom of Kanauj, the centre of Indo-Aryan power at this time. To its south and east was a band of dialects agreeing in many points among themselves, and also in common points of difference when compared with Sauraseni. These were: in the east, in the country now called Bihar, Magadhi; in Oudh and Baghelkhand, Ardhamagadhi; and, south of Ardhamagadhi and Sauraseni, Maharashtri with its head-quarters in Berar. Ardhamagadhi, as might be expected, was partly a mixed language, showing signs of the influence of Sauraseni, but, in all its essential points, its relationship with Magadhi is undoubted. Maharashtri was closely connected with Ardhamagadhi, which formed the connecting link between it and Magadhi, but in its rather isolated position it struck out on somewhat independent lines. It (under the name of Saurashtri) was once the language of Gujarat, before that country was overwhelmed by the invasion from the Midland.
Vidarbha, or Berar, the home of Maharashtri, was the seat of a powerful kingdom, whose rulers, encouraged literature, not only in Sanskrit but also in the vernacular. Maharashtri received culture at an early period. In its native land it became the vehicle of some of the most charming lyrics ever composed in an Indian tongue; and its popularity carried it over the whole of Hindustan, where it was employed both for epic poetry and also by the later Jain religious writers. But it is best known from the Indian dramas, in which, while most of the vernacular prose was written in Sauraseni, the language of the Midland, the songs are usually in Maharashtri. See Note 1.
Note 1. In the old Indian drama, Brahmans, heroes, kings, and men of high rank are made to speak Sanskrit, other characters employing some Prakrit dialect.
The next and last stage of the Secondary Prakrits was that known as ‘Literary Apabhramsa’. ‘Apabhramsa’ meaning ‘corrupt’ or ‘decayed’, was the title given by Indian grammarians, after the Prakrits had begun to receive literary culture, to the true vernaculars on which these polished literary dialects were founded. Ultimately, these Apabhramsas became themselves employed in literature, and were even studied by native grammarians, successors of those who in previous generations had despised them. This was a mere repetition of history. Sanskrit became fixed, and in time ceased to be generally intelligible. Then the vernacular Pali was used for popular literature. When literary Pali became generally unintelligible, the vernacular Prakrit was employed for the same purpose. Prakrit itself became crystallised, and in the course of generations glad to yield to Apabhramsa. While the earlier Prakrits had been manipulated for literary purposes by the omission of what was considered vulgar and the reduction of wild luxuriance to classical uniformity, so that the result was more or less artificial, the Apabhramsas were not nearly so severely edited, and the sparse literature which has survived affords valuable evidence as to the actual spoken language at the time of its committal to writing. The modern vernaculars are the direct children of these Apabhramsas. The Saurasena Apabhramsa was the parent of Western Hindi and Punjabi. Closely connected with it were Avanti, whose head quarters were round what is now Ujjain, the parent of Rajasthani; and Gaurjari, the parent of Gujarati. The remaining intermediate language, Eastern Hindi, is sprung from Ardhamagadha Apabhramsa.
Turning to the Outer Band, an unnamed Apabhramsa was the parent of Lahnda and Kashmiri, the latter having as its base some Dardic language akin to Shins, Sindhi is derived from a Vrachada Apabhramsa spoken in the country of the lower Indus, and Marathi is the child of the Apabhramsa of Maharashtra. In the east, the great Magadha Apabhramsa is not only the parent of Bihari in its proper home, but has also branched out in three directions. To the south it became Oriya to the south-east it developed into the Bengali of Central Bengal; while to the east, keeping north of the Ganges, its children are Northern Bengali, and, farther on, Assamese. These three branches can be distinctly traced. In some respects Oriya and Northern Bengali preserve common features which have disappeared in Central Bengal.
Concurrently with the development of the Indo-Aryan vernaculars, we have Sanskrit, the literary language of the Brahmanical schools, endowed with all the prestige which religion and learning could give it. In earlier times its influence was strongest in its proper home, the Midland. Allowing for phonetic corruption, the vocabulary of Sauraseni Prakrit is practically the same as that of Sanskrit. The farther we go from the Midland the more strange words we meet, words which are technically known as desya or ‘country-born.’ These, though Indo-Aryan, are not descended from the particular archaic dialect from which Sanskrit sprang, but belong to the vocabularies of the dialects of distant parts of India which were contemporary with it. On the other hand, the prestige of the literary Sanskrit has exercised a constant influence over all the Aryan vernaculars of India. Universally, wrongly, believed to be the parent of all of them, the would-be children have freely borrowed words from the vocabulary of their adoptive parent and this tendency received an additional impetus with the revival of learning which dates from the early part of the last century. In some of the modern languages it then became the fashion to eschew as much as possible all honest vernacular words derived from the Prakrits, and to substitute borrowed Sanskrit words. Native grammarians call these borrowed words tatsamas, or ‘the same as “that” (sc. Sanskrit),’ while the true vernacular words derived from Prakrit are tadbhavas, or ‘having “that” (sc. Sanskrit)’ for its origin. Thus we see the Aryan portion of the vocabulary of a modern Indo-Aryan vernacular is composed of three elements: tatsamas, tadbhavas, and desyas. The distinction is of some importance, for the literary language of some of them, such as Bengali, is so overloaded with the fashionable tatsamas that it may almost be called a national misfortune. For the sake of a spurious dignity the written word has been rendered unintelligible to the vast multitudes who have not received the education imparted by the higher schools.
Other languages have contributed their quotas to the Indo-Aryan vernaculars. Many words have been borrowed from Dravidian languages, generally in a contemptuous sense. Thus the common word pilla, ‘a cub’ is really a Dravidian word meaning “son”. The most important additions have come from Persian, and through Persian from Arabic. These are due to the influence of Mughal domination, and their use is universal. Every peasant of Northern India employs a few, while the literary Urdu of Lucknow is so full of them, that little of the true vernacular remains except an occasional postposition or auxiliary verb. A few words also have been borrowed from. Portuguese, Dutch, and English, often in quaintly distorted forms. Few Englishmen would recognise the railway term ‘signal’ in sikandar, which also, as a true Hindustani word, means ‘Alexander the Great’.
We thus arrive at the following list of the modern Indo-Aryan vernaculars:
A. Outer Sub-Branch.
I. North-Western group: Lahnda, Sindhi.
II. Southern group: Marathi.
III. Eastern group: Oriya, Bihari, Bengali, Assamese.
B. Mediate Sub-Group.
IV. Mediate group: Eastern Hindi.
C. Inner Sub-Branch.
V. Central group: Western Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Bhili, Khandeshi, Rajasthani.
VI. Pahari group: Eastern Pahari or Naipali, Central Pahari, Western Pahari.
The word ‘Hindi’ is very laxly employed by English writers. It properly means ‘Indian’, and can be used to signify any Indian language. By Europeans it is sometimes reserved for a particular form of Hindustani which will be described below, but is more often employed as a vague term to denote all the rural dialects of the three languages – Bihari, Eastern Hindi, and Western Hindi – spoken between Bengal proper and the Punjab. Here it is used only as meaning that form of Hindustani which is the prose literary language of those Hindus who do not employ Urdu. In English ‘Hindi’ is specially applied to the languages of Oudh and of the Midland, and, to avoid the introduction of a strange terminology, these are here called ‘Eastern Hindi’ and ‘Western Hindi,’ respectively. They are two quite distinct languages.
Western Hindi is the modern Indo-Aryan vernacular of the old Midland, i.e., of the Gangetic Doab and the country to its north; and, as in ancient times, it is by far the most important of all the languages of India. Hindustani, the principal dialect of Western Hindi, is not only a local vernacular, but is also spoken over the whole of the north and west of continental India as a second language, a lingua franca employed alike in the court and in the market-place by every one with any claim to education. Hindustani is that dialect of Western Hindi whose home is the Upper Gangetic Doab, in the country round Meerut. The city of Delhi lies close to the southern border of this tract. Here the dialect was in general use, and from here it was carried everywhere in India by the lieutenants of the Mughal empire. It has received considerable literary cultivation at the hands of both Musalmans and Hindus. The former employed the Persian character for recording it, and enriched its vocabulary with a large stock of Persian and Arabic words. When this infusion of borrowed words is carried to and extreme, as is the fashion, for instance in Lucknow, the language is intelligible only to educated Musalmans and to those Hindus who have been educated on Musalman lines.
The Persianised form of Hindustani is known as Urdu, a name derived from the Urdu-e-mu’alla, or royal military bazar outside Delhi Palace, where it took its rise. When employed for poetry, Urdu is called Rekhta (‘scattered’ or ‘crumbled’), from the manner in which Persian words are ‘scattered’ through it. The extreme Persianisation of Urdu is due to Hindu rather than to Musalman influence. Although Urdu literature is Musalman in its origin, the Persian element was first introduced in excess by the pliant Hindu Kayasths and Khattis employed in the Mughal administration and acquainted with Persian, rather than by Persians and Persianised Mughals, who for many centuries used only their own language for literary purposes. Urdu literature took its rise in the Deccan. ‘Dakhini Hindustani,’ as it is called, differs somewhat from the modern standard of Delhi and Lucknow, and retains several archaic features which have disappeared in the north. During the first centuries of its existence Urdu literature was entirely poetical. Prose Urdu owes its origin to the English occupation of India, and to the need of textbooks for the College of Fort William. The Hindi form of Hindustani was invented at the same time by the teachers at that College. It was intended to be a Hindustani for the use of Hindus, and was derived from Urdu by ejecting all words of Arabic and Persian birth, and substituting in their place words borrowed or derived from the indigenous Sanskrit. Owing to the popularity of the first book written in it, and to its supplying the need for a lingua franca which could be used by the strictest Hindus without their religious prejudices being offended, it became widely adopted and is now the recognised vehicle for writing prose by those inhabitants of Upper India who do not employ Urdu. Although originally differing from that language merely in vocabulary, it has in the course of a century developed idioms of its own.
Urdu is usually written in a modified form of the Persian character, while Hindi is generally written like Sanskrit, in the Deva-nagari character. While the former is enlisted into the service of both prose and poetry, the latter is employed only for prose. When a Hindu writes poetry he betakes himself to one of the naturally-born dialects of Eastern or Western Hindi, usually Awadhi or Braj Bhasha. The name ‘Hindustani’, when connoting any particular form of speech, is properly reserved for a language whose vocabulary is neither excessively Persianised nor excessively Sanskritised.
The other dialects of Western Hindi are Bangaru, Braj Bhasha, Kanauji, and Bundeli. The first is the language of the Bangar, or highland of the South-eastern Punjab, immediately to the west of the Ganges. It is sometimes called Hariani, and is much mixed with Punjabi and Rajasthani. Of all the dialects, Braj Bhasha is the nearest relative to Sauraseni. It is spoken round Mathura (Muttra) and in the Central Gangetic Doah. It has a copious literature, mainly poetical, and was the principal literary form of Western Hindi employed by Hindus before the invention of Hindi. Kanauji is almost the same as Braj Bhasha. It is spoken in the lower part of the Central Doah as far down as, say, Cawnpore, and in the country to its north. Bundeli is the dialect of the greater part of Bundelkhand, and also of a good portion of the Narbada valley in the Central Provinces. It has a respectable literature.
As languages, Western Hindi, and its neighbour Eastern Hindi, rival English in their flexibility and copiousness. When not spoiled, as Western Hindi too often is, by an excessive display of Arabic and Persian or of Sanskrit words, they are two beautiful, vigorous forms of speech, not overburdened by complicated grammars, and capable of expressing any idea which the mind of man can conceive with ease, elegance, and crystal clearness. They both have enormous native vocabularies and each has a complete apparatus for the expression of abstract terms. Their old literatures contain some of the highest flights of poetry and some of the most eloquent utterances of religious devotion which have found their birth in Asia.
Rajputana, in which Rajasthani is spoken, is divided into many states and many tribes. Each claims to have a language of its own, but all these are really dialects of one and the same form of speech. They fall into four main groups – a northern, a southern, an eastern, and a western. The typical dialect of the north is Mewati or Bighota. Of all the dialects of Rajputana it is, as might be expected, that which most nearly resembles Western Hindi. To the north-east it shares off into Braj Bhasha, and to the north-west into Bangaru. Malvi, the main dialect of Southern Rajputana, is spoken in Malwa. Neither it nor Mewati has any literature to speak of. In Eastern Rajputana we have Jaipuri, with many sub-dialects, and many closely connected forms of speech with various names. The western dialect, Marwari, is by far the most important. It is the vernacular of Marwar, Mewar, Bikaner, and Jaisalmer, and its speakers, who are enterprising merchants and bankers, have carried it all over India. It is the most typical of the Rajasthani dialects, and has a copious literature, written in a peculiar character, the aspect of which is familiar to every Indian official who has had occasion to inspect the accounts of native bankers.
Rajputana has sent out many colonies into Northern India. The most important are the inhabitants of the Himalayas from Chamba in the Punjab to Nepal. Some centuries ago bands of Rajputs at various times invaded and conquered these hills. They settled there and intermarried with the original inhabitants, on whom they imposed their language. The Rajasthani here transplanted has developed on independent lines, and was no doubt influenced by the form of speech which it superseded. What that form of speech was we do not know, except that we have some old plays in one of the original languages of Nepal. This was akin to what is now modern Bihari. The modern Rajasthani dialect now spoken in Nepal is called by Europeans ‘Naipali’ – a wrong name, it is not the main language of the country but is spoken only by the ruling classes. The other inhabitants employ various Tibeto-Burman dialects. Its speakers call it ‘Khas’, from the name of one of the tribes which employ it. Farther west these dialects are simply called ‘Pahari’, or ‘the Language of the Hills’. We have a Western Pahari spoken north of the Central and Eastern Punjab, and a Central Pahari north of the United Provinces. To these Khas may be added, under the name of ‘Eastern Pahari’. Other offshoots of Rajasthani are Gujari, the language of the Giljars wandering with their herds over the mountains of Kashmir and the Swat valley; and Labhani, spoken by the Labhanas or Banjaras, the great carrying tribe of Central and Western India. There are numerous Gujars in the plains of the Punjab, where they have given their name to two Districts, but these nowadays speak ordinary Punjabi.
Marwar is bounded on the west by the Indian Desert beyond which we find Sindhi, one of the Outer languages, but to the south we enter easily into Gujarat. Gujarati, the language of this country, is the most western of those over which the language of the Midland exercises sway, and at its base we can see distinct traces of the old Saurashtri Prakrit, which belonged to the Outer Band. Gujarati has a printed character of its own, modelled on the cursive form which Deva-nagari takes all over Northern India, especially in Marwar. Owing to the survival of a number of ancient grammars, we have a connected history of the language from the time when it first came into existence as a modern Indo-Aryan vernacular some nine hundred years ago. Literature has always flourished in Gujarat from very early times, and the modern vernacular presents no exception. The Bhils and the inhabitants of Khandesh speak mixed forms of speech which are dialects of Gujarati.
Punjabi most nearly agrees with the modern speech of the Midland. It is spoken in the Central Punjab, and is the vernacular of the Sikhs. Immediately to its west lies Lahnda, an Outer language, and the change from the one to the other is most gradual. It is quite impossible to fix a definite boundary between these two. Lahnda once extended far to the east, but was there superseded by the language of the Midland. This mixed language became the modern Punjabi. Its proper written character is related to that employed in Marwar. It is known as Landa or ‘clipped’ (quite a distinct word from Lahnda, the name of the language of the Western Punjab), and is distinguished for its illegibility when once it is put upon paper. Only its writer, and not always he, can read Landa as commonly scrawled. An improved, and legible, form of Landa is known as Gurmukhi. This was invented about three hundred years ago for writing the Sikh scriptures, and is now the character in ordinary use for printing, although the Persian and the Deva-Nagari are also employed. The standard Punjabi is that spoken in the neighbourhood of Amritsar; and the only real dialect is Dogri, the vernacular of the State of Jammu, and, with slightly varying inflexions, of a part of Kangra. Of the languages connected with the Midland, Punjabi is the purest and most free from the burden of terms borrowed from either Persian or Sanskrit. While capable of expressing all ideas, it has a charming rustic flavour indicative of the national characteristics of the sturdy peasantry that use it.
Eastern Hindi is based on the eastern languages of the Outer Band, and the influence of the language of the Midland is not nearly so strong as in Rajputana and the Punjab. Here the two elements meet in nearly equal proportions. It is the language of Oudh, of Baghelkhand, and of Chhattisgarh in the Central Provinces, and has a long history behind it. It is the vernacular of the country in which the hero Rama-chandra was born; and the Jain apostle Mahavira used an early form of it to convey his teaching to his disciples. The local Prakrit, Ardhamagadhi, thus became the sacred language of the Jains. Its modern successor, Eastern Hindi, through the work of a great genius, became the medium for celebrating the Gestes of Rama, and, in consequence, the dialect employed for nearly all the epic poetry of Hindustan. It is spoken nowadays not only in its own tract, but is also used by uneducated Musalmans far to the east – right into the heart of Bihar; and Oudh men, who are accustomed to travel to distant parts in quest of service, have carried it far and wide over the whole of India. It is commonly heard even in the streets of Calcutta and Bombay.
Eastern Hindi has a great literature, probably larger than that of any other of the modern Indo-Aryan vernaculars; and this literature, being founded on the genuine tongue of the people, and acquiring no fictitious dignity by bastard additions of Sanskrit words, has reacted on the spoken language, so that the form of speech heard in the fields of Oudh possesses the characteristic beauties of poetry and clearness. Every Oudh rustic is soaked in his national literature, and quotations from his great writers fall more naturally from his lips than the words of Burns fall from those of a Scotsman.
In the Central Provinces, Eastern Hindi meets Marathi and shades off into that language through a number of mixed dialects. It and Oriya are the only forms of speech which are not separated from Marathi by a distinct dividing line, and it thus still bears witness to the intimate relationship which existed between the Ardhamagadhi and the Maharashtri Prakrits two thousand years ago.
Eastern Hindi has three main dialects. Besides the standard Awadhi spoken in Oudh, there is the Bagheli of Baghelkhand, and the Chhattisgarhi of the eastern part of the Central Provinces.
Owing to its somewhat isolated position, and to the influence of the Dardic languages already referred to, the language of the northern State of Kashmir has struck out on independent lines. At the bottom we find a layer of Shina words [see note] and idioms, almost entirely hidden by an overlayer of a second language, closely allied to the Lahnda of the Western Punjab. Owing to the large number of broken vowels which it possesses, and to the changes which they undergo through the influence of others which follow them but are themselves silent, Kashmiri is almost as difficult for a foreigner to pronounce as is English. It has an old literature of considerable extent, but the modern language has borrowed so freely from Persian and Arabic that the books written two or three centuries ago are hardly intelligible to natives at the present day. The bulk of the population is now Muhammadan, only a few Pandits preserving the memory of the ancient language. Kashmiri has two or three dialects, of which the most important is Kashtawari.
Note: The commonest words, such as those for ‘father’, ‘mother’, etc., are Shina, not Indian, at the present day.
Kohistani is the old language of the Indus and Swat Kohistans. It is now nearly superseded by Pashto, only a few tribes still employing it. Each of these has its own dialect. Very little is known about these forms of speech. Like Kashmiri, they have a Shina basis, covered by an overlayer from the Western Punjab.
Lahnda or Western Punjabi is a language which appears under many names, such as Pothwari, Chibhali, Jatki, Multani, or Hindko. None of these names is suitable, as each indicates only the dialect of some special tribe or of some special locality. ‘Lahnda’, i.e., ‘Western’, has been tentatively adopted, although far from satisfactory. The name ‘Western’ Punjabi, suffers from the disadvantage of suggesting a connexion which does not exist with Punjabi proper. Lahnda, is spoken in the Western Punjab as far east as, say, the seventy-fourth degree of east longitude. It once extended much farther to the east, but has there been superseded by the language from which the modern Punjabi has sprung. There is no definite boundary between these two languages. If we take the conventional boundary line just suggested, we find plenty of Lahnda characteristics to its east, gradually diminishing as we proceed, and at the same time many traces of Punjabi for a considerable distance to its west. The population is mixed and has been mixed for centuries. The Sanskrit writers had a very poor opinion of the Central and Western Punjab, although these tracts were not far from the holy Saraswati. The inhabitants are described as possessing no Brahmans, living in petty villages, and governed by princes who supported themselves by internecine war. The population was casteless, had no respect for the Vedas, and offered no sacrifices to the gods. They were flesh-eaters (a Pisacha characteristics) and hard drinkers, and their women were charged with polyandry like the Jats of the present day.
West of the Indus, up to the Afghan border, Lahnda under various names is spoken by Hindus, while the Pathan Musalmans speak Pashto. Lahnda has two main dialects, one spoken north and the other south of the Salt Range. It has no literature. Its written character is, properly, the Landa, also employed for Punjabi, but this has been nearly superseded by a modification of the Persian.
Sindhi is the language of Sind and the neighbourhood. It is closely connected with Lahnda, and, owing to its isolated position, it preserves many phonetic and flexional peculiarities which have disappeared elsewhere. There was, in former days, a Dardic colony in Sind, and traces of their language are still to be found in Sindhi, which is, in other respects, a typical speech of the Outer Band of languages. It has no literature to speak of, and has received little cultivation of any kind. The population which employs it being largely Musalman, its vocabulary borrows freely from Persian; and an adaptation of the Persian character has been employed for writing it, although Landa is also used for personal memoranda and accounts. Sindhi has four main dialects – Siraiki, spoken in Upper Sind; Lari (the standard dialect) in Laru or Lower Sind; Thareli in the Thar or Desert; and Kachchhi in Cutch. The first approaches Lahnda, while Thareli represents Sindhi merging into Marwari. Kachchhi is a mixture of Sindhi and Gujarati, in which the former predominates.
South of Sindhi the Outer Band of Indo-Aryan vernaculars is interrupted by Gujarati, the Inner language which has reached the sea-board. South of Gujarati, extending from near Daman along the coast of the Arabian Sea to beyond Goa, we come to the southern Indo-Aryan language, Marathi. The Saurashtri dialect of Maharashtri once covered Gujarat, but has been superseded by the Midland language. We find, however, traces of Saurashtri not only in Gujarati, but probably also right down the coast as far as the modern Marathi extends. In the Bombay Presidency Marathi covers the north of the Deccan plateau and the strip of country between the Ghats and the Arabian Sea. It is also the language of Berar and of a good portion of the north-west of the Nizam’s Dominions. It stretches across the south of the Central Provinces (except a small portion of the extreme south, in which Telugu is the language) and, in a very corrupt form, occupies most of the State of Bastar. Here it merges into Oriya through the Bhatri dialect of that language. It has to its north, in order from west to east, Gujarati, Rajasthani, Western Hindi, and Eastern Hindi. The first three are connected with the Midland, and Marathi does not merge into them. On the contrary, there is a sharp border-line between the two forms of speech. In the east it shows several points of agreement with the neighbouring Chhattisgarhi dialect of Eastern Hindi, and it shades off gradually into Oriya, both these languages being based on Prakrits of the Outer Band. Oriya is its near neighbour to the east. On the south lie Dravidian languages, and it is bounded on the west by the Arabian Sea. In Marathi we first meet in general use a past participle, and its resulting past tense, of which the characteristic is the letter i. This extends through all the remaining languages of the Outer Band – Oriya, Bengali, Bihari, and Assamese. It is also found, in restricted use, in Gujarati, alongside of the Midland form without the i, and is there one of the relics of the old Saurashtri Prakrit. This i-participle, therefore, covers the whole of Aryan. East India, reaches, through an almost unbroken chain of dialects all imperceptibly shading off into each other, to the Arabian Sea, and illustrates the intimate relationship which exists among all these forms of speech. Although Assamese is widely different from Marathi, and although a speaker of the one would be entirely unintelligible to a speaker of the other, a man could almost walk for 1,500 miles, from Dibrugarh to Goa, without being able to point (except, perhaps, in Bastar) to a single stage where he had passed from one language to another. Marathi differs from all other Indo-Aryan vernaculars by retaining many traces of early tones.
Marathi has a copious literature of great popularity. The poets wrote in the true vernacular of the country, and employed a vocabulary mostly composed of honest tadbhavas. The result is that the language at the present; day is rich in them; and though the scholars for whom the Maratha country is famous have in later times striven with some success to heighten the style of the language by the use of tatsamas, these parasites have not obtained the complete mastery over the literary form of speech that they have in Bengal. The country was not invaded by the Musalmans till a comparatively late period, and was ultimately successful in repelling the invasion, so that the number of words borrowed from and through Persian is small. Marathi delights in all sorts of jingling formations, and has struck out a larger quantity of secondary and tertiary words, diminutives and the like, than any of the cognate languages.
Standard Marathi is printed in the Devanagari character, but for purposes of writing of a current hand, known as modi or ‘twisted’, is in common use. It has three main dialects. The standard dialect, commonly called: ‘Desi Marathi’, is spoken in its greatest purity in the country round Poona. Sub-dialects of it are also found in the Northern and Central Konkan. In the Southern Konkan there is a distinct dialect known as ‘Konkani’. It differs so widely from standard Marathi that some of its speakers claim for it the dignity of a separate language. To its south and west the Dravidian Kanarese is spoken, so that the Kanarese alphabet is generally employed for recording Konkani. Natives also employ the Devanagari character for the same purpose, while the Portuguese missionaries of Goa have introduced the use of the Roman character among their converts. The Marathi of Berar and of the Central Provinces is the third dialect. It agrees more closely with the standard of Poona, the main differences being those of pronunciation. To these forms of speech may be added Halla, which, however, can hardly be called a true dialect. It is spoken in the State of Bastar and the neighbourhood, by Dravidian tribes who have attempted to abandon their aboriginal tongues. It is a mechanical mixture of bad Marathi, bad Oriya, and bad Chhattisgarhi, which varies in the proportions of its constituents from place to place. On the whole, Marathi inflexions form its most prominent feature.
We now come to those languages of the Outer Band which are directly derived from the ancient Magadhi Prakrit. They form the Eastern group of Indo-Aryan vernaculars, and are Bilhari, Oriya, Bengali, and Assamese. Of these the first-named occupies the original home of the common parent, from which colonies have issued in three directions, to the south, the south-east, and the east, where each developed on its own lines into one of the other three.
Magadha, the land where the Buddha first preached, and in which the famous Asoka had his capital city, corresponds to the Districts of Patna and Gaya. To its north, across the Ganges, lies the land of Tirhut, known in ancient times as Mithila. To its west lies the Bhojpur country, comprising the west of modern Bihar and the east of the United Provinces. It may be taken as extending to the degree of longitude passing a few miles west of the city of Benares. To the south of Magadha lie the two plateaux of Chota Nagpur, the northern coinciding with the District of Hazari-bagh, and the southern with that of Ranchi. To its east lies Bengal proper. With the exception of Bengal, all these tracts together form the home of the present Bihari language. It has three dialects, Maithili, Magahi, and Bhojpuri, the last of which differs considerably from the two others. Maithili, which is spoken in Tirhut, has a most complicated grammatical system, its verb changing its form, not only with regard to the subject, but also with regard to the object. It has a small literature dating from the fifteenth century, and, when written by Brahmans, has a character of its own akin to that employed for Bengali. The people who speak it are among the most conservative in India, and rarely emigrate from their over-crowded fields to other parts of the country. Their character is reflected in their language, which abounds in archaic expressions. The original Aryan language of Nepal before the Rajput invasion was an old form of Maithili. Magahi, the language of the ancient Magadha, or South Bihar, is also spoken on the northern or Hazari-Bagh plateau of Chota Nagpur, immediately to its south. It resembles Maithili in the complexity of its verbal conjugation and in general character; but, owing to the long Musalman domination of this part of India, it is as a rule more flexible and less conservative. The language of Magadha is looked upon by the inhabitants of other parts of India as typically boorish. Although directly descended from the language in which Buddhism was first preached, it has no literature and no traditions.
Bhojpuri is spoken in the east of the United Provinces and in West Bihar. It has also spread to the southern, or Ranchi plateau of Chota Nagpur, where under a slightly altered form, it is called Nagpuri. The Bhojpuri of the United Provinces differs somewhat from that of Bihar, but over the whole area the dialect has the same characteristics, being a flexible form of speech, adapted for current use, easy to learn, and not over-encumbered by grammatical subtilities. Here again the language reflects the national peculiarities. The Bhojpuris are as free from conservatism as the people of Tirhut are the reverse. They wander all over Northern India, and there is hardly a considerable town in which they do not possess a colony.
Apart from the peculiar character employed by the Tirhutia, Brahmans, all the dialects of Bihari are generally written in the current form of Deva Nagari known as ‘Kaithi’.
Oriya is the language of Orissa and of the adjoining parts of Madras and the Central Provinces. It is spoken in an isolated part of India, has been but slightly affected by contact with other languages, and has changed little since the fourteenth century, at which period we find it in use in inscriptions. It has a considerable literature of some merit, and was formerly written by indenting marks with a stylus upon leaves of the talipot palm. On such a a straight indented line along the grain tends to cause a split; and this accounts for the characteristic of its peculiar alphabet, in which the long line familiar to readers of Deva-nagari is replaced by a series of curves.
Oriya is a musical language, with a grammar which is simple but complete. It borrows very freely from Sanskrit, and the chief defect of its literary style in this overloading with tatsamas.
In its own home Bengali has a greater number of speakers than any other Indian language. Over the huge area in which it is a vernacular, Bengali is by no means uniform. Its main dialectal division is not however, according to locality, but lies between the literary and the spoken language. If we except the language employed by the Musalman inhabitants of the eastern part of the Gangetic delta, the literary dialect is the same over the whole country. This is never used when speaking, except in formal addresses and the like. Even the most highly educated Bengalis employ the colloquial dialect in their ordinary conversation. The literary form of the language differs from the colloquial not only in its highly Sanskritised vocabulary but in its grammar, in which the dead forms of three centuries ago are retained in a state of fictitious animation. This literary style dates from the revival of learning which took place in Calcutta, under English influences, at the commencement of the last century. Up to that time Bengal had an indigenous poetical literature of its own, written in a purified form of the spoken vernacular. With the advent of the English there arose a demand for prose literature, and the task of supplying it fell into the hands of Sanskrit-ridden pandits. Anything more monstrous than this prose dialect, as it existed in the first half of the nineteenth century, it is difficult to conceive. Books were written, excellent in their subjects, eloquent in their thoughts, but in a language from which something like ninety per cent. of the genuine Bengali vocabulary was excluded, and its place supplied by words borrowed from Sanskrit which the writers themselves could not pronounce. During the past fifty years there has been a movement, with slight success, to reduce this absurd Sanskritisation; but, still, at the present day many words current in literary Bengali are mere ideograms. The Bengali vocal organs are not adapted to the pronunciation of Sanskrit words, and so these words spell one thing, and, when read aloud, sound something quite different. Under such circumstances literary Bengali is divorced from the comprehension of every native to whom it has not been specially taught. It is this which is the official language of Government and of missionaries, and which (with few exceptions) is taught in the grammars written for European students. Bengalis themselves call their Sanskritised book-language ‘Sadhu-Bhasha’, i.e., the ‘excellent speech’, but the adjective which they apply to anything approaching their true vernacular is the significant one of ‘sweet’. It is this ‘sweet’ language which every one with a pen in his hand, be he European or Bengali, endeavours to ignore. It is an instance of history repeating itself. In the old days the classical language was called sanskrit, ‘purified’, but the epithet applied to the true vernacular Prakrit was amia, or ‘nectar’.
The many dialects of spoken Bengali fall into three groups: the western or standard, the eastern, and the northern. Western Bengali is spoken in the country on both sides of the Hooghly and to the west. The centre of Eastern Bengali may be taken as the city of Dacca. It extends to the east into the Districts of Sylhet and Cachar, and, southwards, to beyond Chittagong. The Bengali of Chittagong is very corrupt, and is quite unintelligible to an untravelled native of Calcutta. Farther inland, in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, there is a still more debased dialect called Chakma, which is written in an alphabet akin to that of Burmese. Northern Bengali is spoken north of the Ganges and at the lower end of the Assam valley. It is a dialect which, though closely connected with standard Bengali, really owes nothing to it. It is, by derivation, an intermediate speech between Bihari and Assamese. In some respects it agrees with Oriya rather than with the language of Calcutta.
Bengali and Assamese are written in very nearly the same alphabet, which is related to that employed by the Brahmans of Tirhut. It is of the same stock as Devanagari, but has existed as an independent script since at least the eleventh century A.D.
Assamese is the language of the middle and upper parts of the Assam valley. It is more nearly related to colloquial than to literary Bengali; and its claim to be considered as an independent form of speech, and not as a dialect of that language, depends mainly upon the fact that it possesses an important litera