Ethnography : Castes and Tribes

िव�ा �सारक मंडळ, ठाणे Title : Ethnography : Caste and Tribes Author : Baines, Athelstane Publisher : Strassburg : Verlang Von Karl J. Trubner Publication Year : 1912 Pages : 231 pgs. गणपुस्त �व�ा �सारत मंडळाच्ा “�ंथाल्” �तल्पा्गर् िनिमर्त गणपुस्क िन�म्ी वषर : 2014 गणपुस्क �मांक : 101 ^ k^ Grundriss der Indo-arischen Philologie und Altertumskunde (ENCYCLOPEDIA OF INDO-ARYAN RESEARCH) BEGRUNDET VON G. BUHLER, FORTGESETZT VON F. KIELHORN, HERAUSGEGEBEN VON H. LUDERS UND J. WACKERNAGEL. II. BAND, 5. HEFT. ETHNOGRAPHY (CASTES AND TRIBES) BY SIR ATHELSTANE BAINES WITH A LIST OF THE MORE IMPORTANT WORKS ON INDIAN ETHNOGRAPHY BY W. SIEGLING. ^35^- STRASSBURG VERLAG VON KARL J. TRUBNER 1912. M. DuMout Schauberg, StraCburg. 6RUNDRISS DER INDO-ARISCHEN PHILOLOGIE UND ALTERTUMSKUNDE (ENCYCLOPEDIA OF INDO-ARYAN RESEARCH) BEGRiJNDET VON G. BUHLER, FORTGESETZT VON F. KIELHORN, HERAUSGEGEBEN VON H. LUDERS UND J. WACKERNAGEL. II. BAND, 5. HEFT. ETHNOGRAPHY (CASTES AND TRIBES) BY SIR ATHELSTANE BAINES. INTRODUCTION. § I. The subject with which it is proposed to deal in the present work is that branch of Indian ethnography which is concerned with the social organisation of the population, or the dispersal of the latter into definite groups based upon considerations of race, tribe, blood or oc- cupation. In the main, it takes the form of a descriptive survey of the return of castes and tribes obtained through the Census of 1901. The scope of the review, however, is limited to the population of India properly so called, and does not, therefore, include Burma or the outlying tracts of Baliichistan, Aden and the Andamans, by the omission of which the population dealt with is reduced from 294 to 283 millions. § 2. It should be borne in mind from the outset, that but for the fact that this vast aggregate is spread over a continuous area between Cape Comorin and the Himalaya, and is politically under one rule, the population does not contain, as a whole, any of the essential elements of Nationality. Irrespective of racial differences, which, for reasons which will appear below, are to a great extent outside the Census inquiry, the Language, falling under no less than 147 heads, varies from Province to Province, each of the principal tongues having its dialects whose Shibboleth infallibly denotes the stranger a hundred miles or so from his native village. Society, again, is split up into almost innumerable self-contained divisions, under sacerdotal prohibition from intermarriage and domestic intercourse with each other. Religion, moreover, constitutes a well-defined distinction only in the case of creeds introduced from abroad, and the Faith returned under a single title, itself of foreign origin, by nearly three fourths of the population covers a vast and incoherent collection of beliefs and forms of worship, from the tribal animism of the primitive denizens of the forest to those involving the most refined metaphysical conceptions. Neither religion nor language, then will be here discussed more than cursorily, and solely in their bearings upon the ethnography of the country. Full information upon the philology and the main currents of religious belief of India will be found in special treatises upon those subjects in other volumes of this Encyclopaedia. Moreover, neither creed nor mother-tongue affords an adequate, or even an approximate indication of the great fundamental variety of race, a subject which also escapes the Census inquiry since Indo-arische Philologie. II. 5. 260835 5. Ethnography. the latter takes cognisance, perforce, of existing facts only, whilst race has been for centuries obscured by the operation of the two most prevalent forms of religious profession. The plastic and assimilative nature of Brahmanism absorbs, whilst the uncompromising tendencies of Islam obliterate, distinctions of race equally with those of doctrine and cere- monial, and both have their effect in diminishing the popularity of the more restricted vernaculars. The veil of superficial uniformity which has thus been drawn over the actual elements from which Indian society has been formed can only be removed, and then but partially and on con- jecture perhaps, by recourse to such ethnological evidence as may be gleaned from tradition and literature, with the aid, in certain directions, of anthropometrical investigation, so far as it has yet been carried. Purity of descent is no more a general characteristic of the population of India than it is of any other old civilisation in the Eastern Hemisphere in which geographical conformation admits of access from the North. In the Upper, or Continental, portion of India that purity is probably found in the upper classes of the Panjab and Rajputana. It exists, too, at the opposite end of the social ladder, amongst the Hill tribes of the Belt dividing the above portion of India from the Peninsula. South of that barrier, again, the population, except along parts of the West Coast, is comparatively homo- geneous, and the main variations noticeable in it are not more marked than those which may reasonably be attributed to secular differences in habits and pursuits. The principal physical features of the country have to be taken into account in connection with its ethnography, as they have played a highly important part in determining the racial distribution of the population. To put it briefly, India can only be entered from the north by any considerable body of men by passes through the outlying ranges running southwards from the Himalaya in the western extension of that great system. In early times, no doubt, access was comparatively easy by routes debouching on the middle and lower Indus, over country which is now sandy desert, but which was once the abode of a considerable population. Similarly, on the eastern flank of the Himalaya, the trend of the lower ranges renders it possible for those accustomed to forest and mountain life to enter, though not in large bodies, the valley of the Brahmaputra or the eastern Gangetic Delta. Between the mountains and the next obstacle, the ranges of Central India, lie the vast alluvial plain of the Ganges and its tributaries and the open plains of the Five Rivers. The Central Belt, of considerable width in both hill and forest, though of insignificant height in comparison with the Himalaya, is yet sufficiently difficult to have proved an effective obstacle in the infancy of means of communication and of protective government. It also affords shelter to a considerable population of the wilder tribes, of old the guardians of the routes through their territory. As in the case of the Himalaya, however, the flank can be turned on both east and west, as the hills do not reach either coast, and the narrow strips intervening between the ranges and the sea consist of fertile and low-lying country, presenting little or no difficulty of passage on the East, at all events, to the great southern plains and the Dekkan plateau. These prominent na- tural features have now to be coordinated with the ethnology of India, so far as our knowledge of the latter extends. § 3. The basic population of practically the whole country consists of a dark, short and broad-nosed race, with wavy, but not woolly, hair. Introduction, In the present day it is represented by the wild tribes of the Central Belt, and in a higher state of culture by the population of the southern portions of the Peninsula. On philological grounds, the people south of the Belt are distinguished from those further north. The former, known as Dravidian, seem always to have kept to their present localities, except in a few cases where tribes have migrated into the Belt within historic times. The other race, to which the title of Kol or Munda, is generally attached, is not known south of the forest Belt, in which it is at the present time concentrated under its distinctive tribal appellations. Formerly, however, it was spread over the whole of the great plains of Upper India, and, according to recent philological discoveries, it is akin, at least in language, to communities now settled on the borders of Assam, and far to the east of the Bay of Bengal. Some investigators, indeed, spread its former habitat over a still wider area. In the east and north-east of India, however, its identity has been obscured, if not obliterated, by the successive immigra- tions of people of Mongoloidic race from eastern Tibet and the head waters of the great Chinese rivers, whose main streams of migration have sought the sea by the valleys of the Irawadi, Salwm and Mekhong. In the Gangetic plain the type is traceable throughout the population, slightly, indeed, along the Jamna, but more distinctly as the east is approached, and almost everywhere more prevalent as the social position is lower. This graduation is due to miscegenation between the Kol, who, as far as ethnography is concerned, may be considered the autochthonous inhabitant of these tracts, and a taller and fairer race, which entered India by the passes of the North-west or the plains of Baliichistan. More than one such race are known to history, but in most cases their impact upon India was sharp but short; not, at any rate, of a character to leave a permanent impression upon the population. Such, for instance, was the connection of the Macedonians with the Panjab. More durable though still in few cases amounting to settlement or colonisation, were the principalities set up from time to time in the North-west by scions of the race or races termed Scythian, of whom more will be said below. The only immigrating race of practical importance in connection with the present subject, is that of the Aryas, whose advent and progress are indirectly, and to a great extent conjecturally, revealed in the collection of their invocations handed down from perhaps as early as 3000 B C, in the Rgveda and the sacerdotal literature appended to it at later dates.

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