202

INDIA

The history of the Aryans, however, is not the history
of India. The Turanian, or Dravidian element of the
population appears to have been, in historic times, as
numerous as the pure Aryans, and at present forms about
one-fifth of the total population of India. They possess a
lower intellectual status than the Aryans, but they “have
preserved their nationality pure and unmixed, and, such
as they were at the dawn of history, so they seem to be
now.” The advent of the Turanian element into India
belongs to an epoch
so remote that it is
impossible to suggest
even an approximate
date. Recent explorations
 in Makran and
on the Persian coast
seem certainly to confirm
 the view that the
Dravidians passed into
India across the lower
Indus from the direction
 of Mesopotamia.
The Brahui of Baluchistan
 appears to be the modern representative of that
widely extended Dravidian people who occupied Makran
when Alexander forced his way through the deserts and
passes of Southern Baluchistan to Persia. But the great
mass of Dravidian people have ever been dwellers in the
southern parts of the peninsula, and are now to be found
in the lower districts of the Central Provinces and in
Madras. Chief amongst Dravidian tribes are the Gonds
and the tribes of the Nilgiris.
Separate again from both Aryan and Dravidian stock
are the aboriginal people, the ancient Kolarian tribes who
once spread throughout India, and are now to be found
under the name of Bhils, Kols, Santals, &amp;c., in the wildest
fastnesses of Central Indian jungles. Their affinities
appear to be with trans-Himalayan population, and they
either entered India through the passes of North-Fic.

 67.—Race Distribution, Lower India.