THE PEOPLE OF INDIA 203
Eastern Bengal—which is unlikely, if we consider the
nature of those passes—or they are a fragment of a great
population that occupied both the northern and the
southern slopes of that great chain of mountains at some
very remote prehistoric period.
The Kolarian group of non-Aryan races now occupies
the northern districts, and the north-eastern edge of the
southern tableland of India.
A third and most important element in non-Aryan
ethnography is that of the Tibeto-Burman group of tribes
which clings to the skirts of the Himalayas and their
north-eastern offshoots. Their prehistoric home was with
Mongolians and Chinese. This group includes an immense
 number of tribes, the limits of whose habitat is at
present but indefinitely known, although it is confined to
the mountain districts of the north-east of Bengal and to
Burma.
These are the people, at any rate, who finally accepted
Buddhism, which was never an Aryan or Dravidian form
of faith. In Bengal, Ceylon, Tibet, Burma, Siam, and
China, wherever a Tibetan people exists, or a people allied
to them, there Buddhism flourished and still prevails.
For the ordinary student of Indian geography and of
the distribution of the castes, tribes, and peoples through
the country these three great divisions, Aryan, Dravidian,
and Aboriginal, may be sufficient to summarise the primary
or original status of the whole population ; but the infinite
variety and enormous number of even important subdivisions
 which take their place in modern history, waxing
great as nations, and disappearing as scattered tribes,
render it absolutely impossible to do more than select a
few of the prominent representatives of each great division,
 and indicate their chief characteristics and geographical
 distribution.
Amongst the so-called Aryan races of Northern India
the Rajputs are distinctly the oldest and the noblest.
They belong to one of the greatest races of history, and
their past extends through thousands of years in an
unbroken record of valour and nobility. Unfortunately