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INDIA

exact ethnology is a comparatively young science in India,
and the absence of authentic history is productive of a
host of ethnographical myths and misconceptions which
can only be gradually cleared away. We do not even
know precisely what is meant by the term “Aryan,” or
whether it is a true race term at all. The two great prehistoric
 races of Central Asia who have most influenced
the destinies of Europe and of India are certainly Aryans
and Skyths, but we are not yet able to say whether there
was—or was not—any connection between them, whether
either included the other either as a whole or in part.
We are, however, safe in assigning to the Rajputs the
chief place amongst the earliest of those Aryan immigrants
 of which we have already spoken. They were
the Kshatryas, the warriors of Indian epic, distinct from
the Brahmans, who form the priestly caste. But there was
a time when the Rajput (whose name is an abbreviation
of the Sanscrit R4ja-putra or king's son) held spiritual preeminence
 in India, and to this day the Ranas of Mewar
officiate as high priests in the temple of their guardian
deity. To this day thousands of Brahmans, bathing in
the Ganges, repeat a hymn every morning of which the
author was a Rajanya and not a Brahman. Whether the
Rajput can be identified with the Solar race and the
Brahman with the Lunar race of Indian classics remains
still to be seen ; further ethnographical inquiry may yet
clear away the allegorical mist of the Mahabharata, and
throw light on many dark points of India’s earliest records.
The Rajput is tall and well built, with well-developed
limbs, which are generally described as of a “reddish”
hue. He is by heredity and national instinct a warrior
and a huntsman. Intensely proud of his descent, which
he attributes to supernatural rather than historical origin,
he is only just beginning to conform to those usages of
society which govern other less illustrious communities,
and to fit himself to the views of a government to which
he is distinctly loyal, but which he doubtless regards as
dangerously democratic in ils tendencies. A Rajput cannot
 marry a woman who does not belong to a Rajput