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INDIA

No central and comprehensive authority for all the ramifications of
race distribution in India from the earliest time to the present age
exists. Ethnographical science has not been officially recognised in India,
and a compilation of all the views and opinions expressed by generations
of writers on the subject is quite beyond the scope of such a work as this.
The most recent authorities are Bellew (for the frontier), Hunter, Lyall,
and Griffin for the continent generally, and the most condensed epitome
of their opinions will probably be found in articles in the Ency. Brit.
Recent Census Reports are full of information about the people of the
continent, but they hardly throw much light on the frontier and transfrontier
 peoples, amongst whom, after all, that evidence has to be sought
which will establish the origin of many of the most important sections of
:he Indian community. Ethnography has been so much in the hands of
amateur inquirers, that it is difficult to assess the relative importance of
:he many contributions on the subject which have appeared from time
:o time in the pages of the Asiatic Quarterly Review, or in pamphlets
published under the authority of the Government of India. Undoubtedly
a very large field for research is still open. Meanwhile it is only possible
to collate such information as is to be found in the works of writers on
Ancient India with the opinions of modern administrators who have had
exceptionally good opportunity for local observation. Owing to the want
of systematic supervision every fresh inquiry in the field of ethnography
is at present conducted as if no previous inquiry into the same field had
ever been made, and no lines of division had as yet been drawn between
the main Central Asiatic sources of the Indian population.