History of Indian and Eastern Architecture v1.c8.s17: Statistics.
History of Indian and Eastern Architecture v1.c8.s17
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Statistics.
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It would add very much to the clearness of what follows if it were possible to compile any statistical tables which would represent with anything like precision the mode in which the people of India are distributed, either as regards their religious beliefs or their ethnographical relations. The late census of 1901 has afforded a mass of material for this purpose, but the information is distributed through some thirty folio volumes, in such a manner as to make it difficult to abstract what is wanted so as to render it intelligible to the general reader. Even, however, if this were done, the result would hardly, for several reasons, be satisfactory. The uneducated masses have hazy ideas even with regard to their religion, and can hardly be expected to know to which of the larger sections of Hindûism their particular sect belongs. Hence, in the tables we are given the enumeration of the members of numerous Hindû sects, but not classified under Saiva, Vaishnava, etc., though these larger groups are the most interesting for us.
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The census results for all India may be briefly stated as follows:
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| British Provinces in India | 221,409,000 | 75 ¼ per cent. |
| Burma | 10,490,000 | 3 ½ " |
| Native States | 62,462,000 | 21 ¼ " |
| **Total** | 294,361,000 | |
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Notwithstanding difficulties or defects, it may be useful to state here that the population of the whole of India, inclusive of Burma—when arranged by religions—was found to stand as follows:
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| Hindûs of all sects | 207,147,000, or 7-10ths |
| Musalmâns | 62,458,000, or fully 1-5th |
| Buddhists—mostly in Burma | 9,477,000, scarcely 1-30th |
| Primitive or Animistic | 8,584,000, about 1-34th |
| Christians | 2,923,200, about 1-99th |
| Sikhs | 2,195,300, about 1-134th |
| Jains | 1,334,200, about 1-220th |
| Parsis, Jews, and others | 242,300, about 1-1200th |
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The tables of this census also afford us some information with regard to the distribution of races among the people, though it could not be expected that the ethnological survey should yet be able to organise a satisfactory census of the races, though the distribution of languages helps us somewhat. Here, however, it is to be borne in mind that, especially in northern India, many aboriginal or non-Aryan tribes have changed their language for one of the Sanskritic family spoken by their neighbours. Hence we must regard the Indo-Aryan group of languages as including a vast number of people of Turanian and mixed descent. The tables show that upwards of 221,000,000 speak Indo-Aryan tongues—including Baloch, Pashtu, Marâthi, Bengâli, etc.—that is about three-fourths of the entire population, whilst close on 60,000,000 or a fifth are Dravidians and Kolarians, Gonds, Brahuis, etc., which the census has grouped together as a Dravida-Munda group. Lastly, the Indo-Chinese and Malayan, including Tibetan, Burmese, etc., number 11,720,000, or about four per cent. of the whole.
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The first linguistic group includes, of course, the Muhammadans; but we know that many of the Moslims of India were recruited from slaves purchased and brought up in the creed of their masters. In Bengal especially, where they are most numerous, they are Bengalis pure and simple, many perhaps most, of whom have adopted that creed quite recently from motives it is not difficult to understand or explain.
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Though there may consequently be 62,458,000 of Musalmâns in India at the present day, we may feel quite certain that not one-half of this number are immigrants or the descendants of emigrants who entered India during the last eight centuries.
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The same is probably true of the Turanian races, who entered India in the first ten centuries after our era. It is scarcely probable that they were sufficiently numerous to be the progenitors of thirty millions of people, and, if they were so, the mothers, in nine cases out of ten, were most probably natives of India.
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Of the Aryans we know less; but, if so great a number as forty millions can trace anything like a direct descent from them at the present day, the amount of pure Aryan blood in their veins must be infinitesimally small. Yet, though their blood may be diluted, the influence of their intellect remains so powerfully impressed on every institution of the country that, had they perished altogether, their previous presence is still an element of the utmost importance in the ethnic relations of the land.
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Another census may enable us to speak with still more precision with regard to these various divisions of the mass of the people of Hindustan, but meanwhile the element that seems to be most important, though the least investigated hitherto, is the extent of the aboriginal race. It has been so overlooked, that putting it at a hundred millions may seem an exaggeration. Its intellectual inferiority has kept it in the background, but its presence everywhere seems to me the only means of explaining most of the phenomena we meet continually, especially those connected with the history of the architecture of the country. Except on some such hypothesis as that just shadowed forth, I do not know how we are to account for the presence of certain local forms of buildings we find in the north, or to explain the persistence with which they were adhered to.
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When from these purely ethnographic speculations we turn to ask how far religion and race coincide, we are left with still less information of a reliable character. As a rule, the Dravidians are Saivas, and Saiva in the exact proportion of the purity of their blood. In other words, in the extreme south of India they are immensely in the majority. In some districts of the Madras Presidency they are as 6 or 7 to 1 of the followers of Vishnu, and generally in the south, 2 to 1; but as we proceed northward they become equal, and in some of the northern districts of the Madras Presidency the proportions are reversed.
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In Bengal, and wherever Buddhism once prevailed, the Vaishnava sects are, as might be expected, the most numerous. Indeed if it were not that so much of the present Hindû religion is an importation into the south, and was taught to the Dravidians by Brâhmans from the north, it would be difficult to understand how the Vaishnava religion ever took root there, except in succession to Buddhism itself, which existed to a considerable extent, but where it, too, was an importation. If, however, it be correct to assume that Saivism had its origin to the northward of the Himâlayas, among the Tartar tribes of these regions, there is no difficulty in understanding its presence in Bengal to the extent to which it is found to prevail there. But, on the other hand, nothing can be more natural than that an aboriginal Nâga people, who worshipped trees and serpents, should become Buddhists, as Buddhism was originally understood, and, being Buddhists, should slide downwards into the corruptions of the present Vaishnava form of cult, which is that most fashionable and prevalent in the north of India.
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One of the most startling facts brought out by the census, is that about one-third of the population of Eastern Bengal are Muhammadan—25,500,000, out of 74,750,000—while in the United Provinces the Muhammadans are scarcely more than 1-6th—4,567,000 among 25,430,000; and in Madras little more than 1-15th. It thus looks more like a matter of feeling than of race; it seems that as the inhabitants of Bengal were Buddhists, and clung to that faith long after it had disappeared in other parts of India, they came in contact with the Moslim religion before they had adopted the modern form of Vaishnavism, and naturally preferred a faith which acknowledged no caste, and freed them from the exactions and tyranny of a dominant priesthood. The Muhammadan religion is in fact much more like Buddhism than are any of the modern Hindû forms, and when this non-Aryan casteless population came in contact with it and they were free to choose, after the mysterious evaporation of their old beliefs, they adopted the religion most resembling that in which they had been brought up. It is only in this way that it seems possible to account for the predominance of the Moslim religion in Lower Bengal¹ and in the Panjâb, where the followers of the Prophet outnumber the Hindûs, in the proportion of 3 to 2, or as 14,000,000 in a population of 20,300,000.
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¹ In Bihâr and West Bengal, the Muhammadans number 4,050,000, or less than 14 per cent. of the population, whilst in Central, North, and East Bengal, they number 20,870,000 or quite 60 per cent., and in East Bengal alone, there are 66 per cent. of Moslims or 11,220,000; in several of the districts they form quite three-fourths of the population.
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Where Saivism held its place or crept in was apparently among those races who were Dravidians or Turanians, or had affinities with the Tartar races, who immigrated from the north long before the Muhammadan conquest.
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To most people these may appear as rash generalisations, and at the present stage of the enquiry would be so in reality, if no further proof could be afforded. After reading the following pages, I trust most of them at least will be found to rest on the basis of a fair induction from the facts brought forward. It might, consequently, have appeared more logical to defer these statements to the end of the work, instead of placing them at the beginning. Unless, however, they are read and mastered first, a great deal that is stated in the following pages will be unintelligible, and the scope and purpose of the work can be neither understood nor appreciated.¹
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¹ For a fuller statement of the author's views on Ethnography as applied to Architectural art, see his 'History of Architecture in all Countries,' 3rd ed. vol. i. introd. pp. 52-85.
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2. Nâga people worshipping the Triratna emblem of Buddha, on a fiery pillar. (From a bas-relief at Amarâvatî.)
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Srî or Gaja Lakshmî, seated on a Lotus, with two Elephants pouring water over her. (From a modern sculpture from Indor.)
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[Figure: Map of INDIA Showing the Principal. Buddhist Localities.]