Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c46.11

c46.11

Of movements of this description which have had a racial significance, that which took place under the auspices of the followers of Muhammad first claims attention. It must be noted, however, that, on the whole, the extent to which it introduced fresh blood into the country is of far less importance than its religious and political influence. India contains, it is true, more Muslim than any other country in the world, and votaries of their faith are found in every part of it; but, except in the territories bordering upon the exclusively Muslim States of Afghānistān and Balūchistān, the community consists almost entirely of local converts from Brāhmanism, without any admixture of foreign blood. In Upper India, colonies of considerable importance were left by successive waves of invasion, especially in and round the cities founded or occupied by the conquering races. In the case of the Moghal dynasties, military and administrative centres were established far down the Ganges and on the western coast. The Arabs, too, have been in commercial intercourse with that coast from time immemorial, and have planted permanent settlements as far south as Malabar. The largest aggregates, however, of foreign Muslim are those recruited from the Indus frontier, and settled not far from that river. The conversion of Sindh and Kashmir has long been almost complete, and that of the eastern tracts of the great Delta of the Ganges and Brahmaputra is in active progress, and already extends to more than half the population. With this exception, the proportion of Muslim diminishes, like that of the Āryan stock, southwards and eastwards from the Panjāb, and is very small amongst the Dravidians, and scarcely existent in the Central Belt of hills and forests. From the standpoint of ethnography it is not to be assumed that the results of conversion to Islām extend no further than the substitution of one dogma or ritual for another, as is the case, to a great extent, when a lower race is absorbed into Brāhmanism. The acceptance of the monotheistic creed entails, as a rule, material expansion of the matrimonial field and of the social horizon generally, with a wider range of diet also, all of which tend to differentiate, after a generation or two, the converted community from that to which it originally belonged, the modification extending to physical as well as to other attributes.