Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c46.16

c46.16

§ 10. The above sketch of the ethnological aspect of the subject will serve to indicate this fact of primary relevance, that, north of the Dravidian country, the demarcation of race is only ascertainable in the case of the communities under tribal constitution, such as the Kōl of the Central Belt, the Mongoloid tribes of the North-east, and the Muslim immigrants of the North-west. The undoubted racial difference between the fair people of Rājputāna and the Panjāb and the masses further east is obscured, for the purposes of ethnography, by the superstructure of Brāhmanism under which it now lies buried. This survey would be incomplete, however, without some exposition of the distribution of creed and language, even though it be restricted to mere numbers. First, then, in regard to Mothertongue, it will be seen from Table I given on the next page, that no more than about one person in a thousand returns any language not peculiar to India or its immediate vicinity, and that one, is probably a European sojourner. Nine in a thousand speak a frontier dialect, mainly Pashtū, Balūchī, Tibetan or one of the almost innumerable languages of the hill-tracts between India and Burma. The languages distinguishable as restricted respectively to special tribes are returned by some 6¹/₄ millions; and, on the whole, 96 per cent speak Indo-Āryan languages or Dravidian, other than those of the hill-tribes. Appended to this volume is a Table showing the territorial distribution of each of the principal tongues, from which a conception may be formed of the great linguistic diversity of the country.