Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c46.2.2

c46.2.2

Full information upon the philology and the main currents of religious belief of India will be found in special treatises upon those subjects in other volumes of this Encyclopaedia. Moreover, neither creed nor mother-tongue affords an adequate, or even an approximate indication of the great fundamental variety of race, a subject which also escapes the Census inquiry since the latter takes cognisance, perforce, of existing facts only, whilst race has been for centuries obscured by the operation of the two most prevalent forms of religious profession. The plastic and assimilative nature of Brāhmanism absorbs, whilst the uncompromising tendencies of Islam obliterate, distinctions of race equally with those of doctrine and ceremonial, and both have their effect in diminishing the popularity of the more restricted vernaculars. The veil of superficial uniformity which has thus been drawn over the actual elements from which Indian society has been formed can only be removed, and then but partially and on conjecture perhaps, by recourse to such ethnological evidence as may be gleaned from tradition and literature, with the aid, in certain directions, of anthropometrical investigation, so far as it has yet been carried. Purity of descent is no more a general characteristic of the population of India than it is of any other old civilisation in the Eastern Hemisphere in which geographical conformation admits of access from the North.