Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c46.6

c46.6

system thus established was so elastic in the matter of doctrine and worship, so simple in its demands upon traditional rites and customs, that without propaganda or formal conversion, it absorbed and continues to absorb into the pale of orthodoxy the religious and domestic observances of all the non-Āryan tribes with which it came into contact. As a necessary result, ethnical distinctions are thus obliterated by religious terminology, and, along with the tribal nomenclature, tribal languages have long tended to disappear from usage. This has been the case throughout the Gangetic valley, in Central India, and along the northern districts of the Western coast, in none of which tracts is creed or language an indication of racial origin. In the first named region, too, the physical characteristics of the masses denote clearly the admixture of Kōl with Āryan blood, a blend which, as above stated, grows more perceptible as the distance from the centres of Āryan settlement increases. The striking differences in this respect between the population of the Panjāb and northern Rājputāna and that east of the Jamnā appears to be due both to the stricter maintenance of the purity of the original northern stock, and also to the recruitment of that stock through the subsequent occupation of the first-mentioned tracts by communities from beyond the Himālaya. The most important of the latter are the various tribes known in ancient Indian literature by the probably generic title of S'aka, or Scythians, the greater portion of whom made their way south by way of Bactria. In more than one instance the dynasty establishing itself in India lasted so long and penetrated so far into the interior, that it is almost certain to have left a physical, as well as a political, impress upon the population. The case of the Yetha Hūnas, or White Huns, is one in point. After the usual vicissitudes north of the great ranges, they ruled in Central India for a considerable period, and, long before their overthrow, they seem to have been absorbed into the local chieftainry of Rājputāna and Mālvā. For several generations, too, a Pahlava, or Parthian, dynasty held sway on the lower Indus. The origin of most of these peoples was probably in the Mongoloid regions of north-east Asia, but recent investigators appear to consider that it is not improbable that at least one, and that an important dynasty in Northern India, was of Āryan race, driven southwards by the pressure on west-central Asia from the north-east. Whatever the actual race, the point relevant to the present question is that they were all northerners, and thus alien in blood and physique to the pre-Āryan inhabitants of India.