Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s7.12

c48.s7.12

With these tribes ends the list of the communities which have been selected as representative of the different elements of which the vast and complicated society of India is compounded. That the review of their leading characteristics is imperfect has been fully admitted throughout, and the certainty of error will not be denied by any one who has attacked even the outworks of a task of this nature. It needs but little experience of Indian life to bring home to the student of ethnography the vanity of thinking that the whole field can be adequately surveyed in the light of such knowledge as can possibly be acquired by a single individual. Here, indeed, if anywhere, a little knowledge is dangerous, because, as has been abundantly shown in the course of this review, Indian society differs from tract to tract to an extent which inevitably involves the lurking danger of being led astray by analogy or similarities of nomenclature, rites or customs, into the assumption that what is true of a community in one part is equally applicable to a body of perhaps the same name elsewhere. Information upon such distinctions must be obtained, as a rule, at second-hand, and fortunately, the supply thereof has greatly increased of late years both in amount and quality and has received valuable additions even since the body of this review was written. It is on such material that reliance has been mainly placed in the attempt here made, perhaps rashly, to give a word-picture of society as it exists to-day in India, not merely geographically, but as a whole.