The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c15.170

v1.c15.170

The theory that the Dravidian element is the most ancient which we can discover in the population of Northern India, must also be modified by what we now know of the Muṇḍā languages, the Indian representatives of the Austric family of speech, and the mixed languages in which their influence has been traced (p. 48). Here, according to the evidence now available, it would seem that the Austric element is the oldest, and that it has been overlaid in different regions by successive waves of Dravidian and Indo-European on the one hand, and by Tibeto-Chinese on the other. Most ethnologists hold that there is no difference in physical type between the present speakers of Muṇḍā and Dravidian languages. This statement has been called in question; but, if it be true, it shows that racial conditions have become so complicated that it is no longer possible to analyse their constituents. Language alone has preserved a record which would otherwise have been lost.