The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c15.180

v1.c15.180

The Indo-Āryans came from Bactria, over the passes of the Hindu Kush into S. Afghānistān, and thence by the valleys of the Kābul river, the Kurram, and the Gumal—all of them rivers well known to the poets of the Rigveda—into the N.W. Frontier Province and the Punjab. In the age of the Rigveda they formed five peoples, each consisting of a number of tribes in which the women were of the same race as their husbands. This is proved conclusively by their social and religious status. We may be certain, therefore, that the invasions were no mere incursions of armies, but gradual progressive movements of whole tribes, such as would have been impossible at a later date, when climatic causes had transformed the physical conditions of the country (p. 38). On this point the evidence of literature receives the support of ethnology; for only thus, according to Risley, can be explained the uniform distribution of the Indo-Āryan racial type throughout the region which it occupies, and the strongly marked contrasts which it presents to types prevailing in regions to the east and south. Later settlements necessarily consisted almost entirely of men. Such modifications of the racial character as would be produced by inter-marriage with the women of the country would, in the course of time, cease to be recognisable. They would be as difficult to trace as the Roman factor in the population of Britain.