The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c16.14

v1.c16.14

It has sometimes been made an argument for deriving the origin of these tribes from India rather than the West, that the sounds and especially the consonants of the language spoken have survived in greater purity in India than in Irān or elsewhere. The argument however is not sound. Invasions of a similar sort, though at a much greater distance from their base, were made by the Spaniards in America in the sixteenth century. The civilisation of the Spaniards was no doubt higher than that of the early Indo-Germanic-speaking peoples who invaded India; but in both Mexico and Peru, if not elsewhere, they met a native population also much more advanced in the arts than the earlier inhabitants of North-Western India could have been. In all parts of America, except Chile, the Spaniards were in so small a minority compared to the natives that they had to be careful to preserve themselves in isolation, with the result that to-day, except in Chile, where greater familiarity with the natives has produced a dialect of Spanish words and native sounds, the local dialects are much more archaic and much more like the Spanish of the sixteenth century than is the language spoken now in Spain. If the isolation of the English Colonies in North America had remained as great as it was in the seventeenth century, no doubt a much greater distinction would now exist between the English dialects of North America and the English of the Mother country. Yet in many parts of the eastern seaboard of the United States many words survive locally which have long been extinct except in local dialects in England, and many forms of expression survive which the modern Englishman now regards as mainly biblical. That an isolation resembling that of the Spanish colonies prevailed also in early India is shown by the most characteristic feature of Indian civilisation—caste. The native word for caste, *varṇa*, means colour, and the first beginnings of the caste system were laid when the fairer people who migrated into India felt the importance of preserving their own racial characteristics by standing aloof from the dark skinned *dāsas*, or *dasyus*, whom they found already established in the peninsula.