Caste and Race in India c9.110

c9.110

The Mongolo-Dravidian type: This type, according to Risley, is a mixture of the pure Mongoloid and Dravidian types and comprises the population of Lower Bengal and Orissa. He describes the head of this type as broad, but we think it would be better to describe it as medium. Only the Rajbansi Maghs of the Chittagong Hills show a cephalic index of over 79; and they are essentially Mongoloid. In Bengal the nasal index, with very few exceptions, is below 78.¹ The nasal index of the Mongoloid type in India is in most cases above this figure.² Nor does the orbito-nasal index support any idea of a Mongoloid mixture. In the case of the Mongoloid people it is below 110.³ In three lower castes of Bengal—the Pod, the Bagdi, and the Chandal—the figures are: 111.5, 112.2, and 114.0. In Orissa the orbito-nasal index varies from 112 to 117. We do not wish to imply that there is no Mongoloid mixture in this part of India, but only to point out that the published data of anthropometry do not give us any clue. The Savaras of Ganjam are distinctly Mongoloid.⁴ Again some of the castes of the United Provinces show marked cultural affinities with the Mongoloid peoples. Among the Bahelias, Dhangars, Dharkars, Dombs, Dusadhs, and Nais, marriage is permitted in the line of one's mother's sister.⁵ Everywhere else in India such marriages are strictly prohibited; hence the permission for such marriages among these castes is very unusual. We can explain it only as a borrowing from the Mongoloid people, the Bhotias of Sikkim. Among them one can marry one's cousin on the maternal side, either mother's brother's child or mother's sister's child.⁶ We think that the Bengalis are only an extension of the Western type. The differential index shows that the Bengal Brahmin is more nearly related to the Shenvi and the Chitpavan Brahmins of Bombay than to the Bihar Brahmin and far more so than to the United Provinces Brahmin. There is evidence to show that the people of Bengal have affinities with the Dravidian culture. The use in marriage of the Chank-bangles even by the Brahmins is an instance in point.¹ Risley thinks that there is "a strain of Indo-Aryan blood in the higher groups ". ² In view of the fact that the differential index between the Bengal Brahmin and the Chandal is 1.11, while between him and the United Provinces Brahmin is 3.89, there does not seem any ground for this supposition. In Orissa there appears to be some mixture of the Munda type, because the nasal index is sometimes very high. The people of Bengal and Orissa, therefore, would best be regarded as a mixture of the Western and the Munda types slightly modified in some cases by the Mongoloid type.