Caste and Race in India c9.34

c9.34

We shall now turn to the conclusions arrived at by Risley. Believing in the "marked divergence of type that distinguishes the people of the Eastern Punjab from the people of Western Hindustan", to account for the people of Hindustan he brings in a second wave of the Aryans with few or no women. They married aboriginal women and thus modified their original type; "but a certain pride of blood remained to them, and when they had bred females enough to serve their purposes and to establish a distinct *jus connubii* they closed their ranks to all further intermixture of blood. When they did this, they became a caste like the castes of the present day".¹ We have tried to indicate that as far as the published data go the Hindustani Brahmin does not materially differ from the physical type of the Punjabis. An acute observer of Upper India, W. Crooke remarked that a traveller from the Punjab glides into Hindustan without marking any change in the physical type.² It is, therefore, not necessary to postulate a second invasion of the Aryans, who could not bring their women-folk with them.³ Nor need we propose a theory entirely contradictory to the literary records of the Brahmins.