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Sikhs also, who date from the seventeenth century, reject idolatry and refuse the doctrines and domination of Brahmins. Recently also there has sprung up in Calcutta a sect styled Brahmo Somaj, which aspires to the re-institution of the most ancient and most pure Monotheism, rejecting Christianity equally with idolatry and caste. Its intentions are benevolent, and it has met with some success, as its disciples amount to several thousands; but whether the movement has any vitality remains to be proved. There are many Brahmins also, in all parts of India, belonging to all sects and divisions of that order, who style themselves 'Vedanta,' who follow the tenets of the Védas, reject idolatry for the most part, and aspire to a pure Theism; but they have few followers. These various sects may, collectively, number among them several millions of souls; but they have no perceptive effect upon the mass of popular Hindoo belief, which, whether in its professed worship of idols, or otherwise, remains undisturbed.

In the popular religion, there is no doubt that idol-worship is considered not only necessary, but efficacious. Some classes of Brahmin and other scholars allege that the idol is but the inanimate object, which serves to fix the mind of the worshipper upon the being worshipped, and that in any other sense it is mere wood or stone; but this is not the popular belief at all. Images are held to be possessed by the spirit of the god represented. He is believed to be present at the time of sacrifice; he eats, he sleeps, he is bathed and clothed. The worshipper believes in a real spiritual presence, as an act of faith which it would be shocking heresy to deny. In some favoured places, where miracles are still claimed, there are more popular images than in others, because the god prefers to dwell in them more than elsewhere, and it is to these places that great pilgrimages are made from all parts of India, attended with an amount of faith and devotion that is difficult to define or express; and there is not a hamlet, much less a village, throughout India which has not one or more temples, possibly of a very humble character in many cases; but still each enshrining an image, of popular gods or demi-gods, for general worship. There are besides these the Grám Déotás, or village tutelary gods, which have no place in established mythology. They are benevolent spirits, who are believed to watch over village and other communities, protect their boundaries and crops, and avert famine and pestilence. They are worshipped and propitiated by a general annual sacrifice, at which all members of the community assist, generally before or after harvest; and offerings made to them are delivered to priests, who are rarely Brahmins.

It may seem strange and wonderful to the reader, that the

D

paganism which has been briefly sketched, should exist among an intelligent and intellectual people like the Hindoos, face to face with the enlightenment and civilisation of the nineteenth century; and that a religion which arose before the birth of Abraham, should have survived with, comparatively speaking, so little change. Such, however, is a fact which cannot be ignored in any history of the Hindoo people: and whether, by the present existing influences in India, it may be changed or modified, is a problem which, for the present, defies speculation.

CHAPTER VII.

OF INDIA BEFORE THE ARYANS.

FROM the very earliest ages, and long before the Aryans, who will Ancient be described in the next chapter, invaded India, its inhabitants. inhabitants were wild and savage tribes, widely dispersed over the country; but all, in a greater or less degree, resembling each other in features and habits, and speaking rude languages, which are connected one with another in certain points. These tribes are now generally classed as Turanian, and belong to a very large section of one of the most ancient people on the earth, who inhabited India, the Eastern and part of the Pacific Islands, and Australia. They have been also termed Negritos, because of certain points of similarity with the negroes of Africa, though in other and very material respects the two races differ altogether. The present Negritós are, for the most part, very dark in colour, some of them being almost black. They have coarse and occasionally woolly hair, thick lips, and short broad noses. They are seldom tall, and never corpulent; but they are strong and active, and are able to live in deep forests and other unhealthy places without suffering. They subsist by the chase, and on fruits, herbs, and roots known to them, and they and weapons. wear little or no clothing. Their weapons-bows and arrows, spears and javelins, and in some places that curious invention the boomerang-have a common resemblance to each other, which is at once curious and interesting. Modern researches have done much to bring together these strange points of agreement: and in museums, where they are all classified, it is impossible to withstand the conviction, that however widely separated by position, the Turanian Negritós now, as in the most remote prehistoric times, have the same instincts as to food and the means

Their habits

of obtaining it, and the same habits of life; and that their weapons not only agree in form and method of use, but can hardly be distinguished one from another. A striking instance of this agreement is afforded in the boomerang, which was first met with in Australasia, and was supposed to be peculiar to its inhabitants; but the wild tribes of Southern India possess exactly the same weapon, and use it in the same manner. So also the science of language, when applied to all the tongues of this Languages. widely-spread people, finds agreement in construction, in

roots of words, in idioms and phrases, and often in the very words themselves. These languages and dialects form a distinct group of their own, having no connection with other equally distinct groups of languages, which are traceable to remote times.

It will naturally be asked how this is known, and whether any of these prehistoric tribes, as they may be called, still present reexist in India. Certainly they do exist, and in some presentatives. localities in great numbers. The aggregate of the whole is computed at 12,000,000. Some of them still retain their original condition of savagery, being naked, or almost naked; inhabiting dense unhealthy forests and jungles, where no other human beings could live; shunning civilised men, and living in the rudest huts. These are among the lowest types of human beings known upon the earth. Others, probably from contact and connection with Aryans and other western invaders of India, are more advanced in manners and customs. They cuitivate the soil, though rudely; they wear clothes to some extent, and are collected into communities and villages. They hold intercourse with civilised people, and trade with them, interchanging the products of their hills and forests for cloths, brass vessels, and such other articles as they cannot themselves produce; but, for all this, completely different in habits, in religious belief (if what they profess can be called religion), and in language. It is quite possible that all the aboriginal tribes of India were once in the same low scale of existence which is to be seen in the very lowest of them at present; and that those among them who have partly emerged from this condition, have done so under the example or influence of the Hindoos. But, notwithstanding their approaches, in some degree, to civilised life, these tribes retain between pretheir ancient peculiarities in manners, customs, rites al tribes and superstitions so strongly, that they cannot be classed with Hindoos, and indeed remain for the most part as distinctly separated from them in all respects as if Hindoos had never existed.

Differences

sent aborigi

and Hindoos.

It may be taken for granted, therefore, that these wild, and at best semi-savage tribes, formed the aboriginal population of India,

and were dispersed all over the country. India, in remote ages, may have been for the most part covered by forests, chequered here and there by tracts of open grassy downs and undulating plains, like those of the Dekhun, Mysore, and the central provinces. Hardy, active tribes, which preferred an open country, abounding in deer, antelopes, wild hog, and feathered game, would most likely live on these wide plains and downs. Those, on the other hand, more timid perhaps, to whom the shelter and seclusion of forests, and the fruits, vegetables, and roots they afforded, were most suitable, remained in them; and thus the representatives of both are to be seen existing to the present day.

Sub-Hima

gines.

Along the bases of the Himalaya mountains, from the Punjab to Eastern Bengal, lie dense unhealthy forests, of which some classes of aboriginal tribes form the only population. The layan abori- climate, indeed, is so deadly, that, beyond a few months in each year, no other persons can live in it. Some of these tribes have become intermixed with Mongolians; but by far the greater number are Turanians or Negritos, and they extend till they meet with the Shans, Karens, and Burmese, to the east and south-east, and the Chinese to the east and north. None of them are, however, found among the mountains on the west and north-west boundaries of India-that is, west of the river Indus. A few of the most numerous of the sub-Himalayan tribes, classed as aboriginal, may be here enumerated; these are, Garrows, Tharoos, Boksas, Kacháries, Nagas, Kookies, Lepchas, and Loshais, with other wholly distinct, or of mixed origin between Indian and Tibetian, Chinese or Burmese races.

Aboriginal

tral and Western India

Now, it will be remembered that, in the first chapter, the broad valley of the Ganges and Jumna rivers, and the tribes of Cen- hilly waving tracts of Central India, which rise out of it on the southern side, were described. No pure aboriginal classes are now to be found in the valley itself; but there are many different tribes all preserving the same general family likeness, though living entirely apart from each other, and speaking different languages and dialects, inhabiting the most hilly and hitherto inaccessible parts of these central tracts. Those nearest to the Ganges are the Santáls, a very numerous and powerful tribe. To the south and east, bordering upon Western Bengal and Kuttack, are the Kórewahs, the Lurka Koles, Ooraons, and Hós. South-west of these, in the mountains which divide Orissa from the open Dekhun, are the Khônds, who were altogether unknown until of late years, when their horrible rites of human sacrifice, and practice of kidnapping children from the British provinces, attracted the notice of Government, and led

to measures for their suppression. All these aboriginal tribes are very numerous and warlike. All, in turn, have engaged in wars with ourselves; have been defeated, and brought under subjection and control. They are not entirely savage, but they retain their ancient rites and customs, and are pure in descent, without intermixture with Hindoos. Among some of these tribes, as the Koles and Ooraons, missionaries of the Christian faith have made remarkable progress, and it does not seem improbable that the whole may gradually embrace Christianity.

Again, in Central India, among the mountain ranges of the Vindhya, Sátpoora and Aravully chains, are found Góands, Bheels, and Kólees. Further to the west Meenas, Mhairs, Waghurs, and others, all separate from each other and more or less imbued with Hindooism; yet still preserving their aboriginal distinctive customs and language. Of these, some are warlike and robber tribes, as the Bheels, Meenas, Waghurs, &c.; others, as the Góands, are peaceful and industrious.

Dekhun and

In the Dekhun proper and Mysore, as also in the South of India, the Máhars, Mangs, Beydurs, and Chamárs, with Wud- Tribes in the durs, Whalleás, Puriars, and others, are the present Southern representatives of aboriginal races; and have never India. perfectly united with Hindooism. They are superior in features and intelligence to the forest tribes; and, since their original subjection, have intermingled with Hindoo communities, and become, in point of fact, part of them; but traces of their ancient languages are still retained in their dialects, and underlying their profession of the Hindoo religion, are the aboriginal superstitions and worship of demons and spirits, as also of natural objects, which have never been forsaken. South-west of Mysore, among the Neilgherry and other mountain ranges of the southern end of the peninsula, Caramburs, Paliars, Irulars, and other strictly forest tribes are found inhabiting the wildest portions of the dense forests, most of whom are of the lowest type of humanity, corresponding with their sub-Himalayan representatives. These savages are at present as irreclaimable as the cannibals of the Andaman Islands or the Bushmen of Australia.

From the foregoing details, it will be evident that throughout India many of the forest and wild tracts are still inhabited by the descendants of the earliest races of its population, among whom their original languages and superstitions have been preserved. None of them have written languages, and few preserve even traditions of the past; yet it can hardly be doubted that all belonged to one great family, which inhabited India. Though Hindooism has existed in great power for more than three thousand years, and its civilisation extended to all accessible parts of

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