VI.] THE SOUTHERN MONGOLS. 



tribes represent the true aborigines driven to the hills and wood- 

 lands by civilised invaders from India and other lands, who are 

 now represented by the settled communities. 



Whether such movements and locations have elsewhere taken 

 place we need not here stop to inquire; indeed their probability, 

 and in some instances their certainty may be frankly admitted. 

 But I cannot think that the theory expresses the true relations in 

 most parts of Farther India. Here the civilised peoples, and ex 

 hypothesi the intruders, are the Manipuri, Burmese, 

 Arakanese, and the nearly extinct or absorbed an d cultured 

 Talaings or Mons in the west ; the Siamese, Shans J t e c ^ les of one 

 or Laos, and Khamti in the centre ; the Annamese 

 (Tonkinese and Cochin-Chinese), Cambojans, and the almost 

 extinct Champas in the east. Nearly all of these I hold to be 

 quite as indigenous as the hillmen, the only difference being that, 

 thanks to their more favourable environment, they emerged at an 

 early date from the savage state and thus became more receptive 

 to foreign civilising influences, mostly Hindu, but also Chinese 

 (in Annam). All without exception are either of Mongolic or 

 Indonesian type, and all speak toned Indo-Chinese languages, 

 except the Cambojans and Champas, whose linguistic relations are 

 with the Oceanic peoples, who are not here in question. The 

 cultivated languages are no doubt full of Sanskrit or Prakrit 

 terms in the West and Centre, and of Chinese in the East, and 

 all, except Annamese, which uses a Chinese ideographic system, 

 are written with alphabets derived through the square Pali 

 characters from the Devanagari. It is also true that the vast 

 monuments of Burma, Siam, and Camboja all betray Hindu 

 influences, many of the temples being covered with Brahmanical 

 or Buddhist sculptures and inscriptions. But precisely analogous 

 phenomena are reproduced in Java, Sumatra, and other Malaysian 

 lands, as well as in Japan and partly in China itself. Are we then 

 to conclude that there have been Hindu invasions and settlements 

 in all these regions, the most populous on the globe ? 



During the historic period a few Hinduized Dravidians, 

 especially Telingas (Telugus) of the Coromandel 

 coast, have from time to time emigrated to Indo- 

 China (Pegu), where the name survives amongst 



