560 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



those of Aryan speech who occupy all the rest of the peninsula 

 together with the southern slopes of the Hindu-Kush and parts of 

 the western Himalayas. Their main divisions are the Kashmiri, 

 many of whom might be called typical Aryans; the Punjabis with 

 several sub-groups, amongst which are the Sikhs, religious sec- 

 taries half Moslem half Hindu, also of magnificent physique ; 

 the Gujaratis, Mahratis, Hindis, Bengalis, Assamis, and Oraons 

 of Orissa, all speaking Neo-Sanskritic idioms, which collectively 

 constitute the Indie branch of the Aryan family. Hindustani 

 or Urdu, a simplified form of Hindi current especially in the 

 Doab, or "Two waters," the region between the Ganges and 

 Jumna above Allahabad, has become a sort of lingua franca, the 

 chief medium of intercourse throughout the peninsula, and is 

 understood by certainly over 100 millions, while all the popula- 

 tions of Neo-Sanskritic speech numbered in 1898 considerably 

 over 200 millions. 



Perhaps the most surprising feature of these teeming multi- 

 tudes is the remarkable uniformity of their physical characters, as 

 indicated especially by the prevailing dolicho shape of the head 

 everywhere in the peninsula. Thus in Mr Risley's tables 1 the 

 averages of cephalic indices for Bengal, Oudh, the North-west 

 Provinces and the north generally, range from 71 to about 77, 

 rising of course much higher (84). on the Himalayan slopes, that 

 is, the Mongoloid Tibetan territory. In the extreme south also 

 Mr Thurston's averages are 72, 74, and 76 for the Madras Pre- 

 sidency 2 . It is- difficult to explain this phenomenon on the 

 assumption that the proto-Dravidians were of brachy Mongol 

 stock, as the Kols almost certainly were, if not also the later Jat 

 and Rajput intruders. These, one would suppose, must have 

 sufficed to have swamped both the dolicho black aborigines and 

 the comparatively recent Aryan invaders, or at least to raise the 

 indices everywhere above their actual low averages.. 



Are we driven to infer with de Lapouge that the form of the 

 head is not so much a racial as a social question? If so, we 

 should have to infer further that, while the inferior round-heads 

 are gaining on the superior long-heads in Europe, the reverse 



1 Quoted by Crooke, I. p. cxxix. 

 ! Madras Govt. Mus. Series, passim. 



