ANTHROPOMETRY IN INDIA. 201 



of' caste. Thus the Doms are found by name not only in 

 the Gangetic provinces, in Chota Nagpur, and (I believe) in 

 Orissa, but also in the far south, about Madras. And their 

 occupations in these different localities seem sufficiently alike 

 to lead one to identify them as, at least, the same caste 

 everywhere. Are we to suppose that their wide spread 

 is due to migration? In the case of the Brahmans and 

 of the military castes or races, one would have no difficulty 

 in believing this ; but does it not seem difficult in the case 

 of Helots like the Doms ? 



The study of the nasal index is enough by itself to make 

 me believe in the racial origin of the system ; but it seems 

 quite possible that caste's were formed subsequently by the 

 comradeship of people of like occupation. In recent times 

 and in our own day, castes would have been and are being 

 formed out of aboriginal tribes low in the scale of civilisation 

 or social status ; and of this Mr. Risley gives many inter- 

 esting and sometimes amusing- instances. The chiefs of 

 such a tribe almost invariably endeavour to hang them- 

 selves on to some branch of the Rajputs ; while the 

 proletariat constitute a new caste, for which an Aryan 

 ancestry is sometimes claimed. Outcasts from higher 

 castes are sometimes received into lower ones ; and this 

 may be one of the ways in which a circulation of blood 

 has been set up, so as slightly to assimilate the various 

 sections of the population. 



The small average size of Hindu heads is remarkable. 

 It comes out very distinctly in Barnard Davis's Thesaurus, 

 as does their inferiority in this respect to those of the Mon- 

 goloid races to the north and east of their habitat. Even 

 the Punjabi heads are not large, nor apparently those of the 

 dolichous tribes north-west of the Indus, Dards, Kafirs, etc., 

 of whom Leitner, Garson, and others have written. Ad- 

 mixture of Dravidian or Australioid types could only be 

 expected to lower the cranial capacity ; admixture of Mon- 

 goloid ones might possibly counterbalance this. Mr. 

 Risley's facts seem to follow these rules. I have con- 

 structed a table of comparative sizes by multiplying in 

 every case the maximum length by the maximum breadth, 



