AS A TEST OP MENTAL CAPACITY. lOl 



archœologists, leave no qiiesiiou on this point.' They were a wandering race, depending 

 mainly on their cattle and sheep for food and clothing, ignorant of the smelting of metals, 

 living in circular huts of wattle and straw, excessively superstitious, domineering, and 

 cruel, and consumed with the land-hunger which possesses all pastoral races. That they 

 were a people of strong intellectual powers is evident from their language. The Sanskrit, 

 with all its defects, which are neither few nor small, could have been spoken only by a 

 highly gifted race. That they were brave and resolute is also apparent from their his- 

 tory. It is equally evident from this history, as it may be gathered from the Eig-veda, 

 that they encountered hardly less resolute opponents.- Centuries passed in the desperate 

 conflict before the northern invaders had made their way from the Indus to the Lower 

 Granges. During this time vast numbers of the conquered people had been incorporated 

 with the conquering race, either as an inferior caste, or as wives and servants in the 

 families of the ruling classes.' It seems highly probable that the mass of the people 

 of North India, while adopting some form of Aryan speech, remained in great part of 

 Dravidiau blood. Such was the opinion of Latham.^ What is of more importance is the 

 evidence from many sources that at the time of the conquest the Dravidiaus were more 

 enlightened than their conquerors. They were a race of industrious cultivators, mechanics, 

 and mariners. The rude Aryan cattle-herders learned from them the habits of settled 

 and civilized life, and the mingled races entered upon a career of splendid achievements 

 in arts and literature which neither of them could have compassed alone. 



The Dravidian languages themselves, though certainly inferior in some respects to 

 the Aryan, do not lack their peculiar excellences, as Sir M. Williams has pointed out. A 

 striking piece of evidence may be quoted from another high authority. Prof Whitney 

 writes of these languages : " The Dravidian tongues have some peculiar jshonetic ele- 

 ments, are richly polysyllabi<% of general agglutinative structi;re, with prefixes only, and 

 very soft and harmonious in their utterance. They are of a very high type of agglutina- 

 tion, like the Finnish and Hungarian ; and the author has been informed by an American 

 who was born in Southern India and grew up to speak its language vernacularly along 

 with his English, a man of high education and unusual gifts as a preacher and writer, 

 that he esteemed the Tamil a finer language to think and speak in than any European 

 tongue known to him." ' 



Thus the Australians, whom some too eager theorists have accepted as the best repre- 



' See especially Schrader'.-* "Sprachvergleichung and Urgeschichte," the second edition, admirably tran.slated 

 (with the author's additions), by F. B. .levons, under the more appropriate title of ' Prehistoric Antiquities of the 

 Aryan Peoples." 



- " Jevons's Schrader," p. 111. 



' " Jevons's Schrader," p. 112. De Quatrefages, " Les Pygmées," p. 84. 



* See his " Natural History of the Varieties of Man," p. .545. 



^ "The Life and Growth of Language," p. 244. The expression " with prefixes only" is doubtless a misprint. 

 The Dravidian languages, like the Australian, are varied entirely by suffixed particles or terminational inflections. 

 These, it may be added, aje sometimes identical, or nearly so, in the two groups of languages. Thus, in the Dra- 

 vidian Tulu, we have from mara, tree, the dative mnroku, and from naramani, man, naramanigu ; while in the 

 Lake Macquarie and VViradhurei dia'ectsof the Australian we have from hirahan, hawk, the dative (nratiatiku, and 

 from bagai, shell, hagaigu. So the plural suffix in Tamil is jraZ, and in Wiradhurei galan, to which in each language 

 the ease particle is added. In Tamil, maram, tree, has for its nominative plural tnarangal, and for its dative 

 marangalukku ; while in Wiradhurei, hngui, shell, makes in the nominative plural bagaigalan, and in the dative 

 bagaigalangv. So closely do those widely separated languages accord, even in minute grammatical points. 



