VOL. XV. (1) THE PEOPLE OF INDIA 69 
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA 
BY 
W. CROOKE, B.A. F.AI. 
(Read March 8th, 1904) 
REPORT BY LECTURER. 
On 8th March, 1904, Mr W. Crooke, B.A., F.A.L., 
delivered a lecture before the Field Club on The People 
of India.. He began by explaining the difficulty of dis- 
cussing the ethnology of a country which is rather a 
Continent than a Peninsula, occupied by some 300 millions 
of people, differing widely in race, language and religion. 
After sketching generally the variety of types of people to 
be found in the Bhendi Bazar at Bombay, he proceeded 
to show that they fall into two main groups—the Aryan 
and Dravidian. The Aryans appear to have reached India 
from the Central Asian Steppe. But the term Aryan 
is linguistic rather than ethnical, and doubtless included 
more than one type, but all influenced by common institu- 
tions and language. The so-called Aryan invasion was 
probably the result of the desire of all northern races 
to reach the sea and the sunshine. It was possibly not a 
well-defined invasion by a conquering race, but the move- 
ment was gradual, and almost certainly occupied a long 
period of time, the occupation of the Indian Peninsula 
being the result rather of the moral and intellectual 
