4 JOHN FKASER, B.A., LL.D. 



an irruption of Arab (Shemite) tribes about 1500 B.C. And 

 now, as I think, a second wave of population began to move 

 towards the shores of Australia, for these Arabs were pure 

 inonotheists, and in their religious zeal must have dashed to 

 pieces the polytheistic and sensual fabric which the Babylonian 

 conquests had upreared. Those portions of the Chaldaso- 

 Babylonian people that were unable to escape from the 

 dominion of the Arabs, were absorbed in the new empire. 

 But the rupture of the Babylonian state and the pro- 

 scription of its worship must have been so complete as 

 to drive forth from their native seats many thousands of 

 the people of the " four quarters or zones " and force them 

 westwards into Africa or eastwards through the mountain 

 passes into the table land of the Punjab and thence into the 

 Gangetic plains. Here, I imagine, were already located the 

 earlier and purer Hamites, but finding them to be guilty of a 

 skin not exactly coloured like their own, and not understand- 

 ing their language, these later Kushites of mixed extraction 

 regarded them as enemies and drove them forth into the 

 mountains of the Deccan, where to this hour the Dravidians, 

 and Kolarians, whom I consider their representatives, are 

 black-skinned and savage races. Ere long these Babylonian 

 Kushites were themselves displaced and ejected from the 

 Ganges valley by a fair-skinned race, the Aryans, another and 

 the last ethnic stream of invaders from the north-west. These 

 Aryans, in religion and habits irreconcileably opposed to 

 the earlier races of India, waged on them a relentless war. 

 Hemmed up in the triangle of Southern India, the Hamites 

 could escape only by sea ; the later Kushites, on the other 

 hand, could not seek safety in the mountains of the Deccan, 

 as these were already occupied ; they must, therefore, have 

 been pushed down the Ganges into Further India and the 

 *Malayan peninsula ; thence to pass at a later time into Borneo 

 and the Sunda Islands and Papua, and afterwards across 

 the sea of Timor into Australia, or eastwards into Melanesia, 

 driven onwards now by the Turanian tribes which had come 

 down from Central Asia into China and the peninsula and 

 the islands of the East Indies. 



Many known facts favour the view which I have thus taken 

 of the successive waves of population which flowed over Indian 

 soil towards Australia. I will mention two or three of these : 

 (1) Ethnologists recognise two pre-Aryan races in India. 

 The earlier had not attained to the use of metals, and had 

 only polished flint axes and implements of stone ; the later 

 had no written records, and made gravo-mounds over their 

 dead. The Vedas call them "noseless," " gross feeders on 



