INTRODUCTOKY. 7 



caste, protecting settlements of missionary priests, and 

 perhaps, by superior courage and arms, liolding in 

 nominal subjection the aboriginal tribes around them. 

 Traditions exist of a pastoral race, to whom is attributed 

 every ancient building that cannot be otherwise ac- 

 counted for. It is highly probable that the cow was 

 unknown to the aborigines before it was brought by 

 their Aryan invaders. Tradition would probably fix 

 on so striking a feature as the possession of herds by 

 those early colonists; and thus it does not seem necessary 

 to suppose the existence of any peculiar pastoral people, 

 distinct from other Aryan settlers in these central 

 regions. 



But what these early immigrants may really have 

 been is unimportant. For, when first the light of true 

 history breaks upon the country, at the period of its 

 contact with the invading Mahomedan in the fourteenth 

 century, all of them had ceased to have any separate 

 existence. Most probably they had been absorbed in 

 the great mass of the aboriginal tribes who surrounded 

 them ; and we find the country then called by the name 

 of Gondwdnd,, from the tribe of Gonds who chiefly 

 inhabited it. The petty tribal chieftainships into which, 

 there is reason to believe, it had formerly been divided, 

 had then been united into three considerable princi- 

 palities, under the sway of chiefs whom all the evidence 

 we have proves to have been of mixed aboriginal and 

 Hindu (Rajput) descent. Architectural remains, and the 

 recorded condition of the country at the time mentioned, 

 show that these little kingdoms had acquired a con- 

 siderable degree of stability and development ; and it has 

 often been wondered how a tribe of such rude savases as 

 the Gonds could have reached a stage of civilisation at 



