INTKODUCTORY. 25 



land has been suitable for their agricultural processes, 

 the orioinal dwellers of the land have been driven out 



o 



to the central hills ; and there we find them in several 

 tribes, which yield to the investigator points of con- 

 nection with several branches of the human race. 



The total population of the tracts I have included 

 in this sketch is about four and one-third millions, of 

 whom about three and one-third millions are Aryans, 

 and one million only belong to aboriginal races. 

 The great majority of these are the Gonds, who have 

 given their name to the country, and who are distri- 

 buted in greater or less density over the whole of the 

 hilly portion of the tract. The infallible test of language 

 shows that the Gonds belong to the same family of 

 mankind as the Tamil-speaking Dravidians of Southern 

 India.''' In the extreme north-east of the tract are 

 found the tribe known in the Bengal hill-tracts as Kols, 

 a race closely allied to the Santals and other tribes of 

 the north-east ; and in the very centre of these high- 

 lauds, on the high plateaux of Puchmurree and Gavil- 

 garh, surrounded and isolated by the Gonds, are found 

 another race, called Kurs or Korkus, whose language 

 and general type are almost identical with these Kols 

 and Santals, though they themselves are utterly unaware 

 of the connection. All these Kolarian tribes differ 

 radically in language from the Dravidian Gonds ; and 

 some connection has been traced between them and the 

 aboriginal races of countries lying to the east of India. 

 Further to the east again, in the Mykal range, and like 



* A supposed connection Ijetween the Gonds and the Brahiiis, a 

 Mahomedan tribe on the Sindh frontier, ])ased on the correspondence 

 of a few words in their hmguages, does not appear to bear the test of 

 a closer examinatiim. 



