THE NAKBADA valley. 51 



But it needs but little observation of tliese Hindu races 

 to perceive that they themselves have long been 

 subjected to some influence which has greatly modified 

 the original high Aryan type — a type which includes 

 the noblest races of mankind ; the Caucasian of Europe, 

 the Persian of high Asia, and the Sanscrit-speaking 

 "fair-skinned" people who entered India from the 

 north uncalculated ages ago. That influence cannot 

 have been one of climate only, which would have 

 aff"ected all their descendants equally ; whereas we see 

 existing the greatest range of diversity, from the light- 

 coloured, noble-featured Brahman of the extreme north- 

 west to the black and negro-like chamar or pariah of 

 the east and south. Everything shows that the cause 

 has been a mino-lino- of the immio^rant race with the 

 inferior Tauranian tribes whom they found occupying 

 the soil before them. To judge from physical ap- 

 pearance, few but the highest castes of Northern India 

 can have any claim to purity of Aryan blood ; and the 

 admixture of indigenous blood, as indicated by colour 

 and feature, appears to be greater and greater the 

 further we proceed from the seat of the original Aryan 

 settlements in the north-west. It can scarcely be 

 doubted, then, that the modern Hindus are a composite 

 race, resulting from the absorption of a wave of 

 Aryanism in a great ocean of peoples of a far inferior 

 type — the type, in fact, represented by such of them as 

 have still remained undiluted in their inaccessible hills. 

 The force of the wave diminished as it proceeded ; and 

 the gradations in the extent of its influence are now so 

 subtle, that it is hard to say where the line should be 

 drawn to denote a preponderance of the one element 

 over the other. The difiiculty is further increased by 



E 2 



