Tin: ABOKIGIXAL TRIBES. 171 



of grain and 100 rupees in cash, leaving them gainers 

 of 35 rupees (£3 105.), after paying off the whole 

 of their debt. Thus they got a stocked farm, free from 

 debt, in a single season, by their own manual labour 

 alone, which would afterwards yield them at least £10 

 apiece per annum, or much more than they could 

 live on in comfort. The money-lender at the same 

 time cleared 40 per cent, on his money in eight 

 months."* Such a farm as this may appear rather 

 a miserable little affair to the English reader ; but 

 such are the units of which the vast extent of Indian 

 tillage is made up ; and to obtain possession of such a 

 holding, with its slender stock, is an object of ambition 

 to millions of labourers for a bare subsistence. 



There can be small room for doubt that the per- 

 meation of these aboriginal tribes with Hindu ideas, 

 manners, and religion, is steadily progressing ; and it 

 may be hoped that this influence is now w^orking rather 

 for the better than for the worse. The flighty, 

 debauched, half-tamed Gond was a being much de- 

 teriorated from his original state of rude simplicity ; but 

 the steady and sober, if illiterate and superstitious, 

 Hindu cultivator of the soil is a type towards which we 

 should by no means regret to see the aboriginal races 

 advancing. It is true that in thus joining the great mass 

 of Hinduism they will exchange their rude forms of 

 religious belief for a submission to the powerful priestly 

 influence which still prohibits the advance of the people 

 of India beyond a certain point, aud for a superstition 

 which is morally no better than their own. The 

 missionary may lose his chance in the meantime of 



* Extract from a Report, by the writer, on the Settlement of the 

 Isimdr district. 



