6 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. 



Jamn& as a vast wilderness inhabited by hostile demons and 

 snakes. Eeligious hermits of the northern race are described 

 as dwelling in leafy bowers in their midst, while heroes and 

 demigods wandered about like knights-errant, protecting the 

 devotees from their hostile acts, which seem more like the 

 pranks of frisky monkeys than the actions of human beings. 

 The snakes and demons have been conjectured, with some 

 probability, to have been the black aborigines of the country, 

 and the scenes of the epics to pourtray the gradual advance 

 of the Aryan race and religion into their midst. The wander- 

 ing Eajas are frequently described as allying themselves in 

 marriage with the daughters of the potent demons, and so far 

 the poems agree with what is otherwise shown to be probable. 

 Nothing like a connected historical narrative is, however, to be 

 extracted from the mass of Brahminical fiction ; and whatever 

 value such materials may yield to the investigation of the 

 history of the Aryan or conquering races, they are worth 

 nothing as bearing on that of the wild men of the wilderness, 

 who are throughout regarded as being as much beyond the 

 pale of humanity as their country was beyond the Aryan 

 pale the land of clearings and the black ante] ope. 



We have a few architectural remains and inscriptions that 

 tell of Aryan chiefs holding power in parts of the Narbada 

 valley and the central plateaux, between the 5th and the 1 4th 

 centuries. But who and what they were, and what was 

 really their position, their is nothing to show. Bemains of 

 religious edifices surrounded by fortifications point to the 

 probability of their having been the heads of isolated bands of 

 the warlike caste, protecting settlements of missionary priests, 

 and perhaps, by superior courage and arms, holding in nominal 

 subjection the aboriginal tribes around them. Traditions exist 

 of a pastoral race, to whom is attributed every ancient build- 



