INTRODUCTORY. 7 



ing that cannot be otherwise accounted for. It is highly pro- 

 bable 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, dis- 

 tinct 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 invad- 

 ing Mahomedan in the 14th 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 sur- 

 rounded them : and we find the country then called by the 

 name of G6ndwana\ from the tribe of G6nds 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 principalities, 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 king- 

 doms had acquired a considerable degree of stability and 

 development ; and it has often been wondered how a tribe of 

 such rude savages as the Gonds could have reached a stage of 

 civilization at that early period so greatly above anything they 

 have since shown themselves to be capable of. The explana- 

 tion seems to lie in the circumstance mentioned. The real 

 establishes of these courts, and introducers of the arts, were 

 not Gonds but Hindus. 



It is the custom in all families which trace their lineage 

 to the fountain-head of Hindu aristocracy among the Rajput 



