134 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. 



by the analogy of the processes he sees still going on around 

 him, so it may be that some light may be thrown on the 

 construction of modern Hinduism by the process of trans- 

 formation which is here going on before our eyes. 



It is difficult to say how far the actual admixture of blood has 

 taken place. There is small room for doubt that the so-called 

 Gond Rajas of pre-Mahomedan times were nearly, or quite, 

 pure Hindu Rajputs, exercising a feudal authority over 

 numerous petty chiefs of mixed descent. The former have 

 been nearly swept away, their only remaining representative 

 being the pensioned Gond Raja of Nagpur ; the latter 

 remain in their descendants, and, almost to a man, show the 

 clearest signs of possessing a mixture of the Hindu and 

 aboriginal blood. The Hindu element in such cases has not 

 been the debased article current among the masses of the 

 laboring population, but the purer strain derived from the 

 aristocratic families of Rajpiit&Da\ It is as it were the first 

 cross in the mixed breed, and thus, as might be expected, 

 shows the characteristics of both sides clearly developed. In 

 other cases, among the lower races of aborigines, crosses also 

 appear to have taken place ; but in such cases it appears to 

 have been the already debased Hindu of the lower orders 

 that has furnished the foreign element, and the result has 

 been a breed which little approaches the high Aryan character, 

 and is in fact only a slight advance on the purely aboriginal 

 type. Among the chiefs the cross appears to have taken place 

 with all the different tribes of indigenes. Towards the east 

 the mixed breed call themselves Gond-Rdjputs, or shortly 

 RaJ-G6nds, and are the direct result of the alliance between 

 the Rajput adventurer and the G6nd. In the Korku country 

 the same thing seems to have occurred between the Rajputs 

 and the Korkvis. In this case, however, the tribe being an 



