PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 723 



forest tribes, from the Santals and Paharias on the east, passing on to the Kols 

 and Gonds, and ending with the Bhi'ls on the west. At present our information 

 of the inter-relations of these tribes is fragmentary, and their superficial uni- 

 formity does not exclude the possibility that they represent more than one racial 

 element. It will also be necessary to push inquiry beyond the bounds of the 

 Indian Empire, and, like the trigonometrical surveyor, to fix the base line as a 

 datum in India, and extend the triangulation through the borderlands. It is in 

 these regions that the ethnological problems of India a-wait their final solution. 

 Many of these countries are still beyond our reach. Until the survey of the 

 routes converging at Herat, Kabul, or Kandahar is complete the extent of the 

 influence of the western races — Assyrian, Babylonian, Iranian, Arab, and Greek — 

 cannot be determined. Recent surveys in Tibet have thrown much light on that 

 region, but it is still only very partially examined. In Nepal the suspicious 

 native government still bars the way to the Buddhist sites in the Tarai and 

 the Nepal valley, and thus a wide chapter in the extension of Hindu influence 

 beyond the mountain range remains incomplete. 



The second great problem is the origin and development of caste. We have yet 

 to seek a definition which will cover the complex phases of this institution, and 

 effect a reconcilement between the views of Indian observers who trace it to the 

 clash of races or colours, and that of the sociologists, who lay little stress on 

 race or colour and rely more upon the influence of environment, physical or moral. 

 We must abandon the insular method which treats it only in relation to India, 

 and ignores the analogous grouping of rank and class which were prepotent in 

 western Europe and elsewhere, and are now slowly losing ground in the face 

 of industrial development. It is by the study of tribes which are on the border- 

 land of Hinduism that we must look for a solution of the problem. The conflict 

 of the Aryan and aboriginal culture, on which the religious and social systems 

 of Hinduism were based, is reproduced in the contact between modern Hinduism 

 and the forest tribes. Since the Hindus are the only members of the Aryan 

 stock among whom we find endogamous groups with exogamous sections, the 

 suggestion of Professor Frazer that they may have borrowed it from the non- 

 Aryans gains probability. The Dravidians within the Indian totemic area have 

 worked out an elaborate system of their own, which is well described in the 

 recent survey of the Malayans by Mr. F. T. Richards. How far this is connected 

 with their preference for mother-right and their strong family organisation, of 

 a more archaic type than the joint family of the Aryans, is a question which 

 deserves examination. The influence, again, of religion must be considered, and 

 this can be done with the most hopeful results in regions like eastern Bengal, 

 where a people who have only in a very imperfect way adopted Hinduism are 

 now being converted wholesale to Muhammadanism. 



Again, when we speak of the tribe in India, we must remember -that it 

 assumes at least seven racial types, ranging from the elaborate exogamous groups 

 of the Rajputs to the more archaic form characteristic of the Baloch and Pathan 

 tribes of the western frontier, attached to which are alien sections affiliated by 

 the obligation to join in the common blood-feud, which in process of time 

 develops into a fiction of blood-brotherhood. Thus among the Marri of 

 Baluchistan we can trace the course of evolution : admission to participate in 

 the common blood-feud, admission to participation in a share of the tribal land, 

 and finally admission to kinship in the tribe. 



This elasticity of structure has permitted not only the admission of non- 

 Aryan tribes into the Rajput body in modern times, but prepares us to understand 

 how the majority of the Rajputs were created by a similar process of fusion, 

 the newcomers being known as the Gurjaras, who entered India in the train of 

 the Huns in the fifth or sixth century of our era. The recognition of this 

 fact, by far the most important contribution made in recent times to the ethnology 

 of India, is due to a group of Bombay scholars, the late Mr. A. M. T. Jackson, 

 whose untimely death at the hand of an assassin we deeply regret, and Messrs. 

 R. G. and D. R. Bhandarkar. Mr. D. R. Bhandarkar has recently proved that a 

 group of these Gurjara Huns, possibly the tribal priests or genealogists, were 

 admitted first to the rank of Brahmans, and then, by a change of function of 

 which analogies are found in the older Sanskrit literature, becoming Rajputs,' aro 

 now represented by the Guhilots, one of the proudest septs. This opens up a new 



