ON THE NATIVES OF INDIA. 617 



its length as the Negro, while this feature in the Aryan group can fairly 

 bear comparison with the noses of sixty -eight Parisians, measured by 

 Topinard, which gave an average of 69-4. Even niore striking is the 

 curiously close correspondence between the gradations of racial type 

 indicated by the nasal index and certain of the social data ascertained 

 by independent inquiry. If we take a series of castes in Bengal, Behar, 

 or the North-Western Provinces, and arrange them in the order of the 

 average nasal index, so that the caste with the finest nose shall be at 

 the top, and that with the coarsest at the bottom of the Hst, it will be 

 found that this order substantially corresponds with the accepted order 

 of social precedence. The casteless tribes, Kols, Korwas, Mundas, and 

 the like, who have not yet entered the Brahmanical system, occupy the 

 lowest place in both series. Then come the vermin-eating Musahars and 

 the leather-dressing Chamars. The fisher castes of Bauri, Bind, and 

 Kewat are a trifle higher in the scale; the pastoral Goala, the culti- 

 vating Kurmi, and a group of cognate castes from whose hands a Brahman 

 may lake water follow in due order, and from them we pass to the 

 ti-ading Khatris, the land-holding Babhans, and the upper crust of Hindu 

 society. Thus, it is scarcely a paradox to lay down as a law of the caste 

 organisation in Eastern India that a man's social status varies in inverse 

 ratio to the width of his nose. Nor is this the only point in which the 

 two sets of observations — the social and the physical — bear out and illus- 

 trate each other. The character of the curious matrimonial groupings 

 for which the late Mr. J. P. McLennan devised the happy term ' exoga- 

 raous ' also varies in a definite relation to the gradations of physical type. 

 Within a certain range of nasal proportions, these subdivisions are based 

 almost exclusively on the totem. Along with a somewhat finer form of 

 nose, groups called after villages and larger territorial areas, or bearing 

 the name of certain tribal or communal officials, begin to appear, and 

 above these, again, we reach the eponymous saints and heroes, who in 

 India, as in Greece and Rome, are associated with a certain stage of 

 Aryan progress. 



It deserves notice that the data obtained by the most modern anthro- 

 pological method agree in the main not only with the long chain of 

 Indian tradition, beginning with the Vedas and ending with the latest 

 vernacular treatise on the theory and practice of caste, but also with the 

 rationahsed and critical story of the making of the Indian peoples, as 

 it has been told by Sir William Hunter in the 'Imperial Gazetteer.' 

 Here the historian shows how, through the veil of fable and miracle, in 

 which prehistoric India is shrouded, traces may be discerned of a pro- 

 tracted struggle between a lower and a higher race, which would have 

 tended to produce much the same results as our statistics bring out. 

 Studied in the light of these statistics, it would seem that the standard 

 Indian theory of caste may deserve more respectful consideration than 

 has been accorded to it of late years. 



The observations conducted by Mr. Risley include fifteen tribes and 

 castes of Bengal Proper ; five of the Chittagong Hills ; ten of the Dar- 

 jiling Hills ; ten of Behar ; seventeen of Chota Nagpur ; twenty-three of 

 the North- Western Provinces and Oudh ; and nine of the Panjab. 



It is hoped that, within a reasonable time, the inquiry may be ex- 

 tended throughout the remainder of our Indian empire, and, with this 

 object in view, your committee ask for reappointment, with a renewal of 

 the grant. 



