14 The Ethnology of India. 
features has been attained, in a great part of India, but gradually, and 
that it is within the historical period that these features have alto- 
gether preponderated, it is only necessary to look at the ancient 
sculptures of the South and West. ‘Take for instance the caves of 
Klephanta near Bombay. Who, looking at the faces there cut in stone, 
and observing the universal thick lip and peculiar feature, can doubt 
that when those were cut, the non-Caucasian element was still large 
even among the higher classes ? 
My scheme, however, is not to separate any of the tribes or castes 
of modern Indian society, and to designate them as aboriginal. All 
those people who have been either completely or partially amalga- 
mated into Hindoo society, whether as proper Hindoos or as Helots 
and outcasts, I regard as coming within the designations of ‘ Modern 
Indians.’ I shall class as Aborigines only those tribes which still live 
apart, forming communities by themselves, under their own leaders, 
and often speaking their own peculiar languages. 
As Modern Indians again I class together all the high-featured 
northern races, and all the various trikes, castes, and nationalities 
formed by them after absorbing so much of the aboriginal element 
as has been amalgamated with them, whether they are now Hindoos, 
Mahommedans, or of any other religion. Of course they are mainly 
Hindoos. I draw no wide ethnological line between the Northern 
and Southern countries of India, not recognising the separate Dravidian 
classification of the latter as properly ethnological, It seems to me 
that among all the Hindoo tribes the Arian element now prevails, and 
that the presence, more or less, of the aboriginal element is only a 
question of degree. As a question of degree, I do not think that 
there is, at any geographical parallel, any decided line. It is remarked 
by Max Muller that languages are seldom properly speaking mixed. 
Vocables may be mixed, but a single grammar and structure usually 
prevails. Therefore the change from one language to another must 
in so far be sudden. It is still, I believe, open to dispute whether 
the grammar of the present languages of Northern India is of Sanscrit 
or of Aboriginal origin ; but at any rate this we know, that in the North 
the Arians gained so rapid and complete an ascendancy as to introduce 
their own radical words, numerals, &c., and to render the language 
essentially Arian, while in the South the Aborigines held out 
