The Ethnology of India. 25 
common tradition and consent of the country makes it clear that they 
came as conquering immigrants to their present position at a compara- 
tively recent period, and their pastoral habit renders their migration 
easy. Their language, so small a body may well have almost lost 
during their wanderings among Dravidians. They may be anything 
Caucasian, and from anywhere ; ordinary Aborigines they are not. It has 
been said, that in their speech some words have a resemblance to the 
Brahui dialect, but personally they do not seem to resemble Brahuis, 
they are rather like Greeks. 
The points of structure which I have given, as common to all the 
Aboriginal languages, are, it will be observed, of the widest character. 
And this brings me to the fact that by the test of language the 
Aboriginal tribes may be divided into two great classes, having very 
few vocables in common. The first great division is that of the tribes 
speaking dialects radically allied to the civilised languages of the 
South, commonly called the Dravidian languages. These then I shall 
call the Dravidian Aborigines. There is no doubt that the wild tribes 
of the southern hills speak wild and primitive forms of the southern 
languages. The Carambers seem to be ancient Tamil speakers, the 
Maleasurs of the Western Ghats approach nearer to the Malayala. 
The Burghers and Kotahs speak a primitive Canarese, the Ramooses, 
a language which seems to be for the most part Telagoo. 
The Gond language is as clearly Dravidian as Telagoo or Tamil, and 
the Gonds are so considerable a people that the Gondee might almost be 
added to the list of regular languages of the southern type. The 
name Khond is so like Gond that, next neighbours as they are, one 
would almost suppose the words to be the same. They are said to be 
different, but at any rate the Khonds also are shown by their language 
to be clearly Dravidian. More distant is the tongue of the Oraon 
tribe, to whose physical characteristics I have already alluded, and who 
are now found among tribes of the other division (to be presently 
noticed) in the Chota-N agpore territory. But the radicals and main 
features of the Oraon language leave no doubt that they are of 
Dravidian stock—a circumstance which does not suprise us, aS we 
learn that they are comparatively recent immigrants from the west 
into their present locations. East of them again, in the Rajmahal 
hills, we have the last of the Dravidian tribes (so far as has yet been 
