The Ethnology of India. 71 
Tt might be conjectured that centuries of Mahommedan rule might 
have caused the retreat of the Bramins from the more open 
plains to these regions; but I do not know that there is historical 
ground for this supposition, and think it more likely that under any 
rule they would hold their own and circumvent even foreign rulers. 
Their personal appearance would lead one rather to suppose that they 
came from the North-West. Many of them are very fair, and I think 
that there is among them a much greater tendency to the common 
occurrence of a somewhat aquiline, or what I call sub-aquiline type 
of feature than among Hindustanee Bramins. A very marked feature, 
not uncommonly met with, seems to be a light greyish kind of eye. 
Altogether, I cannot suppose these Bramins to be a branch of the 
race which, after occupying Hindustan, extended southwards. I can- 
not imagine how they could in the south, as it were, in some degree 
have returned towards an earlier type, instead of step by step 
becoming darker and more Indian-like. It is undoubtedly the case 
and is a subject of common remark, that all along the West Coast of 
India the people are much fairer than in the interior, even though 
most of the interior country above the Ghats is considerably elevated. 
Some have accounted for this by saying that colour does not alto- 
gether depend on the thermometer, that the inhabitants of the 
more umbrageous Coast are less exposed to an unclouded sun and dry 
atmosphere than the people of the bare and treeless plains of the 
Deccan, and that thus the difference of colour is to be accounted for. 
I will not say that this cause is wholly without effect, but I think it 
quite insufficient to account for the whole difference. The Bengalees 
in a moist atmosphere and amid a luxurious vegetation are generally 
dark. The blackest of the Aboriginal tribes live in the densest forest 
country in a moist malarious climate. Hven on this very Western 
Coast I find the Aboriginal Helots of Malabar described as being 
“of the deepest black.” We must look then to some other cause 
modifying the complexion of many tribes on the West Coast, and 
that I take to be immigration by sea. That there has been much 
such immigration, is not only probable, but a historical fact. All 
along the southern portion of the West Coast, a large part of the 
population is notoriously to a great degree of foreign blood. The 
Moplahs are to a great extent Arabs, the ‘ Teers’ or ‘ Teermen’ are also 
