40 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA 



In less than three centuries this has been done; 

 and yet it is the custom to say that India is an unpro- 

 gressive country, that she has been standing still since 

 the beginning of history! Everything shows that this 

 country is still in its very youth. The people, strong- 

 limbed and healthy, rejoicing in the rude abundance that 

 falls to the lot of energetic races tilling an almost virgin 

 soil. Tilling it roughly, it is true, getting from it nothing 

 approaching to the quantity of produce extracted by the 

 denser populations of long-reclaimed tracts from much 

 inferior soils; but still, tilling it in the way_ which is 

 the most profitable to a scanty population with a poor 

 accumulation of wealth and stock. The example of all 

 new countries with much available land, even when, as 

 in America, all the resources of capital and machinery 

 are available, shows that a comparatively rough culture 

 of a large area is more remunerative than the higher 

 tillage of a smaller area; and this alone is the cause of 

 the rude state of agriculture still observed in this and 

 many other parts of India. At present, plenty for all 

 is the rule, poverty the very rare exception. Well-built 

 houses, well-stocked cattle yards, and a general air of 

 comfort and happiness, cannot fail to arrest the attention 

 in Hindu villages. It is true that the people of the soil, 

 those of the Gonds who have preferred to stay and serve 

 a Hindii master to a retreat to the hills, are poorly clad 

 and housed, living like outcasts beyond the limits of the 

 Hindu quarter; but they, too, are at least suflB.ciently 

 fed; and nothing but their own innate apathy and vice 

 prevents them from receiving a greater share of the 

 surrounding plenty. 



As the influence on the aborigines in the past, and 

 at the present time, of their contact with these invading 

 Hindu races will afterwards form matter of consideration, 

 it is important to understand of what material these 

 Hindu races themselves are really composed. They have 

 generally been comprehended in the category of " Aryan," 

 as distinguished from the " Tauranian" peoples who are 

 believed to have preceded the fair-complexioned Aryan 

 invaders from Upper Asia in the occupation of Hindostan, 



