INTEODUCTOKY 5 



snakes. Religious hermits of the northern race are 

 described as dwelling in leafy bowers in their midst, while 

 heroes and demigods wandered about like knights-errant, 

 protecting the devotees from their hostile acts, which 

 seem more hlce the pranks of frisky monkeys than the 

 actions of human beings. The snakes and demons have 

 been conjectured, with some probability, to have been 

 the black aborigines of the country, and the scenes of the 

 epics to portray the gradual advance of the Aryan race 

 and religion into their midst. The wandering Rajas are 

 frequently described as allying themselves in marriage 

 with the daughters of the potent demons, and so far the 

 poems agree with what is otherwise shown to be probable. 

 Nothing like a connected historical narrative is, however, 

 to be extracted from the mass of firahminical fiction; 

 and whatever value such materials may yield to the 

 investigation of the history of the Aryan or conquering 

 races, they are worth nothing as bearing on that of the 

 wild men of the wilderness, who are throughout regarded 

 as being as much beyond the pale of humanity as their 

 country was beyond the Aryan pale — the land of clearings 

 and the black antelope. 



We have a few architectural remains and inscriptions 

 that tell of Aryan chiefs holding power in parts of the 

 Narbada valley and the central plateaux, between the 

 fifth and the fourteenth centuries. But who and what 

 they were, and what was really their position, there is 

 nothing to show. Remains of religious edifices sur- 

 rormded by fortifications point to the probability of their 

 having been the heads of isolated bands of the warhke 

 caste, protecting settlements of missionary priests, and 

 perhaps, by superior courage and arms, holding in nominal 

 subjection the aboriginal tribes around them. Traditions 

 exist of a pastoral race, to whom is attributed every ancient 

 building that cannot be otherwise accounted for. It is 

 highly probable that the cow was unknown to the aborigines 

 before it was brought by their Aryan invaders. Tradition 

 would probably fix on so striking a feature as the posses- 

 sion of herds by those early colonists; and thus it does 

 not seem necessary to suppose the existence of any peculiar 



