136 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA 



There can be small room for doubt tbat the permeation 

 of these aboriginal tribes witb Hindu ideas, manners, and 

 religion, is steadily progressing ; and it may be hoped that 

 this influence is now working rather for the better than for 

 the worse. The flighty, debauched, hal£-tamed Gond was 

 a being much deteriorated from his original state of rude 

 simpHcity ; but the steady and sober, if illiterate and super- 

 stitious, Ilindu cultivator of the soil is a tjrpe towards which 

 we should by no means regret to see the aboriginal races 

 advancing. It is true that in thus joining the great mass 

 of Hinduism they will exchange their rude forms of rehgious 

 behef for a submission to the powerful priestly influence 

 which still prohibits the advance of the people of India 

 beyond a certain point, and for a superstition which is 

 morally no better than their own. The missionary may lose 

 his chance in the meantime of getting them to accept some 

 of his fetishes^ in the place of their own. But probably 

 they will then be no further, if so far, from the acceptance 

 of a pure religion of morahty than they are at present ; and 

 when the distant day dawns for the dusky peoples of India, 

 when the hght of education shall dissipate their hideous 

 superstitions, and lead them to inquire after a pure belief, 

 they will be there, elevated and improved by contact and 

 assimilation with a race superior to themselves. 



Such seems to be the probable future of those sections of 

 the aborigines who lie on the confines of Hinduism in the 

 plaias. But so long as the vast wildernesses of these Central 

 Highlands remain uncleared, which physical causes wifl in 

 great measure render a permanent necessity, so long must 

 human inhabitants of a type fitted to occupy them continue 

 to exist. For, such civilisation as we call it is impossible, 

 and undesirable if it were possible. All that can be done 

 for them is to ehmitiate by thoughtful administration causes 

 which lead to their depression or demorahsation, and to 

 avoid any treatment irksome to their wild and timid nature 

 which is not necessitated by the general requirements of the 

 country. 



To return to my doings at Puchmurree. Towards the end 



^ Of course I mean wtat would prove fetistes to them in their 

 present intellectual stage — ^not that they are so to the missionary ! 



