256 



On Ancient Indian Weights: 



[No. 8, 



far improved 15 local inhabitants, as opposed to the Aryan assumption 

 of the introduction of all knowledge, I am by no means prepared to 

 contend that the domiciled races gained nothing in return. The verv 

 contact of independently- wrought civilisations, to whatever point each- 

 had progressed, could not fail mutually to advantage both one and the 

 other ; the question to be asked is, which of the two was best pre- 

 pared to receive new lights, and to utilise and incorporate the inci- 

 dental advantages within their own body politic ? The obvious result 

 in this case, though denoting the surrender by one nation of all their 

 marked individuality, by no means implies that they did not carry 

 with them their influence, and a powerful one moreover, and affect 

 materially the character of the people among whom, at the end of 

 their wanderings, they introduced a priestly absolutism, which has 

 progressively grown and increased rather than lost power till very 

 recently over all India. 



But here again a most important query forces itself upon our con- 

 sideration. The Aryans are acknowledged to have been in a very bar- 

 barous state on their first entry into the land of the Sapta Sindhu. 1 ® 

 It is not known how long a period they consumed in traversing six 

 out of the seven streams, or what opportunities may have been 

 afforded for social improvement during the movement ; but even by 

 their own showing in the sacred hymns of the Big Yeda, the Aryans, 

 when they had reached the banks of the Saraswati, were still but very 

 imperfectly civilised. The Basyus, or indigenous races, with whom 

 they came in contact in the Punjaub, may well also have been in $ 

 comparatively undeveloped stage of national progress ; while the in- 

 habitants of the kingdoms on the Jumna seem to have been far ad- 

 vanced in civil and political refinement. 1 * Is it not, therefore, possible, 



15. tc We have therefore, according to the views just summarily expounded, four 

 separate strata, so to speak, of the population in India : — 1. The forest tribes 

 . . . . who may have entered India from the north-east. 2. The Dravidians, 

 who entered India from the north-west . . . .3. The race of Scythian 

 ornon-Arian immigrants from the north-west, whose language afterwards united 

 with the Sanskrit to form the Prakrit dialects of Northern India. 4. The Arian 

 invaders," . . . .— Muir's " Sanskrit Texts," ii. p. 487. See also Caldwell's 

 es Dravidian Grammar." 



16. St. Martin, p. 91. 



17. Professor Wilson while speaking of the ultimate self- development of the 

 Aryans in the Punjab, remarks, " It [is] indisputable that the Hindus of the 

 Vaiclik era had attained to an advanced stage of civilisation, little, if at all, dif- 



