The Ethnology of India. 11 



seems to be patriarchal and arbitrary— property in the soil is tribal 

 rather than individual. There is little loeal attachment to the soil, 

 he aboriginal tribes of India move from place to place, abandoning 

 one location and taking up another in a light way; they are even 

 ready to give up their land, to become labourers, and to emigrate in a 

 way to which the Arians are by no means prone. They seem to 

 have among themselves no caste, they eat anything and every thing. 

 Marriage is, I fancy, but a loose tie. On all these points, however, we 

 want much information. 



5. Manners and mental characteristics. Under this I must in- 

 clude so much that I cannot attempt to detail it. Suffice it to say, 

 that any information regarding the temperament and bearing, the 

 intelligence, the customs and habits, the amusements and the cere- 

 monies of little known tribes, may be in many ways most useful. 



It is patent in India to the most superficial observer that, owing to 

 the peculiar institution of castes, mere vicinage (even lasting many 

 hundred years) has not, as in Europe, led to the welding of different 

 races and tribes into proper local nationalities : that, in fact, in the 

 same locality many different races exist together without complete 

 intermixture, while a single race may frequently be traced through 

 many different provinces and countries, always retaining its own pecu- 

 liarities under a great variety of circumstances and in contact with 

 many varying races. On the other hand, language can never be 

 exclusive, it must be the means of inter-communication between man 

 and man, caste and caste, without distinctions of race or creed. 

 Hence, however much by religion and race a tribe may be segregated, 

 if it be politically and to a great extent socially united with other 

 peoples, it almost always in the end adopts their language, or a com- 

 mon language is formed by intermixture. That is the ordinary state 

 of Indian society. In the business of life, the different castes are 

 united in one society ; some are in the upper, some in the lower strata ; 

 one is the lord, another the priest, another the free cultivator, ano- 

 ther the hewer of wood and drawer of water ; but still they form one 

 social whole. Farther, although the rules of caste and marriage may 

 hinder the inter-communication of blood, it cannot but be that in 

 the long course of time, during which different tribes live in the 

 closest intercourse, there must be some irregular percolation from one 



