20 The Ethnology of India. 



Military vigor, and most democratic constitution, and generally occupy 

 the dominant position in the country. 



3. The gardening tribes, i. e., those who do the smaller and finer 

 farming and kitchen gardening. These are generally peaceable and 

 unmartial people. 



I shall not always exactly follow this order, but shall take first the 

 tribes who are politically most important. 



The Mercantile tribes I shall notice separately, and then the Writer 

 tribes, where such tribes exist. When I speak of literate occupation, 

 I mean exclusive of mercantile business, that being almost every- 

 where in the hands of mercantile castes. Next come the ' Artizans, 

 and finally the Helots and inferior classes. 



The Aborigines. 



In giving any general description of the Aborigines, I must premise 

 that it is by no means to be supposed that all or most of the indivi- 

 duals of the race will correspond to the description. The fact is that 

 the Aboriginal tribes now remaining are but like scattered remnants 

 of a substance floating here and there in a mass of water, into which 

 they have been all but melted, and in which they are on the point of 

 disappearing. By far the greater part of their substance has already 

 commingled in the fluid around them, the remainder is saturated with 

 it, and it is only in the very kernel and inner centre of the largest 

 lumps, that something like the pure original substance is to be found. 

 There is not in Peninsular India any very large tract of very high 

 and difficult country ; the Aboriginal tribes are for the most part not 

 collected in any great masses supporting one another, but are found 

 in small and detached tribes here and there, wherever a bunch of 

 hills or an unhealthy jungle has given them a refuge. Even in these 

 retreats, they are everywhere closely surrounded by, and to a consider- 

 able extent penetrated, or as I called it, saturated with an Arian 

 element which modifies both their features and their language. 



Another circumstance has perhaps almost as much contributed to 

 modify many of these tribes. There seems to be no doubt that at 

 points in Indian history, where one dominant race has given way and 

 before another has been fully established, tribes of hardy aborigines 

 from the hills, accustomed to the use of weapons in the chase and 



