THE KTHSOLOttY OF TUB INDIAN I fU'H II'KL Kit) 31 



Hinds the whole were formed* By the gradual extension of this 

 intercourse between adjacent shores! and by occasional involuntary 

 voyages across the open sea, the primitive isolation of the various 

 du'ricts must have been destroyed, the man of one been led or 

 cast into another, and language and customs been diffused far and 

 wide. To the Indian ethnologist it must be left to trace out the 

 net work of radiatinc; ethnic lines which spread over that sjroat 

 central region in early times ; to shew, if it be possible, where not 

 the primitive but the present non-Iranian occupants first set foot 

 in it ; what districts they have longest occupied ; and how and 

 where that civilisation arose which, before the entry of the Brah- 

 manical race, had given a common language to so much of 

 southern Indis. With every step thai is made into the past by the 

 explorers of the ethnology of any portion of southern Asia, we 

 ehall gain some new li^ht for that of the Indian Archipelago. 



The next section of ethnic geography relates to tl»e comparative 

 influence of the climate, vegetation and scenery of the different 

 regions and districts, on the physical and intellectual character of 

 their occupants. It is to this influence that every tribe owes its 

 fundamental peculiarities of mind and person. The subject is still 

 obscure, but the power of physical geography in developing ethnic 

 varieties is well ascertained, and we must attribute most of the 

 apparent anomalies to the exceeding slowness with which it operates, 

 and to the different degrees and modes in which tribes, coming 

 from dissimilar regions and bringing with them dissimilar constitu- 

 tions and characters, are ejected by it. As on all other sides of 

 ethnology, so here also we see the national growing out of the 

 individual developments, bo that the elements of a sound knowledge 

 of the relation otthe national characteristics to die national region, 

 must be drawn from a science thai has hardly yet received a form : 

 — that embracing the development of the infant mind by contact 

 with the external world, — the results of the different aspects and 

 active influences of nature in different natire seats, — the gradual 

 modifications of hereditary organism thus induced, — and the vary- 

 ing limits of its perpetuation after migrations to the many strongly 

 contrasted regions which the world affords. The subject is vast, 

 complex, and subtle, but it must yield to the spirit of modern 

 research and the appliances of modern science. 



Among the wider ethnic enquiries connected with this port of the 

 subject, there is one which' demands in every region our attention. 

 At all periods the continents and the lar^erislauds have been the scats 

 of two distinct kinds of ethnic life, the inland and die maritime. To 

 the inlanders the sea is eitber unknown or a subject of wonder 

 and exaggerated fears. The pursuits and mode of subsistence 

 of the two peoples are widely different, and their habits and ideas 

 acquire an equal divergence. In the earlier developments the in- 

 landers appear, on the whole, to be more elevated physically anil 

 mentally, and in most countries are the iisst to lo>o their wild 



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