ETHKOLOGT THE IKDO-BAClFtO ISLAIITJa, 



159 



Sec, 13, EECArlTUtATlOSI Awn fNPEERSOEi.* 



Is our present enquiries wg cannot go back to ihe period whan 

 there were no languH^es ia India and the adjacent countries, oi- 

 when some of llie present great formnliona had not yet come into 

 exiatence. Wo must reason on the phenomena which Southern 

 Asia has presented to human observation since any permanent 

 records of it began to be kept. As far as observation can carry 

 us into the past, this region has always presented several mce« 

 and formations as at present, and tribes and languages belonging 

 to diiFerent races and formations have always been more or lei^s 

 intermixed and subject to change fi-om mutual influence. In 

 those human eras into which ethnic research has hitherto extended, 

 South West Asia and Asonesia, considered as one continuous 

 province, have been contemporaneousiy occupied by, Ist, archaic 

 lado-Auslralian, 2nd, Papuan, 3rd, Ti be to- Chin esc or Ultrain- 

 dian, 4th, Dravirian, 5th, Scylbic, 6th, Iranian, and 7th, Semi- 

 tic races and formations. In all historical times we find several ot 

 them intermixed in the same territory and influencing each other. 

 We also find that at different historical eras each of the tliree last 

 has become expansive or migratory. Ir^niafrom very remote ante- 

 historic ages appears to have been occupied by these three races, 

 at an earlier period by the 4th also, and probably at a still earlier 

 by a race akin to the 1st. Hence in later eras each of the three 

 last must always have been more or Jess subject to mutual in- 

 fluence. In the same manner the peoples and languages of ludiu 

 mast have been exposed, throughout these eras, to the influence, 

 in different degrees, of the three races of Irania or of the predomi- 

 nanl one. In great periods of archaic time the language and race 

 of the most dominant or diffusive people of Irania and India pro- 

 bably varied, as it has done in historic eras. Nor, in our endea- 

 vours to obtain some firm fooling in the archaic world, must we 

 overlook the mere powsibilities arising out of the distribution and 

 character of the great races< Scythic, Semilie^ Iranian^ Semiiico- 

 Iranian, Scylhico-Semitie, Scythico-Iranian or other mixed forma- 

 tions like the modern Indian, may have successively prevailed in 



* See Sec. 10 for mmmaty of the eomparatlve structural cliar&ct^rs of Ufa- 

 viriiui. 



