OF BHARATAVARSA OR INDIA, 
37 
visible, but whether these are in reality the first settlers and 
their abodes the first erected, is another question which does 
not properly belong to the domain of history, so long as we 
are unable to assert its relevancy or to find an answer to it. 
Whether the people of whom we first hear in a country are 
really its aborigines may be doubtful ; but so long as no 
earlier inhabitants can be discovered, they must be regarded 
as such. So far as historical traces can be found in the laby- 
rinth of Indian antiquity, it was the Gauda-Dra vidians who 
lived and tilled the soil and worked the mines in India. 
This discussion does not concern the so-called Kolarian 
tribes, whose connection with the ancient history of India 
is so very obscure, that we possess hardly any historical 
accounts about them. 
However considerable and apparently irreconcilable may 
appear the differences exhibited by the various Gauda-Dra- 
vidian tribes in their physical structure and colour, in their 
language, religion, and art, all these ditferences can be satis- 
factorily accounted for by the physical peculiarities of the 
localities they inhabited, by the various occupations they 
followed, and by the political status which regulated their 
domestic and social habits. For every one must be aware of 
the fact that change of abode and change in position have 
worked, and are working, the most marvellous alterations in 
the physical and mental constitution of individuals and 
nations. Language, especially the spirit which pervades it, 
is the most enduring witness of the connection which exists 
between nations, and with its help we can often trace the 
continuity of descent from the same stock in tribes seemingly 
widely different. 
From the north-west across to the north-east, and from 
both corners to the furthest south, the presence of the Gauda- 
Dravidian race in India can be proved at a very early period. 
On the arrival of the Aryans on the north-western fron- 
tier, the Gauda-Dravidians are already found in flourishing 
