to be descendants of a Nāga king called Āriaka.36 Yudhiṣṭhira himself says to the Nāga Nahuṣa: "In human society it is difficult to ascertain one's caste because of the promiscuous intercourse among the four orders. Men belonging to all the orders have children by women of all the orders."37 Considering that these unions were in vogue from very early days and taking into account the fact that the ethnical Aryan type-that is the brachycephalic-has practically disappeared from northern India,38 modern scholars do not favour the opinion of the present existence of the Aryan race in India. "As time went on," says Keith, "Dravidian blood came more and more to prevail over Aryan." 39 Consequently Dr. Hall, of the British Museum, states: "Among the modern Indians, as amongst the modern Greeks or Italians, the ancient pre-Aryan type of the land has (as the primitive type of the land always does) survived, while that of the Aryan conqueror died out long ago.40 On this account we have often expressed the view that the Punjabis and Kashmiris are probably much purer Dravidians, racially considered, than the Tamil and Malayalam speaking people of South India, whose physical characteristics reveal much mixture of negrito blood in the former and of Chinese blood in the latter.41 The Aryas never reached the mountains of Kashmir nor settled in the Puñjāb on their way to Madhyadeśa. When Alexander the Great invaded India, Dravidian tribes were still peacefully living along the Indus. The purest representatives of the Dravidian race in South India are probably the Coorgies, well built and sturdy people, not very different from the Punjabi type; living in the mountains they had no occasion to mix with peoples of other races. In the very traditions of South India the Coorgies are said to be imbued with "the essence (or spirit) of the Pāṇḍus."42 They probably are the ancient Kuḍagas (later Kuraṇgas and Vānaras) spoken of in one of the Mohenjo-Daro inscriptions.43 Their language is still called Kuḍagu. . . The actual affinities between the culture of India and the culture ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 36 Ibid., 4964-5033. 37 Ibid., Vana Parva, 14514-14628. 38Risley, Tribes and Castes of Bengal, I, p. XL. Cf. below. Chapter V. 39Keith, op. cit., II, p. 497. 40Hall, The Ancient History of the Near East, p. 173. 41The numerous Chinese merchants who from very ancient times had fre-quented the harbours of Malabār may perhaps explain this Chinese ethnological influence. Ibn Batuta speaks of numerous Chinese junks seen by him in the ports of that country. Cf. Lee, The Travels of Ibn Batuta, pp. 172-173. Chinese influence is also seen in Malabar architecture. 42Cole, "Cromlechs in Maisur", I.A., II, p. 88. 43Heras, "Karnƒtaka and Mohenjo-Daro", p. 3. |