Art. XIII.—Two Lectures on the Aboriginal Race of India, as distinguished from the Sanskritic or Hindu Race

Abstract

The subject on which I propose to address you possesses a certain degree of interest, if it be only for its novelty. We have heard, it is true, for a series of years, of races of Hill-people in different parts of India; and latterly the accounts of them have crowded in upon us from many directions. Some have called them aborigines, without troubling themselves about their origin; while others have considered them Hindus expelled from their caste for some misdemeanour; but no one seems to have entertained the idea that the numerous communities which have been found spread over the surface of India, were the inhabitants of the country before the Hindus, or that those communities had one common origin. This idea appears to have occurred to no one that I am aware of till about six years ago, when I had occasion to refer to several papers on this subject in the Transactions of this Society, and those of the more ancient Society in Calcutta. When I began to compare the various accounts one with another, I did not fail to perceive the very close general analogies of their customs and their institutions. This led to fuller inquiries into their physiological, and eventually, into their philological peculiarities, till at length I arrived at the conclusion that all these various tribes were of one and the same race; and I shall endeavour to lead you to coincide with my sentiments on this interesting question.