Hinduism.
Origins of Hinduism :
___________________It is quite clear that the previous inhabitants of India lived in cities and had a high civilisation, probably of Western Asiatic origin, and it is significant that Hinduism is remarkable for the similarity of many of its tenet and practices to those of Asia Minor and the Mediterranean. The indigenous religion starts with an advantage over that of an invading people, since it is the priest of the country who knows how to approach the gods of the soil and to propitiate them. In India the important position of Shiva, Vishnu and Kali signalises the triumph of the older gods. The cult of snakes, the worship of a mother goddess were probably brought in by earlier invaders of Mediterranean or Armenoid race whose religion must also be associated with fertility cults, phallic symbolism, the Devadasi cult and probably human sacrifice. Ancestor worship is very strong in India. With Asia Minor or Mesopotamia we must associate astronomy and the worship of the heavenly bodies, which form an important part of Hindu culture, and the cult of the moon god. The sanctity of the cow is foreign to the Rig Veda and appears far more suggestive of the religions of Asia Minor, Egypt and Crete. Vishnu, Shiva and Kali, the great gods of Hinduism, are not Rigvedic deities at all. Sakti is probably a cult derived from the Great Mother Goddess of Asia Minor and the cult of Shiva is associated with it. It is probably significant that the word lingo, is definitely of non-Aryan origin while the word puja is also believed to be a non-Sanskritic loan word. Vishnu would seem to have some associations with religious beliefs represented chiefly in beliefs yet surviving among primitive tribes. Admittedly it is difficult to draw the line between Hinduism and the tribal religions. The inclusion of the latter is easy and wherever hill or forest tribes live in daily contact with their Hindu neighbours their religion rapidly assimilates itself to theirs, though the old method of thinking is unchanged.
Nature of Hinduism :
____________________Religious or quasi-religious beliefs and practices among Hindus appear very frequently to be based on the principles of magic, mana or other ideas common in primitive religion. The sanctity of the fig tree is possibly to be associated with the beliefs of the Negrito inhabitants, the earliest population of India. The possibility that some tribal and totemic taboo has acted as a contributory factor in the religious sanctity attaching to cattle cannot be entirely overlooked. The very word brahma itself seems to have connoted originally supernatural power or influence in the nature of mana. This seems naturally to associate itself with the views on soul-matter or life itself as a transferable and material substance which are common enough in Indonesia, Further India and India itself. It is probably the principle which underlies head-hunting, human sacrifice and cannibalism. The first of these has been recognized in India only in Kafiristan and Assam. Headhunting as a preliminary to marriage is to be explained by the idea that unless a man has taken heads he has no surplus soul-matter about him to beget offspring. Human sacrifice has been widespread and has clearly been based on the conception of the desirability of releasing soul-matter to fertilize the earth. The same idea of soul-matter as a fertilizer is probably at the bottom of human sacrifice as a cure for illness, as in the case of a Santal who in 1931 garlanded and then beheaded his infant son in order to cure his own maladies. True cannibalism is only traditional in India but vestiges of ceremonial cannibalism survive in many places or have done till recently. Thus in September 1931 two men, one apparently a Rarhi Brahman ascetic and the other a Mahabrahman, were accused in Bankura of having dug up the newly hurried corpse of a child, of having taken it to their asram and of there having cooked and eaten part of it; the Rarhi Brahman admitted having eaten a little of the heart as ‘he believed it was part of his religion to do so.’ Perhaps the crudest form in which the doctrine of soul-substance appears is the vulgar but widely credited superstition which attribute to the European the practice of catching fat boys and hanging them over a slow fire to distil from a puncture in the skull the seven drops of vital essence which imparts to sahibs in general their energy in field sports and their activity of mind and body. Curiously enough this life essence, thismomiyai, seems to have started as bitumen simply and to have been used as a legitimate medicine, then to have become a spurious substitute in the form of resin, the supposed virtues of which were later attributed to the embalmed bodies from which this resin was most easily obtained. Involved again in the belief in soul-matter is the practice of erecting megalithic monuments and wooden images of the dead. Dolmens have been used as Saivaite temples. The carved stones erected to the Rajput dead of both sexes have the same origin as the Naga or Khasi menhir. At certain temples in southern India barren women are or were seated on a particular stone to get offspring. A suit was argued in the Calcutta High Court in 1929 about a stone about 5 feet square, apparently of black slate or marble from Jaipur, which changed hands for Rs. 10,000 as being ‘very efficacious in the matter of getting a son.’ The suit arose because the stone failed to function and it was stated in evidence that numbers of even quite well educated Hindus believed in the efficacy of stones of this kind, when used with the correct rites and, that so much as a lakh might be paid for such a stone. The reverence and superstition paid to stones in general are the degenerated remnant of the life-essence fertility cult. A vague belief in reincarnation is common to most of the tribal religions in India and is generally associated more or less with some degree of ancestor worship, a tendency which is everywhere apparent. This reincarnation belief is seen very clearly in the ancient Brahmanic theory that after the birth of a son the sexual relationship of husband and wife should cease, since the son is the father’s self and the father’s wife has become his mother also. It is stated of the Kochhar sub-caste of the Khatri, a trading caste of the Punjab, that a father’s funeral rites should be performed in the fifth month of his wife’s first pregnancy, which points to the same idea. It is a common practice with some tribes that while a dead grandfather’s name or that of another ancestor must be given to a child, the name of a living ancestor shall not be given as either he or the child will die. In old Indian society in the lists of kings it is common to find a grandson named after the grandfather, but the name of any ancestor living or dead is reported now to be avoided by Hindus. Traces of totemism are shown by primitive, tribes in all parts of India and by not a few castes that have reached or retained a high social position. It is likely that totemism in general has received accretions from a number of sources and while it may have originally started with the conception theory in ignorance of the fact of paternity, it has been encouraged and perpetuated by the ideas of life-matter, a separable soul, transmigration and other connected ideas and that a number of these have contributed to totemism as still found in India. A belief, in magic, both white and black, pervades all the more ignorant classes in India nor is it always eliminated by culture and education, as in the practice, reported on good authority, of a director of an international trading corporation in Rangoon who, when ill, has sewn into the seat of his pyjama trousers by his Catholic wife a pious fragment of the holy St. Theresa’s petticoat. Often a belief in witchcraft leads to the murder of the reputed witch. On the other hand the witches themselves likewise commit murders for their own ends and to that extent justify their persecution. Tribal magic, in which the community combines, usually at some festival, in rites or dances intended to secure fertility or prosperity, is a normal feature of tribal religion. Such festivals are usually associated with the agricultural year, and no better instance of such a festival can be quoted than the holi, which has survived as a Hindu festival throughout India. Thus the tribal religions represent as it were surplus material not yet built into the temple of Hinduism. Hindu religion has its origin in pre-Vedic times and in its later form it is the result of the reaction by the religion of the country to the intrusive beliefs of the invaders. This will explain Hinduism’s amalgamation with and absorption of local cults and its excessive multiformity and is in accordance with the manner in which it spreads at the present day, absorbing tribal religions in virtue of its social prestige, and by identification of loca l gods with its own, by an experimental resort to Hindu priests, and by the social promotion of pagan chiefs who are provided with suitable mythological pedigrees.
Scope of Hinduism :
___________________The Hindu word ‘dharma’, which corresponds most closely to our word ‘religion’, connotes conduct more than creed. In India the line of cleavage is social rather than religious for no one is interested in what his neighbour believes, but in knowing whether he can eat with him or take water from his hands. The Indian, though much less tolerant than the European in the matter of his neighbour’s acts, is far more so where his beliefs are concerned. Fearing many gods himself, he is quite ready to admit that there may be others of whom he has no ken, and it seldom occurs to him differentiate himself from his fellows merely because they invoke a different deity in time of trouble. It is only when a new religious cult is joined to some strong social or political propaganda that any real cleavage is established. This was the case with Buddhism, which repudiated the Brahmanical supremacy, and Jainism, which denied the authority of the Vedas, and also with Sikhism in the form given to it by Guru Gobind, who aimed at the establishments of a political ascendancy and openly repudiated many of the ordinary Hindu scruples. The peculiar tenets of the Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs differ widely from the ordinary forms of Hinduism. There are numerous minor cults, such as those of the Satnamis and Panchpiriyas, which differ equally widely but have no history and no religious literature and are relatively of minor importance. Hinduism includes a complex congeries of creeds and doctrines. It shelters within its portals monotheists, polytheists and pantheists; worshippers of the great gods, Siva and Vishnu, or of their female counterparts, as well as worshippers of the divine mothers of the spirits of trees, rocks, and streams and of the tutelary village deities; persons who propitiate their deity by all manner of bloody sacrifices, and persons who not only will not kill any living creature but who must not even use the word ‘cut’; those whose ritual consists mainly of prayers and hymns, and those who indulge in unspeakable orgies in the name of religion; and a host more or less of heterogenous sectaries, many of whom deny the supremacy of the Brahmans, or at least have non-Brahmanical religious leaders. There is a bewildering maze of sects which overlap each other in a most extraordinary manner. There are the two main divisions of Saiva and Vaishnava; and it has been said that all Hindus belong to one or other of these, but this does not seem to be correct. There is, for example, the Sakta sect, which owes its origin to the Tantrik developments that infected both Buddhism and Hinduism, chiefly in North-East India, about the seventh century of our era. This cult is based on the worship of the active producing principle of nature as manifested in one or other of the goddess wives of Siva; it is a religion of bloody sacrifices and magic texts. The ritual is laid down in the mediaeval scriptures known as Tantras, in one of which it is expressly stated that the Vedas have become obsolete. Of the great mass of Hindus only a relatively small minority belong definitely to special sects, and still fewer have any idea that their peculiar cult differentiates then in any way from ordinary Hindus. A Bengali scholar said; – I fast on the Sivaratri day, because it is sacred to Siva, and I fast on the Ekadashi day because it is sacred to Vishnu. I plant the bel tree because it is dear to Siva and the tulsi because it is dear to Vishnu. The bulk of Hindus are not sectaries.
Hindu Sects.
Hindu sects may be grouped under seven heads :
- The old sects comprising the religious orders, the saint worshipers and the orthodox.
- Worshiping Muhammadan saints in addition to their own gods.
- Sects of low castes.
- The Reformers.
- Miscellaneous Sects
- Unspecified
- Sects analogous to other religions.
The Hindu religious orders are Shaiva (Sanyasis who are worshippers of Shiva and Jogis who worship Bhairon – including Gorakpanthis) and Vaishnavas (Bairagis who are attached to Ram Chandra and Gossins who are devotees of Krishna). Shankacharya organised the Sanyasis into a regular religious order and established four Mathas (central institutions) where alone a person could be initiated. They are at Goverdhan, Shringeri, Dwarika and Kedar. A disciple was placed in charge. A number of minor groups of Sanyasis have been formed such as Urdhabahu who keep one arm up until it becomes atrophied and stiffens in that position, Akashmukhi, who always keep looking upwards, Nakhi who grow their nails, Sthadeshwari who always keep standing and never sit or lie down. Urdhamukhi who tie themselves to a tree by their legs at the time of their practices.
The ceremonies of initiation are :
- To perform the shraddha of all his pitras – ancestors –
- To give away all that he possesses except a kopin, a loincloth, danda or staff, and jalpatira or water vessel;
- To have his beard, moustaches and head shaved – except the shikha or scalp lock;
- To perform his own shraddha or after death rites, thus declaring himself to be dead,
- To proclaim his giving up all desire for sons, wealth or higher life and his resolve that no living being shall be harmed by him,
- The severance of his shikha and abandonment of this world.
As to the orthodox Hindus, the bulk of them are Shaivas, for Goddess worship in one form or another is very prevalent but with reference to the main forms of worship it may be equally true to call the majority Vaishnavas.
Besides conversion Islam has had influence on the Hindu religion. The miraculous powers of Muhammadan saints were enough to attract Hindus. Such are the followers of Sakhi Sarwar or Sarwarias who abstain from Jhatka, i.e., they will not eat meat unless prepared by halal, and observe Jumerat – Thursdays, when doles are distributed in fulfilment of vows. The Shamsis are believers in Shah Shames Tabrez of Multan and follow the Imam, for the time being, of the Ismailia Shiahs, their present leader being H.H. the Agha Khan of Bombay. They belong mostly to the Sunar caste, pass as ordinary Hindus but their devotion to the Imam is said to rest on faith in the efficacy of his blessings. The instructions of the creed are issued in a novel alphabet – probably a secret code – by H.H. The Agha Khan who is said to represent an incarnation of the Hindu Trinity.
ISLAM was actually originated from BRHMIN.
Although it is considered in INDIAN SUB-CONTINENT, ISLAM was originated in the hand of Brahmins. It is considered that Kaaba was built for the devotion of Lord Shiva on the base of the story of Oor, an arabic merchent. He had got it erected for easy recognisation of Zamzam water sorce even from far distance in huge desert and dry mountains and for his devotion ofLord Shiva.
muslim idiols
1. KAAB (Builder of KAABA ca 320 AD) son of 2. LAWWA 3. GHALIB 4. FAHAR 5. MALIK 6. NADHAR (QURAISH) 7. CANAANA 8. KHAZEEMA 9. MADERKA 10. ILYAAS 11. MADHAR 12. NAZAAR 13. MAAD (the Second) 14. ADNAAN (the Second) 15. AUDHDH 16. AWAD (the Second) 17. AL-YASSAA 18. AL-HAMEESAA (the Second) 19. SALAMAAN (the Second) 20. SABET 21. HAMAL 22. MAAD (the First -588 BC) 23. ADNAAN (the First - 600 BC) 24. AWAD (the First0 25. AL-HAMEESAA (the First) 26. SALAMAAN (the First) 27. AUOS (the Second) 28. BIRDH 29. MEHENSAWEEL 30. ABUL AWAAM 31. NASEL 32. HURRAH 33. YELDAAREM 34. BIDHLAN 35. KALEH 36. FAJIM (MAJEM) 37. NAHOOR 38. MAAMI 39. AASQHAA 40. AANAF 41. ABEED 42. ADHDHAA 43. HAIRAAN 44. YASSEEN 45. BARRAA 46. SAJRAA 47. BALKHAA/II 48. ARR-AWAA 49. AANQHA 50. HISSAN 51. IESSA 52. AFSHAAR 53. ABHAAM 54. MAASAR 55. NAJIB 56. ZARAAHA 57. SAMAWA 58. MARRAH 59. AAWAS (the First) 60. AAWAM 61. QAIDAAR 62. ISMAEEL 63. IBRAHEEM (ca 1600 BC) 64. TARIKH also called TERAH 65. NAHOOR 66. SHARROOA 67. ARGHOO 68. QANEH 69. AABER 70. SALEKH 71. ARAFKHASHAD 72. SAM 73. NOOH (NOAH) 74. LAMAK 75. METHUSHELAH 76. AKHNOOA (IDREES) 77. BEYARIDH 78. MEHLAEEL 79. QAINAAN 80. ANOOSH 81. THEETH (SETH) 82. ADAM & EVE might not be the head of human race, may be only of the Semites.
According to Jewish (J document, J for Yaweh, CAIN, the tiller and ABEL, the shepherd, were born and after the murder of ABEL, another son THEETH was born.
According to P document (Priestly code) God bade the First Pair to “go forth and multiply” and THEETH was the Firstborn.
(There is confusion of S and Th. The pronunciation of TH in Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic is exactly the same as the English Th. However, the difference between TH and Saad is difficult to detect. sz).
Thus we can say Prophet Muhammed(pbuh) himself was born in the tribe of idol worshiping Qurayshi Brahmins who worshiped 360 idols inside Kaaba for 2500 yrs. In fact, all the first four great Khalifa's namely Abu Baker, Umar, Usman and Ali who brought Arabia under Islam are Qurayshi Brahmins. All of them are Brahmin Khalifas.
structure of kaaba, is symetrical with HINDUS HOMKUNDA OF ANY YAGYA or PUJA or VEDIC WORSHIP.
During Hajj pilgrimage to the Kaaba, Muslims purify and wear seamless white cloth. This is a clear Vedic remnant
Brahmin priests wearing White cloth for Vedic worship.
Finally. one can see striking similarities in the rituals performed by Muslims during Hajj and the rituals performed by Brahmins during Tirupathi pilgrimage.
* Shaving head
* Wrapping the body with unstiched cloth - Ihram
* 7 times circum ambulation
* Throwing 7 pebbles on the pillar - Throwing flowers on deity "Archana"
* Drinking holy water zam zam - Theertham
3. Tirupathi is surrounded by seven hills: Seshadri, Vedadri,Garudadri, Anjandri, Vrishabhadri, Narayandri and Venkatadri.
Mecca also is surrounded by 7 hills: Jabal abu Siba, Jabal Safa, Jabal Marwah, Jabal abu Milhah, Jabal abu Ma’aya, Jabal abu Hulayah and Jabal abu Ghuzlan
The principal sects of the lower castes are the Balmikis and Lalbegis. The Arya Samaj and the Brahmo Samaj are reforming sects.
The Brahma Samaj.
The Brahma Samaj, founded by Raja Ram Mohun Roy is divided into three sections, the Adi or original, the Nabab dhan or New Dispensation and the Sadharan or common Samaj but all alike believe in the unity of the Godhead, the brotherhood of man, and direct communion with God in spirit without the intervention of any mediator. The differences are ritualistic and social rather than religious. The Adi Samaj is the most conservative and while discarding all idolatrous forms, it follows as closely as possible the rites of Hinduism, drawing its inspiration from Hindu religious books, especially the Upanishads. The Nababidhan Samaj, founded by Keshab Chandra Sen, has assimilated what it considers just – both in the Shastras and in the teachings of Christianity, Buddhism and Islam. The Sadharan Brahmo Samaj is the most advanced and relies on the teachings of all religious systems, rejecting the system of caste altogether. It is also opposed to the parda system, gives its women a liberal education and allows them an equal voice in all matters of church government. (Bengal, 1901, p. 159). It inculcates the worship of One God, Creator and Preserver, who punishes sin remedially and is to be served in prayer and moral conduct. No prophet and no scriptures of any religion are finally and exclusively authoritative. The very broadness of this creed militates against its appeal to any but the most intellectual classes.
The Arya Samaj.
The Arya Samaj was founded by Mul Shankar, an Audich Brahman of Kathiawar. In 1845 he became a Sanyasi and devoting himself to yoga or ascetic philosophy wandered from teacher to teacher. From 1863 to 1873 Dayanand Saraswati as he was then called wandered over Northern India from Bombay to Calcutta preaching a reformed Hinduism. God – he taught – was a personal creator – all true, all knowledge, incorporeal, almighty, just, merciful, unbegotten, unchangeable, all pervading, immortal and the cause of the universe. He alone is to be worshipped. With God are two eternal substances – spirit or the soul and Prakriti, the material cause, creation was only a rearrangement of Prakriti. The soul is distinct from God – it is an eternal substance, endowed with consciousness and the capacity for pleasure, pain and knowledge. The Vedas are actually the knowledge of God Himself and consequently as eternal as He. Salvation (moksha) is won by good deeds; it is a temporary emancipation from human existence and its troubles, exchanged for a state of existence with God. The law of karma is an Arya tenet; man is free as regards his actions but cannot alter their results. Its ritual is simple. There is no doubt that it is the greatest religious movement in India of the past half century. When Dayanand died in 1883, he constituted the Paropkarini Sabha and left all his wealth to it to be spent on the publication of the Vedas, on the preaching of the word and the maintenance and education of orphans. In each province there is a Pratinidhi Sabba composed of delegates from each local sabba. Its funds are raised by subscriptions. Ever since 1897 Veda Prachar or missionary teaching has been the chief means of propagandism. The updeshaks or missionaries are always moving about, preaching especially at large fairs. The Aryas hold that not birth alone but occupation, method of life and knowledge of the Vedas determines caste. It has strong and sound views against child marriage. The expenses of weddings are curtailed. Widow remarriage is countenanced and encouraged. In the matter of food the tendency is to relax the Hindu restrictions till they are little more than such as are dictated in any case by common sense. They are far beyond the mass in the matter of education both male and female. The Arya Samaj meeting house serves the purposes of a social club, a religious meeting place and local headquarters. The samaj as a whole is not a political body, all Aryas are not politicians and those Aryas that are politicians have not necessarily opinions that lead to or connote disloyalty. The attitude of the Arya Samaj to other religions is often objectionable. It seems certain that the Arya Samaj do fear the spread of Christianity because the adoption or adaptation of any foreign creed would endanger the national feeling which they wish to foster. (U.P., 1911, p. 132 sq.) Started as a crusade to purge the old Sanatan Vedic religions of idolatrous impurities and to break the superiority of Brahmans, Aryaism has found it difficult to make much impression on the stubborn rock of Hinduism and there is now a noticeable weakening in their campaign against the priestly Brahman. The Sarnaj’s influence on the views and social activities of the orthodox Hindu community has been marked and has made for the amelioration of the lot of considerable numbers of the population. The Samaj still disclaims any political connexions. But the younger followers of the Samaj were among the most ardent supporters of the Congress movement and are not politically-minded because they are Aryas, rather they have become Aryas either in the hope of being able to use the Samaj’s organisation for their political aims or because the advanced doctrines of the Samaj appeal to them.
Miscellaneous Sects.
The Karthabhajas are said to be a disreputable Guru-worshipping sect but they call themselves worshippers of the Creator, the Satya or Sahaj Pharma. Members must never utter any untruth, must every day repeat the mantra three times in the prescribed manner on at least five occasions in the day, must observe Fridays as sacred, abstain from meat and intoxicating liquor. No distinctions based on caste or wealth are recognised but popular belief credits them with immoral practices. The original principle of the sect was the very antithesis of, sensuality. Men and women must remain as eunuchs for only by sexual self-restraint can one avoid the cycle of rebirth.
The same idea of the evils of procreation, as leading to rebirth in a world of misery, appears to be the basis of the beliefs of the Bauls, a Vaishnava sect who do not shave or cut their hair, go about in motley garb, and sing devotional songs to the accompaniment of stringed instruments called gub-guba-gub.
The Shikshaparas hold that Krishna is the only male principle in the universe and that all else constitutes his prakriti or female principle. A woman belonging to this sect is said to look upon Krishna as her spiritual husband and her mundane husband as a conventional appanage. She regards the Guru as Krishna’s representative on earth and has no objection to giving him the privileges of a husband. Caste distinctions are obliterated and members of different castes partake of food together.
The Sheonarayanis believe in one formless God and have a sacred book called the Sabda Granth which lays down that salvation can be attained only by faith in God, control of the passions and obedience to the Guru.
The Kabirpanthis follow Kabir who endeavoured to establish a religion that would embrace both Hindu and Musalman, rejecting distinctions of caste, sect and rank, and preaching the equality of man. One God only is worshipped and idolatry is forbidden. Converts from clean castes from whom water may be taken by Hindus will not allow converts from low castes to eat with them; the cook must, moreover, be a Brahmin or Rajput.
The Kumbhipatia sect was founded by Mukund Das who lived in retreat at Joranda for many years and proclaimed himself the apostle of a new faith. The idols worshipped by Hindus were merely stone and wood. The Creator of the Universe was Alekh or Mahima, a spiritual being without form, omnipresent and omniscient. He denounced the caste system and would eat food cooked by any one except a Raja, a Brahman, a Bhandari and a Dhoba – the Raja because he was responsible for the sins committed in the State, the Brahman because he accepted gifts from sinful persons, the Bhandari because he shaved sinners, and the Dhoba because he washed their clothes. He used to take his food on the public road in a broken earthen pot. He and his followers used the bark (pat) of the kumbhi or yellow cotton tree to cover their nakedness. As he was regarded as an incarnation of the deity and immortal, his death came as a shock to his followers but Bhima Bhoi, a blind boy of Kandh (Khond) origin became the leader of the sect. Inspired by the belief that if the image of Jagannath was destroyed, it would convince Hindus of the futility of their religion, he led a body of Kumbhipatias to Puri and tried to break into the shrine. A woman with whom he consorted became pregnant and Bhima declared that she would give birth to Arjun who would root out all unbelievers. The woman gave birth to a girl but Bhima asserted that it had been revealed to him that the child would destroy the unbelievers by her charms. The child died a few days later and Bhima gave out that she was a fairy who quitted this world because she found it filled with vice. They believe that the soul of the father is reincarnated in his son. To attain salvation one should not be reborn. Man is sinful because he does not repress his sexual instincts. For the specially initiated celibacy is essential. Others may marry and beget children but they must only have intercourse with their wives at periods favourable for the fertilisation of the ovum. If they observe this rule, though they beget children and must therefore be born again, they will be free from sexual passion and attain salvation at the next birth. Initiation confers a secret virtue by which man and woman are rendered incapable of procreation, even though there may be sexual union. God is an unseen power manifested by the organs of generation, but is not to be identified with them or their functions. God is in fact an omnipresent creative energy, but is not visible or expressible, and is therefore called Alekh. (Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and Sikkim,)
The present day leaders of this sect consider themselves to be Hindus with the exception that they do not worship idols or forms. The followers are divided into three classes – (1) Kumbhipatias, (2) Kamapatias and (3) Grihis. The first are those sannyasis who have attained that stage of development which entitles them to wear bark; the second are sannyasis who have coupins; and the third class are men living as householders but professing Alekh Dharma. (Bihar and Orissa, 1931)
Sectarian Marks.
The outward mark of sectarianism is what is known as a tilak, a mark made on the forehead (and on other parts as well see B.B.O. and S., 1911), as a symbol of the god which the sect worships. The marks of the Shaivas are phallic in character and consist of two or more horizontal lines with, or without, a dot below or above the lines, or on the middle line and with, or without, an oval or half oval; also by a triangle, a cone or any other pointed or arched figure having its apex upwards. The figure of a crescent moon or a trident (trisula) also indicates a votary of Siva. These marks are made by hand or by metallic stamps with ashes collected from the sacrificial fire or from burnt cowdung or sandal wood paste or turmeric steeped in a solution of lime juice and saltpetre. The ashes used are said to represent the disintegrating force associated with Siva. The Vaishnavas usually make two perpendicular lines on their foreheads with or without a dot or circle between them. They also make marks on their body by stamps of the emblems of Vishnu, the discus – chakra – the conch, sankha – the mace gada, and the lotus, padma. They have also other signs coloured red, yellow and black, made with sandal wood paste or charcoal taken from a fire in which incense has been burnt before an image. Clay brought from sacred places like the Ganges, Jaggannath, Puri, etc., is also used, especially by the lower castes. The different sub-divisions of Vaishnava sects founded by (1) Ramanuja (2) Madhava and (3) Vallabba have different tilaks. The followers of the first are divided into the northern school, Vadagalais and the southern school, the Ten-galais. The Vadagalais make a simple white line between the eyes, curved like the letter U to represent the sole of the right foot of Vishnu, and a central red mark emblematical of Lakshmi, while the Ten-galais have a more complicated device symbolical of both feet which are supposed to rest on the lotus. The Ten-galais symbol has the appearance of a trident, the two outer prongs painted with white earth standing for Vishnu’s two feet, the middle painted red for his consort Lakshmi and the white line drawn over nose representing the lotus. The sect marks of Madhavas and Vallabhas are those of the Vada-galais but the Madhavas instead of the red line in the centre have a black one made with charcoal taken from incense burnt before an image of Vishnu. The Vaishnavas also brand their breast, arms and other parts of the body with stamps representing the two chief emblems of Vishnu, the chakra and sankha. These instruments are made either of copper, brass or silver, are heated to a sufficient temperature to singe the shin and leave a deep black mark on it. Dwarka, Brindaban and Udki are the chief places where visitors go for these branding operations but the chief Gurus of the Madhava sect will perform the operations on followers of the sect wherever they happen to be. The Saktas have no special marks peculiar to them but use the same tilaks as the Saivas. (C.P., 1911, p. 88 sq).
Hinduism in the United Provinces.
Hinduism in the United Provinces, is Brahmanism run to seed and spread out into a confused tangle of divine personalities and incarnations, from which three emerge pre-eminent – Brahma, Siva, Vishnu. They are all equally manifestations of Brahma, the universal spirit, but they are also more, for they are separate personal deities. Hinduism’s chief characteristic is theism, but with constant lapses into pantheism. Hinduism itself is usually divided into five sects – Saivas, Vaishnavas, Saktas, Ganpatyas and Sauryas. The one creed which may be held to be orthodox in Hinduism is that which regards the highest deities as finite beings, destined ultimately to be absorbed into the universal spirit, Brahma. And in that sense Saiva and Vaishnava are unorthodox as they exalt each his favourite personal deity to the position of an eternal, supreme self-existing god. Saivaism identifies Siva with Brahma as well as with the Atman and Maya of the Vedanta philosophy, and also with the Purusha and Prakrit of the Sankhya system, with the male and female generative energies operating in the universe, with every conceivable force and form in nature! It is not pantheism, for Siva is a personal god; it is theism. But it is based on and directly springs from, the pantheism of Brahmanic thought. Vaishnavism exalts vishnu in much the same way. It is therefore like Saivaism a form of theism, even of monotheism. But there are certain differences. Saivaism is a severe and cold system. It inculcates reverence fear, worship: Vaishnavism postulates not only a personal god but personal devotion to him (bhagti) it inculcates faith rather than reverence, love rather than fear, devotion rather than worship. Such then is theoretical Hinduism which can be described in all its three forms as theism, which in the case of a few is polytheism, in the case of the vast majority is monotheism, but always theism with personal gods. Every Hindu has some conception of a supreme personal god called by many names but most commonly Parameshwar, who made the world, who is pleased by good and displeased by evil deeds but much too exalted to be troubled by mundane affairs. Nebulous as his idea of Parameshwar may be, it makes of him at bottom a monotheist. It is a waste of time to importune a god with prayer when his attitude is one of suave aloofness; and the Hindu reserves his attentions for the minor gods and godlings. There is however a point on which Hindus differ widely and that is the question of salvation and what it means. Each system has its own heaven – that of Siva is called Kailasa, supposed to be in the Himalayas; that of Vishnu is known as Vaikuntha and is generally located on the mythical Mount Meru. The faithful adherents are transported to these heavens, where, safe from future transmigration they attain to beatitude, which consists, according to the soul’s deserts in either salokya – dwelling in the same world with the personal god – or samipya – dwelling near the personal god – or sarupya – obtaining the form of the personal god. The kingdom of Hell, of Yama the god of death, lies in the south of the sky; between it and the earth flows the terrible river, Vaitarani, which all departed spirits must cross, Yama though he punishes the wicked does not reward the good who escape and go straight to Kailasa or Vaikuntha; nor can he avail against the power of proper death-bed ceremonies. As soon as the dead sinner has been cremated. Yama’s messengers hale him to the judgment seat. Chitra Gupta the recorder of good and evil deeds, produces his balanced account and judgment is pronounced accordingly. Once sentenced, the spirit is hastened back to the place of cremation, there to acquire a body; for without a body it can neither enjoy heaven nor suffer the pains of hell. This body is acquired by feeding on the pindas (funeral cakes) offered for 12 days. On the 13th day it is hurried back to hell, through fierce heat and icy winds, amid fearful thorns and terrible animals; the road at one place is the edge of razors and at another iron spikes. From there the worst of sinners can be saved by death-bed ritual and death-bed gifts to Brahmans. The first and most important ceremony is to transport the dying man to the nearest stream, among which the Ganges is pre-eminent. Merely to look on it in the death agony keeps Yama’s messengers at a distance. At the last moment the dying man is made if possible to repeat the taraka mantra or saving text. The Chaitanya Vaishnava sect consider that the mere repetition of Vishnu’s name, or names, especially Krishna, Narayan or Hari, secures admission to Vaikuntha but there is not in general use any such thing as a death-bed mantra. The ordinary Hindu layman, with no theological instruction, scarcely knows mukti which may be temporary or final for he means by it little more than an advantageous reincarnation. The ordinary good man must be content with hoping for temporary mukti in the heaven of his particular creed till he has been paid in full for the goodness of his past life and it is time for him to be born again. On the other hand the bad man can also escape hell and get some measure of mukti; so long as his funeral rites are all they should be, the god of hell will be disappointed of his victim but the sinner cannot escape a disadvantageous rebirth. To the average Hindu it is karma and not the pleasure or displeasure of a god, which provides the religious sanction which dissuades him from evil and persuades him to good. In theory it may be a weak sanction, for a man knows nothing of his former lives and practically it is another person who suffers from his ill deeds. Nobody minds running up a bill which somebody else will have to pay. But in practice there is no doubt it is a real and powerful sanction.
The Sanskars.
The ceremonies or sanskars prescribed for Brahmans and other twice-born castes are – (1) Garbhadhan, performed at the consummation of marriage. – (2) Punsavana, the sacrifice performed in the vitality in the foetus. – (3) Anavalomana, performed in the third month of pregnancy. – (4) Vishnubali, the guardian-pleasing sacrifice performed in the seventh month of pregnancy. – (5)Simantonayana, the parting of the hair in the fourth, sixth or eighth month of the first pregnancy. – (6) Jatakarma, giving the infant clarified butter out of a golden spoon before dividing the navel string. – (7) Namakarma, naming the child on the tenth, eleventh twelfth or hundred and first day. – (8) Nishkramana carrying out the child to be presented to the moon on the third lunar day of the third bright fortnight after birth. – (9) Suryavalokana carrying out the child in the third or fourth month to be presented to the sun. – (10) Annaprashana feeding the child with food (rice) in the sixth or eighth month. – (11) Chudakarma tonsure of the hair in the second, third or fifth year. – (12) Upanayana the ceremony of investing the boy with the sacred thread. – (13) Mahanamya the instruction in the Gayatriafter the Upanayana. – (14) Samavartana the boy’s return home after the completion of his studies. – (15), Vivalia, marriage. – (16) Antyeshthi obsequies.
Initiation.
Initiation (diskha or mantragrhan) is performed when a Hindu boy is 8 or 9 years old. The guru informs him what god is to be the peculiar deity of his worship and whispers in his ear a mantra some mystic syllables, through which he can obtain remission of sins and future happiness. This mantra the lad must keep an inviolable secret; its daily repetition is a solemn duty. Initiation is regarded as conferring spiritual franchise and bringing the boy into direct communication with God. The Guru renders spiritual revelation possible, for he acts as a medium between God and his disciple. Throughout the life of the latter the Guru is his spiritual guide and receives, almost divine veneration. A person who has passed the age at which he should have been initiated without having the ceremony performed, is held to be impure and to be incompetent to perform religious ceremonies with efficacy. No orthodox Hindu will knowingly take food or water from such a man, even though he belong to his own caste or family. He cannot enter into heaven or attain salvation by absorption into the divine essence, but will be condemned to narak (purgatory) and subject to re-birth. For this reason people dare not die without initiation and the ceremony is frequently performed upon their death-bed. It is not surprising that some Hindus consider initiation the most distinctive feature of Hinduism and the only possible criterion between the Hindu and the non-Hindu. A distinctive external sign of Hindu laymen is the chutia or as it is also called shikka or tikki, the lock of hair worn on the crown of the head. It distinguishes them from the Muhammadans on the one hand and from the Hindu monastic orders on the other. The practice of wearing this lock dates back to very ancient times and cutting it off was regarded as the greatest of punishments. This, indeed, was the punishment for heinous crimes imposed on Brahmans who could not be put to death. It is said in the Mahabharata that, when Asvathama was convicted of killing the sons of the Pandavas, his top-knot was torn out of his head. In commemoration of this and symbolically to heal the raw wound on his head, every Hindu when taking his daily bath sprinkles a little oil on before anointing his body. Dressing the top-knot and tying it are regarded as a daily religious duty by all Hindus and there are distinctive mantras to be uttered on this occasion. (Bengal, Bihar, Sikkim and Orissa. 1911,)
Duties of Brahman.
The Brahman is enjoined to perform daily, in addition to the sandhya prayers, the panchamahayadnya or five daily acts of devotion, viz., (1) bhutayadnya or oblation to all created beings (2)manushyayddna, hospitable reception of guests, (3) pitrayadna, oblations of water to the manes, (4) brahmayadna, the recital of the Vedas, (5) devayadna oblations to the gods through fire. But except the very orthodox who are few in number, none perform any except the sandhya, which is dispensed with by a large number of educated persons. Marathas, Rajputs, Kunbis and the artisan castes are expected to worship the house-gods after the morning bath or to visit temples. The worship of the house gods should be performed by the head or other elder of the family; but it is generally entrusted to the drone of the family if there be one. It is often delegated to boys, and even to women as a last resort. Among the well-to-do, a Brahman priest is engaged to perform the daily worship of the house-gods. The Brahmans and other high caste Hindus have generally in their houses a room set apart for the worship of the gods, which is known as the god-room. Their family gods generally consist of the Panchayatna or the group of five, a stone linga, pyramid for Mahadev, a stone Shaligram or round pebble from the Gandaki or the Narbada river or an idol of Vishnu, an image of Shakti Bhavani or Mata, Ganpati, and Surya, or the sun. Some families have the images of their family deities such as Khandoba or Vithoba. Toks or embossed images of deceased ancestors are also kept among the house gods, in the Deccan. In Kanara the favourite house gods of the lower castes are Venkatramana and Ammas or mother goddesses, to which are some times added unhusked cocoanuts representing the original ancestors of the family. In addition to the house deities, the sun is worshipped by Brahmans and other castes who perform Brahmanic rites, by the offering of arghyas or water while performing sandhya. Other Hindus worship the sun every morning by bowing down to him after cleaning their teeth and washing their faces; some times after the bath. Certain texts are repeated by Brahmans and other twice-born castes while bathing, while the other castes repeat the names of the sacred rivers. The tulsi plant is grown in a kind of altar in the backyards of houses in towns and in front yards of villages by all pious Hindus. It is worshipped daily, especially by married women whose husbands are still alive. Every year the marriage of the tulsi with Vishnu is celebrated in every Hindu house with the help of a Brahman priest. Of the principal Hindu gods, Siva is worshipped annually on the treat Sivaratri or Siva’s night in Magh and on every Monday in Sravan Vishnu is worshipped in his incarnation as Krishna on the eighth of the dark half of Sravan and as Ram on the ninth day of Chaitra. The goddess Bhavani is worshipped during the Navaratra or nine days of the first half ofAshvin. When cholera breaks out, Mariamma or Kakabalia, that is the cholera goddess is worshipped with offerings of water, goats sheep, fowls or he-buffaloes. Similar offerings are made to Sitaladevi or smallpox goddess when smallpox is raging; when a child recovers from smallpox and in certain castes even after vaccination. In other cases of sickness vows are made to certain deities, which are fulfilled if the patient recovers. No special deities are worshipped to overcome barrenness but vows are made and pipal trees are circumambulated for hundreds of times a day continually for days. On all ceremonial occasions Ganpati is worshipped as the remover of obstacles. Among Brahmans and other higher castes, Gaurihar is worshipped by the bride at the time of marriage. Animal sacrifices are made to the gods Khandoba, Bahiroba, Jotiba, etc. and to the goddess Bhavani, Kalika, Maruti, Kakabalia, Sitala and others. The usual occasion for animal sacrifices is the Desara holiday. Occasional sacrifices are made to the gods generally on Sundays and to the goddess on Tuesday or Friday when they do not fall on fast days. The sacrifice is attended with little or no ceremony; but at times the animal is, worshipped and music is played while it is being slaughtered. All the cultivating castes perform field rites for the protection of their crops and cattle. Before sinking a well and before each seasons first ploughing the ground is worshipped. Before watering the ground for the first time the water in the well is worshipped and to guard against excessive rain fall the village headman and other husbandmen go with music to the village tank and offer flowers, red powder and cocoanuts. The field rites of the Maratha Kunbis are far more elaborate.
In Sanskrit the meaning of a word is based on the verbal root from which the word is derived. The word “BRAMHāN” “ব্রাহ্মণ’’ “ब्राह्मण” (also spelled as “Brahma”) is a noun derived from the verbal root “Briha” which means to become big. Thus the noun Brahman derived from the verbal root “Briha” means “bigness”. In English, however, the word Brahman is not translated as bigness, but as Absolute Reality.
Let us first examine the meaning of Absolute Reality. Absolute means ultimate, independent, existing all by itself or complete by itself and reality means nature, quality, or substance of objects. Thus Absolute Reality means ultimate nature of objects, called Brahman in Sanskrit. This word also means the substance that exists independent of all other substances and from which all other substances are derived. That from which the origin, sustenance, and dissolution of this universe are derived is called the Absolute. Thus the Absolute Reality, the substance from which everything is derived, must be “Big” or limitless, because everything else is either derived from it or is included in it. Because it is absolute, there is nothing else other than the Absolute Reality, the substratum of everything. Thus Brahman is all encompassing substance --- the root cause of everything, known or unknown, seen or perceived, feelings or emotions, thoughts or things. Everything is included in the“Bigness” of Brahman. Nothing is left out --- including God.
“BRAMHāN” [Brahman], is indestructible, dimensionless, beginning-less, andlimitless. It cannot be measured, seen, or described by a human being that is limited in everyway. Brahman is ever present and beyond time and space. Actually time and space are included in Brahman. It is the ever present reality of all objects and is also called “Sat” or permanent in Sanskrit. It is also present in the form of consciousness (Chit) or awareness in all living beings that cannot be seen or felt. Brahman in the form of awareness is not present in non-living objects, but Sat is present in both living and non-living objects. Brahman is also limitless (Ananta). Thus Brahman is referred as Sat-Chit-Ananta or Sacchidananta from point of view of all objects, living or non-living.
Everything, perceivable or non-perceivable, in the cosmos is nothing but an apparent transformation of Brahman. It is the cause of all causes. Thus there is Brahman and Brahman only and nothing else. Brahman has apparently assumed different forms like water assumes different forms such as ice, vapor, ocean, waves, ripples, etc. The entire creation is born in time and space, and the time and space abides in Brahman. Thus Brahman is the absolute reality of everything including me, you, the animals, plants, minerals, our thoughts, knowledge, ignorance, happiness, suffering, etc. Thus there is nothing other tha BRAMHāN.
Brahman is often described as formless, because its transcendental or subtle form cannot be perceived by our senses. It can take any form. All forms are nothing but an apparent change of Brahman from one form to another. Thus it cannot be formless in a real sense. Everything has a form --- visible or invisible to human eyes. The process or the forces (Shakti) that cause this apparent change or creation is called Lord, the creator. The product of the change is called creation that includes both living and non-living beings.
BRAMHāN itself is action-less awareness. And without Maya, the power of nature, it cannot create the world of objects, emotions and thoughts. This Maya, the efficient cause of creation is not separate from Brahman. Similarly, both the material of creation or the material cause of the creation is also in Brahman. Thus the Brahman is not only the entire creation, but also both the material and efficient cause of the creation. It is the creator as well as the creation, all in one. One who understands Brahman in this way can say: I am the limitless Brahman, called Atma, that dwells in the body-mind complex; and not this body-mind complex which is limited. With the dawn of the knowledge of Brahman, one gets rid of want, unhappiness and limitations and attains full maturity and bliss called Nirvana.
[nirvāna (emancipation) is the perfect peace of the state of mind that is free from craving, anger, and other afflicting states (kilesas). This peace is achieved when the existing volitional formations which have been firmly established in the course of countless incarnations (as the bases for worldly activity) are pacified and the conditions for the production of new ones eradicated. In nirvāṇa the deeply set roots of craving (Pali: tanha, raga, lobha) and aversion (Pali:dosa)—dispositions of the mind/brain apparatus considered in Buddhism the cause of human suffering (dukkha—the first noble truth according to the Buddha)—have been dissolved and uprooted. These underlying dispositions furthermore are the basis for the process of repeated incarnation so their uprooting means that one is no longer subject to further rebirth in samsāra. This nirvāna is "the highest happiness", an enduring, transcendental happiness qualitatively different from the limited, transitory happiness derived from impermanent things.]
NOW, The purity of mind that comes from selfless service, KarmaYoga, is required to gain the knowledge of Brahman or the Self-knowledge. "Truly, there is no purifier in this world like the true knowledge of the Supreme Being. One discovers this knowledge within, naturally, in course of time when one's mind is cleansed of selfishness by KarmaYoga.
THE SUPREME CAN BE DESCRIBED BY PARABLES, AND NOT IN ANY OTHER WAY.
The concept of Brahma-Vishnu-Maheswar :
The Supreme Being --- the object of knowledge. By knowing this one attains immortality. The beginningless Supreme Being is said to be neither eternal nor temporal.
In the beginning there was neither Eternal Being nor Temporal Beings; no sky, no air, neither day nor night. There was nothing else whatsoever other than the Absolute Supreme Being (RV 10.129.01, AiU 1.01). The Absolute is beyond both Temporal Beings (celestial controllers, Devas) and the Eternal Being (the Spirit). Therefore, He is neither temporal, nor eternal. The Supreme Being or the Absolute is also both temporal and eternal and beyond temporal and eternal; because, He is everywhere, in everything, and also beyond everything. Therefore, the Absolute is all three :
1.neither temporal nor eternal;
2.beyond both temporal and eternal,
3.as well as both temporal and eternal --- at the same time.
The Supreme Being has His hands, feet, eyes, head, mouth, and ears everywhere, because He is all-pervading and omnipresent.
He is the perceiver of all sense objects without the physical sense organs; unattached, and yet the sustainer of all; devoid of the three modes of material Nature, and yet the enjoyer of the modes of material Nature by becoming the living entity.
The Self walks without legs, hears without ears, performs many actions without hands, smells without a nose, sees without eyes, speaks without a mouth, and enjoys all tastes without a tongue. All His actions are so marvelous that one finds His greatness utterly beyond description. The Supreme Being may be described only by parables and paradoxes and in no other way. Self expands Himself as the living entity to enjoy three modes of material Nature.
God does not possess a body like an ordinary being. All His senses are transcendental, or out of this world. His potencies are multifarious. Any one of His senses can perform the action of any other sense. All His deeds are automatically performed as a natural consequence.
He is inside as well as outside all beings, animate and inanimate. He is incomprehensible because of His subtlety. And because of His omnipresence, He is very near --- residing in one’s inner psyche --- as well as far away in the Supreme Abode.
He is undivided, yet appears to exist as if divided in beings. He is the object of knowledge and appears as: the creator (Brahmaa),
sustainer (Vishnu),
destroyer (Shiva) __of all beings.
One planet earth appears divided into so many countries, one country appears divided into several states, one state appears divided into counties and so on; similarly, one Reality appears as many. These are apparent divisions, because they have the same order of reality.The term God is used for the Generator, Operator, and Destroyer aspects of the Self.
The Supreme Being is the source of all lights. He is said to be beyond darkness of ignorance. He is Self-knowledge, the object of Self-knowledge, and seated in the inner psyche as consciousness of all beings, He is to be realized by Self-knowledge.
“BRAMHāN” / “ব্রাহ্মণ’’ (Brahmin/Brahman; Brāhmaṇa) (Sanskrit: ब्राह्मण) is a name used to designate a member of one of the four varnas in the traditionalHindu society. The English word brahmin is an anglicised form of the Sanskrit word Brāhmana. In the Smriti view there are four "varnas", or classes: the Brahmins, the Kshatriyas, the Vaishyas, and Shudras. The Atreya smriti 141-142 enjoins that
"janmana jayate shudrah’’
One is a Shudra by birth
samskarad dvija ucyate
By observing Samskaras one becomes a Dvija
vedapathi bhaved viprah
By studying the Vedas one becomes a Vipra
and
brahma janati brahmanah
One who knows Brahman is a Brahmana.
Thus…“BRAMHāN” / “ব্রাহ্মণ’’ became a CLASS. Let’s see when it was generated.
ORIGINATION of BRAMHāN / ব্রাহ্মণ Race :
With the birth of HINDU PHILOSOPHY, a CLASS of people, who adhered to different branches of Vedas, used to practice FIRE-PRIEST culture to adhere the spirit of SUPREME KNOWLEDGE. Members of the Brahmin varna are generally expected to belong to this priestly class. However, historically, the semantic change from a tribal state into the Hindu state of jati-varna matrix saw the conversion and absorption of tribal into the Brahmin class, through getting knowledge and through adoption of the priestly occupation.
In Medieval and colonial Indian Subcontinent, people in mundane occupations have also proselytized themselves into Brahmins, usually upon gaining positions of power or upon becoming wealthy.
By HINDU philosophy, it’s conferred upon the Brahmins, the position of being the highest of the four Varnas. The priestly class was expected to practice self-abnegation and play the role of being the custodians of Dharma (as "one who prays; a devout or religious man; a Brāhman who is well versed in Vedic texts; one versed in sacred knowledge").
According to mythology, the Brahmin community started from Brahma creation, husband of Brahmani, the supreme Hindu Goddess of knowledge and education in ancient Indian mythology and adopted in their religion (Vedic religion of early Hinduism, now often referred to by Hindus as Sanatana Dharma). The Vedas are said to be the primary source of knowledge for Brahmin practices. Most sampradayas (sects) of modern Brahmins claim to take inspiration from the Vedas. According to orthodox Hindu tradition, the Vedas areapauruṣeya and anādi (beginning-less), and are revealed truths of eternal validity.
The Vedas are considered Śruti ("that which is heard") and are the paramount source on which modern Brahmin tradition claims to be based. Shruti includes not only the four Vedas (the Rigveda, the Yajurveda, the Samaveda and the Atharvaveda), but also their respective Brahmanas, Aranyakas & Upanishads.
LET’S SEE WHAT IS RACE (classification of humans) :
ydna_migrationmap_(FTDNA2006)
The concept of human races has often been misused, and the whole issue has therefore come under intense criticism. Though it is unlikely that there exist populations of humans that have been reproductively isolated for long enough to have diversified to the same extent as races of other biological organisms, many genetic traits do show geographical (and demographical) distributions demonstrating historical endogamical traits. When the lines separating many of these characters roughly coincide, it is useful to refer to the common borders as race divisions.
Historical race concepts have varied across cultures and over time, and have been controversial for social, political and scientific reasons. Until the 19th century, race was thought by many to constitute an immutable and distinct type or species which shared particular racial characteristics, such as body constitution, temperament and mental capacities.
One concept, that of Christian Western Europe, conceived of the races as constituting a hierarchical chain of life known as the Great Chain of Being, which was believed to have been created by God, in which the people thought the Christian European races were closest to God in perfection.
As per Early Modern Concept of race, this is a Group of humans have probably always identified themselves as distinct from other groups, but such differences have not always been understood to be natural, immutable and global. These features are the distinguishing features of how the concept of race is used today.
Etymology
The word "race", interpreted to mean common descent, was introduced into English in about 1580, from the Old French rasse (1512), from Italian razza, which may have been derived from the Arabic Word "ras" "رأس" meaning the head of someone or something. In this context, "ras" points to the root or the head of selected species. The etymology can be further traced back to Latin gens or Arabic "genat" "جينات" meaning clan, stock or people and genus meaning birth, descent, origin, race, stock, or family, and cognate with Greek genos (γένος) "race, kind," and gonos "birth, offspring, stock [...]." This late origin for the English and French terms is consistent with the thesis that the concept of "race" as defining a small number of groups of human beings based on lineage dates from the time of Christopher Columbus. Older concepts, which were also based at least partly on common descent, such as nationand tribe entail a much larger number of groupings.
During the Age of Enlightenment, Europeans tried to define race as a biological concept, in keeping with their scientific ideas. In the centuries that followed, scholars made attempts to classify and define racial types, and to determine racial origins and correlates. As forensic anthropologists, biomedical researchers, and other scholars have collected and analyzed data on individuals and populations, some maintain that race denotes scientifically practical distinctions.
Earliest views on ethnic differences
In many ancient civilizations, individuals with widely varying physical appearances became full members of a society by growing up within that society or by adopting that society's cultural norms. (Snowden 1983; Lewis 1990).
When the lighter ancient Egyptians were in power, they called the darker group "the evil race of Ish". When the darker ancient Egyptians were in power, they called the lighter group "the pale, degraded race of Arvad". These differences also related to different cultural groups who competed for power. For example, the Ancient Egyptian sacred text called Book of Gatesidentifies four ethnic categories that are now conventionally labeled "Egyptians", "Asiatics", "Libyans", and "Nubians" (see Ancient Egypt and race), but such distinctions tended toconflate differences as defined by physical features such as skin tone, with tribal and national identity.
Classical civilizations from Rome to China tended to invest the most importance in familial or tribal affiliation than an individual's physical appearance (Dikötter 1992; Goldenberg 2003). Societies still tended to equate physical characteristics, such as hair and eye colour, with psychological and moral qualities, usually assigning the highest qualities to their own people and lower qualities to the "Other", either lower classes or outsiders to their society. For example, an historian of the 3rd century Han Dynasty in the territory of present-day China describes barbarians of blond hair and green eyes as resembling "the monkeys from which they are descended." (Gossett,)
Dominant in ancient Greek and Roman conceptions of human diversity was the thesis that physical differences between different populations could be attributed to environmental factors. Though ancient peoples likely had no knowledge of evolutionary theory or genetic variability, their concepts of race could be described as malleable. Chief among environmental causes for physical difference in the ancient period were climate and geography. Though thinkers in ancient civilizations recognized differences in physical characteristics between different populations, the general consensus was that all non-Greeks were barbarians. This barbarian status, however, was not thought to be fixed; rather, one could shed the ‘barbarian’ status simply by adopting Greek culture.
Ancient Greek theories
Hippocrates of Cos.
Hippocrates believed, as many thinkers throughout early history did, that factors such as geography and climate played a significant role in the physical appearance of different peoples. He writes that, “ the forms and dispositions of mankind correspond with the nature of the country.” He attributed physical and temperamental differences among different peoples to environmental factors such as climate, water sources, elevation and terrain. He noted that temperate climates created peoples who were “sluggish” and “not apt for labor”, while extreme climates led to peoples who were “sharp”, “industrious” and vigilant”. He also noted that peoples of “mountainous, rugged, elevated, and well-watered” countries displayed “enterprising” and “warlike” characteristics, while peoples of “level, windy, and well-watered” countries were “unmanly” and “gentle”.
The Greek philosopher Aristotle believed that climate played the most crucial factor in determining differences in physical characteristics, most notably the mixture of heat and cold. He is widely credited with devising the concept of the great chain of being, in De partibus animalium, in which animals of the earth exist on a fixed and unchanging ladder of perfection depending on the mixture of fundamental elements within the animal (Graves 2001). Though Aristotle did not explicitly delineate the variety of the human species on this scale, later scientists would re-invent the scale, using explicit divisions of human races.
Ancient Roman theories
Julian the Apostate, a Roman emperor in the 4th century, stereotyped characteristics of various ethnic groups, which he attributed to Divine Providence:
"Come, tell me why it is that the Celts and the Germans are fierce, while the Hellenes and Romans are, generally speaking, inclined to political life and humane, though at the same time unyielding and warlike? Why the Egyptians are more intelligent and more given to crafts, and the Syrians unwarlike and effeminate, but at the same time intelligent, hot-tempered, vain and quick to learn? For if there is anyone who does not discern a reason for these differences among the nations, but rather declaims that all this so befell spontaneously, how, I ask, can he still believe that the universe is administered by a providence?"[4]
Medieval theories
European medieval models of race generally mixed Classical ideas with the notion that humanity as a whole was descended from Shem, Ham and Japheth, the three sons of Noah, producing distinct Semitic (Asiatic), Hamitic (African), and Japhetic (Indo-European) peoples. This theory dates back to the Judeo-Christian tradition, as described in the BabylonianTalmud, which states that "the descendants of Ham are cursed by being black, and [it] depicts Ham as a sinful man and his progeny as degenerates."
In the 9th century, Al-Jahiz, an Afro-Arab Islamic philosopher attempted to explain the origins of different human skin colors, particularly black skin, which he believed to be the result of the environment. He cited a stony region of black basalt in the northern Najd as evidence for his theory:[5]
In the 14th century, the Islamic sociologist Ibn Khaldun, a proponent dispelled the Judeo-Christian account of peoples and their characteristics as a myth. He wrote that black skin was due to the hot climate of sub-Saharan Africa and not due to the descendants of Ham being cursed.[6] Such Arabic writings were generally not accessible to many Europeans at this time.
Later, during the European colonial era, Ibn Khaldun's work was translated into French, especially for use in Algeria, but in the process, the work was transformed from local knowledge to colonial categories of knowledge. The historian William Desborough Cooley's The Negro Land of the Arabs Examined and Explained (1841) has excerpts of translations of Khaldun's work that were not affected by French colonial ideas. For example, Cooley quotes Khaldun's describing the great African civilization of Ghana (in Cooley's translation):
"When the conquest of the West (by the Arabs) was completed, and merchants began to penetrate into the interior, they saw no nation of the Blacks so mighty as Ghánah, the dominions of which extended westward as far as the Ocean. The King's court was kept in the city of Ghánah, which, according to the author of the 'Book of Roger' (El Idrisi), and the author of the 'Book of Roads and Realms' (El Bekri), is divided into two parts, standing on both banks of the Nile, and ranks among the largest and most populous cities of the world.
The people of Ghánah had for neighbours, on the east, a nation, which, according to historians, was called Súsú; after which came another named Máli; and after that another known by the name of Kaǘkaǘ; although some people prefer a different orthography, and write this name Kághó. The last-named nation was followed by a people called Tekrúr. The people of Ghánah declined in course of time, being overwhelmed or absorbed by the Molaththemún (or muffled people; that is, the Morabites), who, adjoining them on the north towards theBerber country, attacked them, and, taking possession of their territory, compelled them to embrace the Mohammedan religion. The people of Ghánah, being invaded at a later period by the Súsú, a nation of Blacks in their neighbourhood, were exterminated, or mixed with other Black nations." [8]
Ibn Khaldun suggests a link between the rise of the Almoravids and the decline of Ghana. But, historians have found virtually no evidence for an Almoravid conquest of Ghana.
Early Modern period
The word "race," along with many of the ideas now associated with the term were products of European imperialism and colonization during the age of exploration. (Smedley 1999) As Europeans encountered people from different parts of the world, they speculated about the physical, social, and cultural differences among various human groups, which marked the early stages of the development of science. Scientists who were interested in natural history, including biological and geological scientists, were known as “naturalists”. They would collect, examine, describe, and arrange data from their explorations into categories according to certain criteria. People who were particularly skilled at organizing specific sets of data in a logically and comprehensive fashion were known as classifiers and systematists. This process was a new trend in science that served to help answer fundamental questions by collecting and organizing materials for systematic study, also known as taxonomy.
As the study of natural history grew, so did society’s effort to classify human groups. Some zoologists and scientists wondered what made humans different than animals in the primate family. Furthermore, they contemplated whether homo sapiens should be classified as one species with multiple varieties or separate species.
In the 16th and 17th century, scientists attempted to classify Homo sapiens based on a geographic arrangement of human populations based on skin color, others simply on geographic location, shape, stature, food habits, and other distinguishing characteristics. Occasionally the term “race” was used but most of the early taxonomist used classificatory terms such as “peoples,” “nations,” “types,” “varieties,” and “species.”
Age of Enlightenment
As noted earlier, scientists attempted to classify Homo sapiens based on a geographic arrangement of human populations based on skin color, others simply on geographic location, shape, stature, food habits, and other distinguishing characteristics. In the 18th century, scientists began to include behavioral or psychological traits in their reported observations- which often had derogatory or demeaning implications – and often assumed that those behavioral or psychological traits were related to their race, and therefore, innate and unchangeable. Other areas of interest were to determine the exact number of races, categorize and name them, and examine the primary and secondary causes of variation between groups.
The Great Chain of Being, a medieval idea that there was a hierarchical structure of life from the most fundamental elements to the most perfect, began to encroach upon the idea of race. As taxonomy grew, scientists began to assume that the human species could be divided into distinct subgroups. One’s “race” necessarily implied that one group had certain character qualities and physical dispositions that differentiated it from other human populations. Society gave different values to those differentiations, which essentially created a gap between races by deeming one race superior or inferior to another race, thus a hierarchy of races. In this way, science was used as justification for unfair treatment of different human populations.
The Enlightenment period saw the rise of both monogenism and polygenism, these are both theories of racial origins, monogenism is the idea that all races have a single origin, while polygenism is the idea that all races have a separate origin.
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach
Blumenbach's five races.
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach divided the human species into five races in 1779, later founded on crania research (description of human skulls), and called them (1793/1795):
the Caucasian race or white race
the Mongolian or yellow race
the Malayan or brown race
the Ethiopian, or black race
the American or red race.
(See also color terminology for race.)
These five groupings together with two other additional groupings called the Australoid race (1940s) and the Capoid race (early 1960s), making a total of seven groupings in all, are today known as the traditional racial classifications or the historical definition of race. These groupings are still used today in historicalanthropology that describes human migration and in forensics.
His classification of the Mongolian race included all East Asians and some Central Asians. Blumenbach excluded peoples of Southeast Asian islands and Pacific Islanders from his definition in 1779, as he considered them to be part of the Malay race. He considered American Indians to be part of the American (Indigenous peoples) race. He did not think they were inferior to the Caucasian race, and were potentially good members of society. He included the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa in the Negro or black race.
Blumenbach argued that physical characteristics like skin color, cranial profile, etc., were depended on geography and nutrition and custom.
Blumenbach's work included his description of sixty human crania (skulls) published originally in fascicules as Decas craniorum (Göttingen, 1790–1828). This was a founding work for other scientists in the field of craniometry.
Further anatomical study led him to the conclusion that 'individual Africans differ as much, or even more, from other individual Africans as Europeans differ from Europeans'. Furthermore he concluded that Africans were not inferior to the rest of mankind 'concerning healthy faculties of understanding, excellent natural talents and mental capacities'.
"Finally, I am of opinion that after all these numerous instances I have brought together of negroes of capacity, it would not be difficult to mention entire well-known provinces of Europe, from out of which you would not easily expect to obtain off-hand such good authors, poets, philosophers, and correspondents of the Paris Academy; and on the other hand, there is no so-called savage nation known under the sun which has so much distinguished itself by such examples of perfectibility and original capacity for scientific culture, and thereby attached itself so closely to the most civilized nations of the earth, as the Negro."
Racial anthropology (1850-1930)
Among the 19th century naturalists who defined the field were Georges Cuvier, James Cowles Pritchard, Louis Agassiz, Charles Pickering (Races of Man and Their Geographical Distribution, 1848). Cuvier enumerated three races, Pritchard seven, Agassiz twelve, and Pickering eleven.
The 19th century saw attempts to change race from a taxonomic to a biological concept. For example, using anthropometrics, invented by Francis Galton and Alphonse Bertillon, they measured the shapes and sizes of skulls and related the results to group differences in intelligence or other attributes (Lieberman 2001).
These scientists made three claims about race: first, that races are objective, naturally occurring divisions of humanity; second, that there is a strong relationship between biological races and other human phenomena (such as forms of activity and interpersonal relations and culture, and by extension the relative material success of cultures), thus biologizing the notion of "race", as Foucault demonstrated in his historical analysis; third, that race is therefore a valid scientific category that can be used to explain and predict individual and group behavior. Races were distinguished by skin color, facial type, cranial profile and size, texture and color of hair. Moreover, races were almost universally considered to reflect group differences in moral character and intelligence.
The eugenics movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, inspired by Arthur Gobineau's An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853–1855) and Vacher de Lapouge's "anthroposociology", asserted as self-evident the biological inferiority of particular groups (Kevles 1985). In many parts of the world, the idea of race became a way of rigidly dividing groups by culture as well as by physical appearances (Hannaford 1996). Campaigns of oppression and genocide were often motivated by supposed racial differences (Horowitz 2001)
During the late 19th century and early 20th century, the tension between the social conservatives, who believed in hierarchy and innate superiority, and the social liberals, who believed in social change and human equality, was at a paramount. The social conservatives continued to exacerbate the belief that certain races were innately inferior by examining their shortcomings, namely by examining and testing intelligence between groups. Some scientists claimed that there was a biological determinant of race by evaluating one’s genes andDNA. Different methods of eugenics, the study and practice of human selective breeding often with a race as a primary concentration, was still widely accepted in Britain, Germany, and the United States. On the other hand, many scientists understood race as a social construct. They believed that the phenotypical expression of an individual were determined by one’s genes that are inherited through reproduction but there were certain social constructs, such as culture, environment, and language that were primary in shaping behavioral characteristics. Some advocated that race ‘should centre not on what race explains about society, but rather on the questions of who, why and with what effect social significance is attached to racial attributes that are constructed in particular political and socio-economic contexts,’ and thus, addressing the “folk” or “mythological representations” of race.
Although there was a strong notion of race as cultural instead of biological, there were still scientists such as Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt, Stanley Marion Garn, and Jan Czekanowskiwho continued in their taxonomic endeavor to count the number of races and to name them.
CONCLUSION ABOUT RACE :
By the 1970s, it had become clear that (1) most human differences were cultural; (2) what was not cultural was principally polymorphic – that is to say, found in diverse groups of people at different frequencies; (3) what was not cultural or polymorphic was principally clinal – that is to say, gradually variable over geography; and (4) what was left – the component of human diversity that was not cultural, polymorphic, or clinal – was very small.
A consensus consequently developed among anthropologists and geneticists that race as the previous generation had known it – as largely discrete, geographically distinct, gene pools – did not exist.
Anthropologists long ago discovered that humans' physical traits vary gradually, with groups that are close geographic neighbors being more similar than groups that are geographically separated. This pattern of variation, known as clinal variation, is also observed for many alleles that vary from one human group to another. Another observation is that traits or alleles that vary from one group to another do not vary at the same rate. This pattern is referred to as nonconcordant variation. Because the variation of physical traits is clinal and nonconcordant, anthropologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries discovered that the more traits and the more human groups they measured, the fewer discrete differences they observed among races and the more categories they had to create to classify human beings. The number of races observed expanded to the 30s and 50s, and eventually anthropologists concluded that there were no discrete races. Twentieth and 21st century biomedical researchers have discovered this same feature when evaluating human variation at the level of alleles and allele frequencies. Nature has not created four or five distinct, nonoverlapping genetic groups of people.
Biological definitions of race (Long & Kittles 2003)
Essentialist
Hooton (1926)
"A great division of mankind, characterized as a group by the sharing of a certain combination of features, which have been derived from their common descent, and constitute a vague physical background, usually more or less obscured by individual variations, and realized best in a composite picture."
Taxonomic
Mayr (1969)
"A subspecies is an aggregate of phenotypically similar populations of a species, inhabiting a geographic subdivision of the range of a species, and differing taxonomically from other populations of the species."
Population
Dobzhansky (1970)
"Races are genetically distinct Mendelian populations. They are neither individuals nor particular genotypes, they consist of individuals who differ genetically among themselves."
Lineage
Templeton (1998)
"A subspecies (race) is a distinct evolutionary lineage within a species. This definition requires that a subspecies be genetically differentiated due to barriers to genetic exchange that have persisted for long periods of time; that is, the subspecies must have historical continuity in addition to current genetic differentiation."
Population genetic correlation structure
Edwards (2003)
"most of the information that distinguishes populations is hidden in the correlation structure of the data and not simply in the variation of the individual factors."
Races as social constructions :
As anthropologists and other evolutionary scientists have shifted away from the language of race to the term population to talk about genetic differences, historians, cultural anthropologists and other social scientists re-conceptualized the term "race" as a cultural category or social construct—a particular way that some people talk about themselves and others.
Many social scientists have replaced the word race with the word "ethnicity" to refer to self-identifying groups based on beliefs concerning shared culture, ancestry and history. Alongside empirical and conceptual problems with "race," following the Second World War, evolutionary and social scientists were acutely aware of how beliefs about race had been used to justify discrimination, apartheid, slavery, and genocide. This questioning gained momentum in the 1960s during the U.S. civil rights movement and the emergence of numerous anti-colonial movements worldwide. They thus came to believe that race itself is a social construct, a concept that was believed to correspond to an objective reality but which was believed in because of its social functions.
Craig Venter and Francis Collins of the National Institute of Health jointly made the announcement of the mapping of the human genome in 2000. Upon examining the data from the genome mapping, Venter realized that although the genetic variation within the human species is on the order of 1–3% (instead of the previously assumed 1%), the types of variations do not support notion of genetically defined races. Venter said, "Race is a social concept. It's not a scientific one. There are no bright lines (that would stand out), if we could compare all the sequenced genomes of everyone on the planet." "When we try to apply science to try to sort out these social differences, it all falls apart."
Stephan Palmié asserted that race "is not a thing but a social relation"; or, in the words of Katya Gibel Mevorach, "a metonym," "a human invention whose criteria for differentiation are neither universal nor fixed but have always been used to manage difference." As such, the use of the term "race" itself must be analyzed. Moreover, they argue that biology will not explain why or how people use the idea of race: History and social relationships will.
Social interpretations of race regard the common categorizations of people into different races, often with biologist tagging of particular "racial" attributes beyond mere anatomy, as more socially and culturally determined than based upon biology. Such interpretations are often deconstructionist and poststructuralist in that they critically analyze the historical construction and development of racial categories.
The "RACIAL" classifications of Caucasoid, Negroid and mongoloid is an outdated classification system. As our knowledge of genes grow these morphological distinctions that used to be defined as "race" actually turn out to be a very small proportion of the human genome compared to the vast amount of the "average" genome between each geographic area and the populations around the Earth being 99.9% similar. The best way to answer your question with more factuality then simply relying on biases and guess work would be to look at the genetic frequency of Y-DNA and mt-DNA haplogroups between other areas around the globe in comparison with India's haplogroups. Here is a handy diagram that you can refer to: (unfortunately the frequency diagram and article that I had used earlier is no longer an active link) So here is a less handy diagram which shows the spread of haplogroups which shows how haplogroups spread to Europe and India independently as they diverged along separate paths and thus Indians are clearly a different very unique group, and have the unique introduction and a high rate of the L haplogroup that came about near the end of their ancestors migration to that part of the world: http://www.kerchner.com/images/dna/ydna_… Clearly since the Indian population has a high occurrence of the L Y-DNA haplogroup, whereas the L haplogroup is NOT common within any other areas of the globe, save for low rates of L in the Middle East. The relationship between Indians and other groups, either mongoloids or Caucasians on the genetic level, therefore, is slim to none. Anyways, I prefer to bring in conclusive empirical evidence that provides factual answers instead of just conjecturing at whim. So there it is, a factual and empirically supported answer. I would have also liked to have shown you the global frequency of mt-DNA haplogroups, but as-of-yet my internet searches have not been forth coming at finding such a diagram. I have seen individual mt-DNA pie-charts for the areas in question, and this same discrepancy as is observed in the Y-DNA haplogroups is repeated in the mt-DNA haplogroups.
Classical anthropologists have long debated the racial classification of Indians, in particular Dravidians. One scheme labeled Dravidians as the Australoid or Veddoid race in about the 40 human races in that system.
Races in Indian Subcontinent
The concept of human races has often been misused, and the whole issue has therefore come under intense criticism. Though it is unlikely that there exist populations of humans that have been reproductively isolated for long enough to have diversified to the same extent as races of other biological organisms, many genetic traits do show geographical (and demographical) distributions demonstrating historical endogamical traits. When the lines separating many of these characters roughly coincide, it is useful to refer to the common borders as race divisions.
Social Stratification
The majority (about 80%) of Indian society is broken up into about 2000 castes which can be further broken down into endogamous units which are called subcastes, the total number of these units in India is estimated to have been 75000 at its peak, and still about 43000. Any genetic study needs to take these into account, as well as the ‘gotra’s (roughly speaking, exogamous lineages) within these. A preliminary study showed that about 87% of the subcastes were strictly endogamous, and about 5% allowed ‘anuloma’ (hypergamous: woman marrying socially above herself) marriages. In almost all cases, the society is patrilocal (and patriarchal), and caste follows the father.
In addition to the Hindus who belong to the caste system, Moslems, and other established religious groups, the rest of the mainland Indian population, about 7%, is tribal in nature; 427 separate tribes are officially recognized. These are usually divided into the tribes of the Himalayan, Middle, Western and Southern India; Bengal has tribes belonging to the first two groups (1941 census: population of tribal and aborigines defined linguistically as bhoTiYA, cAkamA, dAmAi, guruM, hadi, kAmi, khAsa, kuki, lepacA, lim_bu, maMgara, meca, mru, muNDA, neoyAra, orAõ sÃotAla, sAraki, sunuoYAra, and Tip_rA: totalling in west bengal 1368780, in east bengal 287217, in Coochbehar 2435, in hilly Chattagram 233392, in Sikkim 63206, and in Tripura 33633. Note that this is not an exhaustive list by any means: khand, lusAi, gAro, hAjaM, bediYA, bAheliYA, bhŨYA, jhĩjhiYA, pAna, pAsi, dosAda, rAbhA, nATa, ghAsi, kAchAD.i, nAgesiYA, bhUmija, korA, thAru, mAlapAhAD.iYA, ho, mAhali, turi, beruYA, binda, doYAi, jimadAra, thAmbu, khAmi, khiYAM, kurmi, kaora, mAla, murami, rAYa, ToTo, shabara might also be mentioned). Knowledge of the exact affinities of the tribal with Australian or African Negrito populations would be interesting, but investigations have not been able to uncover direct genetic affinities except for known or suspected cases of recent contact. The tribes in bengal have sometimes been divided into a australasiatic like sÃotAla, ÕrAo, muNDA, etc, Chinese-mongoloid like gAro, kAchAD.i, hadi, etc., the Tibetan-mogoloid like bhoTiYA, guruM, lepcA, neoYAr, and the Arakan-burmese like cAk_mA, kuki.
The castes can roughly be broken down into the upper castes, the middle castes, and the lower castes based on their social status. The division, especially between the upper and middle castes, varies according to region. Genetic evidence points to the different social groups and geographical regions having different set of Y chromosomes, pointing to the social identity staying unchanged along male lines; similar data from mtDNA studies show only slightly higher admixture in the female lines. However, the statistical signficance of all these results is weak except to support a tribal versus caste hindu divide.
Old ideas about human races in India
Studies conducted in the past have often not taken proper account of in-group variation both of genetic and environmental origins nor of the immense and rapid effect of environment and nutrition on metrics such as stature. In the presence of cultural (‘sexual’) selection, there is no reason to believe that facial characteristics are constant either. As a result, traces of race admixtures have often been claimed in what should properly be called a single race. These should be kept in mind while noting that, from anthropometric studies, one found traces of seven races of humans who intermixed to create the Indian race.
As a rough guide for understanding the description below, the height measures used are roughly: pygmy (less than 1480 mm), short (1480–1581 mm), medium (1582–1676 mm), tall (1677–1720 mm), and very tall (more than 1720 mm). The cephalic index is calculated by dividing the distance between the nasion and the occiput by the width. This divides people into dolichocephalic (less than 0.75), meso- or mesaticephalic (0.75–0.80) and brachycephalic (more than 0.80). Similarly the height of the nose divided by its width gives the nasal index which divides people into leptorrhine (0.55–0.77), mesorrhine (0.78–0.85), and platyrrhine (0.85–1.00).
(E) The tribal people of Andaman, Semang of Malaya peninsula, Angami Nagas of Assam, Kadar and Pulayans of Perambkulm and Annamallai hills may show existence of a Negrito race in the distant past in this region. These people are small bodied, dolichocephalic, platyrrhine, shining black, have wavy hair and thick upturned lips. Some genetic research indicates that the Andamanese may be more closely related to some African people than to the rest of the Eurasian ones. As the language currently spoken by these people belong to the Australesian group of languages, whether these are just a variation of the proto-Australoids discussed next, or whether, in fact, they are a separate race, is debatable. The Bagdis of Rajamahal hills in Bengal, some fisherfolk of Sundarvana and other parts of southern Bengal, and some tribes of Maimansingh and Jessore may show the influence of these people in Bengal.
(D) The Kol, Bhil, Karoa, Kharoar, Munda, Bhumija, Malpahari, Chenchu, Kurur, Kherur etc. show traces of the proto-Australoid race of people. These people are short, black, dolichocephalic, platyrrhine and have bronze coloured hair.
(A) A certain dolichocephalic people of middle build with short foreheads, short face, high cheekbones, long raised nose, thick lips, big mouth, black eyes, and light to dark brown skin seem to have lived all over from North Africa to North West India in the Paleolithic age, and moved all over India in Neolithic times. They probably form the base of many of the people in both North and South India.
A robust, big brained, big eyebrowed, big earboned dolichocephalic people seem to have contributed to the North Western India. Their influence may not have reached beyond Punjab.
A slightly short, not so robust, dolichocphalic race with sharp raised nose and bowlike bent forehead and similar to the Mediterranean races seem to have contributed to the people of India. These people may have been the main contributors to the Sarasvati-Sindhu (often called Indus valley or Mohenjodaro) civilization. Their contribution to the people of Bengal is unknown.
(B) A brachycephalic Alpo-Dinarian race spread from the North West and provides a pronounced brachycephalic character to a lot of races in India, including many peoples of Bengal. These people may have spoken an Indo-European language.
(C) A proto-Nordic (dolicho-)mesocephalic big-faced robust people with narrow raised nose, dark brown to black hair, and brown to red skin may have been the main Indo-European speaking race in India. They may not have contributed much to Bengali population, however.
(F,G) In addition, of course, small amount of trans-himalayan migration is always present and gives rise to other elements in the immediately adjoining regions.
Historical Migrations
A study of the skulls from ancient South Asia showed presence of three groups of people.
Most of the hunter-gatherer skulls from South Asia clustered with upper paleolithic skulls from Europe.
The skulls from Harappa were sharply distinct from these.
The foraging and farming populations of South and Central India are intermediate between the other two.
In India, from anthropometric studies, one used to find traces of seven races of humans who intermixed to create the Indian race. Modern studies within regional contexts are still rare; so one mostly has to look back to the global genetic studies. Northwest India shares with west Asia and eastern Europe (and pockets in Africa and South East Asia) the maximum heterozygosity known among world populations, with means between 0.35 and 0.37; and the rest of India (and Europe) is only slightly lower: 0.33 to 0.35. This shows the vast amount of admixture that has gone on in these regions: to be contrasted against Australia which has a homozygosity of less than 0.25. It is currently accepted that at least four strata are visible in the populations in different parts of India.
An australoid-veddoid substratum.
A migration from the east of Austrasiatic and sino-tibetan language speaking groups.
Neolithic migrations from western Iran, probably proto-Dravidian.
The aryan expansion from north of Caspian sea via Turkmenia and Northern Iran.
Thus, for example, some researchers have concluded that the most likely synsthesis of different lines of evidence is that
the Austric language speakers came to India c. 50–65 Ka BP from the northeast
the Dravidian speakers c. 8–4000 BC from the mideast with knowledge of wheat cultivation and cattle, sheep, and goat domestication (all middle eastern developments around 8000 BC),
the Indo-europeans in several waves since 4000–1500 BC with horses (domesticated c. 4000 BC around Ukraine; appears to move from northwest India in about 1900 BC to southeast India in 100 BC) and/or iron (used around 3000 BC in Anatolia; also appears to move from North West India in 900 BC to South East India in 400 BC; iron and horses were almost certainly distinct cultural traits which were not associated with one another), they had distinctive burial styles and may have performed cremation, the painted grey ware pottery associated with these people fits the iron users more than the horse riders;
and in this mix, the Sino-Tibetans joined in in several waves since 8–6 Ka years BP bringing in rice cultivation (if it is not of separate origin in the Indian region, it may have started in south-east Asia around 8 Ka BP).
DNA evidence
The differences between different groups is small overall. But the differences that exist can be used to trace the history of human migrations. One word of caution is, however, due: human groups are rarely defined strictly genealogically. More often, it is cultural transmission that defines the groups one is studying, and this transmission has both vertical (concordant with genetics) and horizontal (possibly discordant with genetics) components. Thus a group like ‘Indoeuropeans’ is defined by cultural features (language spoken, pastural nature, milk and domestic meat based diet, importance of the domesticated horse, a certain polytheistic religion with light/dark or day/night contrast symbolism etc.) and may correlate with a certain genetic makeup. On the other hand, except for genes like lactose tolerance which probably were important for surviving with their dietary peculiarities, no other gene need correlate with this cultural pattern. It is completely possible that the Indoeuropeans in various parts of the world, or associated with migrations at different times and places, have different genetic make up. Whether that is the case for any group (like the Indoeuropeans) needs specific study.
Overall, though with those caveats, the DNA data prefers the hypothesis that the Austro-asiatic speaking tribals predate the Dravidian and the Tibeto-Burmese tribals in India (see here for one timing study). The caste populations are of more recent origins. The North-Indian muslims and the Tibeto-Burmese tribes stand apart in most comparisons (see here and here), though there is some support for a grouping of north Indian muslims and the Indo-european upper castes of the same region. The Dravidian speaking groups seem to be related by paternal lineage. A change of Dravidian tribals to Indoeuropean caste population by an ‘elite dominance’ phenomenon is consistent with the data. However, there is significant admixture of the Central Asian populations, more in the North than the South and even less in the Northeast, and more among the upper castes than among the lower.
mtDNA
Early mitochondrial DNA (which is maternally inherited) studies indicated that a vast number of Indian mtDNA lineages cluster with the East Asians, probably reflecting the proto-Dravidian. They also seem to be closely related to African (e.g. Ethiopian) populations, probably indicative of the Australoid-Veddoid substratum.
Modern studies indicate that the major mtDNA lineages in India belong to the typically asian M haplogroup (see here and here), whose Indian variety (T at np16223) probably originated around 48000 +/- 1500 years before present (i.e. about 46000 BC), and more than 98% of the M individuals carry this variety. This haplogroup is most common in the tribal population (for example, 96.7% amongst the Kotas of the South) and decreases as we go up in caste (reaching 18.5% amongst the Brahmins of Uttar Pradesh). It is also rare in the north Indian muslim community. Among its lineages M2 is the most diverse and occurs in significantly higher frequency among the Austro-asiatic tribals. The M3 (frequent among Dravidian tribals), M4, and M5 are also found in significant numbers. See here for relations between these.
The U haplogroup shows a contrasting distribution: it is most common among the North Indian muslim community (more than 30%), present at 15–20% in the various castes, and less than 10% among the tribals. The haplotype U2i separated from an West Eurasian lineage around 53000 +/- 4000 before present (i.e. about 51000 BC). The relative frequency of this subhaplogroup compared to the haplogroup U in general is highest amongst the tribals. Conversely, the tribals almost entirely lack the the West Eurasian subhaplogroup U2e which is more common among the upper castes and shows a caste linked gradation. The other subgroups significantly represented in Indian population are U1 and U7.
A small fraction of the Indian population (about 5–10%) belongs to lineages (W,H,K in upper castes; J,T in other castes) also common in Europe, and which have more recent divergence dates. They probably have caste linkages, but the data set is, as yet, too small to be definite. Also, the divergence times have not been estimated, so it is difficult to pinpoint which migration this refers to.
Previous research, which had not detected the caste linkage of the European haplotypes had concluded that, assuming they were largely of Western Eurasian origin (e.g. in accord with the Dravidian-protoElamite or the Indo-european hypothesis), the divergence time is about 9300 +/- 3000 BP (i.e. about 7300 BC), which is deduced as an average over various number of unknown founders (i.e. gradual migration model, rather than concentrated invasion model). Some minor geographical gradients from the Punjab to the Andhra in distribution of European haplotypes also needs further study.
Y chromosome
The Y chromosome (which is paternally inherited) data is broadly similar, but shows higher diversity than the mtDNA data (see here). India groups clearly with the South/Southeast Asia cluster (lineage M9(xM45) or K*(xO,P)?), though North India has a large fraction of R1a(M17) as illustrated by the map (YAP = DE, M130 = O?, M89 = F, M9 = K, M45 = P, M173 = R1*(xR1a1), M17 = R1a1; F is inherently F*(xK), K is K*(xP) and P is P*(xR)) of prevalence of the markers around Eurasia.
The Central Asian P* is significantly rarer among the tribals. The European ancestral lineage BR* is more common among the tribals, especially the Dravidian tribals, than the caste populations: the lineage itself may, however, be a heterogeneous group. The Tibeto-Burmese, and to a smaller extent Austro-asiatic, tribals have higher frequencies of K*. It has been suggested that haplogroup J shows clines showing diffusion of agriculture from the middle east: Indian data does not show any clear evidence of this. The ‘Indoeuropean’ R1a and the L haplogroup are also found in significant numbers. See here for details, andhere for one estimate of their ages in India. See here for data from a study concentrating mostly on the brahmins and the tribals, and here for associated age estimates.
The major European haplotype (M173 or R1b?) is pretty rare, but some European haplotypes are found amongst the upper castes, and in Punjab and Pakistan. A North African/Middle Eastern variety (M89(xM9) or F) is found at low levels all over India, but many of the Indian haplotypes seem to be of Indian origin, possibly due to genetic drift in small endogamous units.
The interesting aspect is the much stronger caste linkage in the genetic distance between the Indian and European populations found in these studies compared to those dealing with the maternally inherited mtDNA. The data also shows multiple bottleneck events showing that the ethnic subgroups of India may have formed by widespread ‘fission’ resulting from pressures on natural resources and because of social regulations.
A recent paper by Sengupta et al. has done a far more detailed study, and claims a revision of this standard scenario is in order. The much larger and varied sampling, especially of the tribals, predictably leads to much better resolution of the phylogeny and greater clarity of the haplotype distributions, sometimes correcting the details of previous analyses. Thus they find that the haplogroups H* and its subclades H1*, H1c, H1a and H2 form the most common (26.4%) haplogroup in their Indian sample followed by R1a1-M17 (15.8%), O2a-M95 (14.6%), R2-M124 (9.3%), J2-M172 (9.1%), O3e-M134 (8.0%), L1-M76 (6.3%), F*-M89 (5.2%) and others accounting for the rest 4.2%. Geographically, India lies between Pakistan (where they found R1a1-M17 which is predominant (24.4%), followed by L*-M20 (13.1%), J2-M172 (11.9%), R2-M124 (7.4%), R1b-P25 (7.4%), G-M201 (6.3%), C3-M217 (6.8%), H*-M69 (6.3%), L1-M76 (5.1%), and others, each less than 5%, accounting for the rest 16.4%) and East Asia (where O3e-M134 (15.4%), C3-M217(13.1%), N3-TAT (12.0%), O2a-M95 (10.9%), O3-M122(xO3e) (11%), N-M231(xN3) (6.3%) and R1b2-M73 (6.3%) are more than 5% and account for 75.4%). It is, however, in the study of diversity and divergence times that there are hints of disagreement with the standard model. The prevalence and diversity of H1, R1a1, and the R2 haplogroups peak in different regions. Overall, the Indoeuropean speaking groups are more similar to the Pakistani populations than to the East Asian populations, and than the Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman, and Austro-asiatic groups are to the Pakistani population. As to the origin of the haplotypes, they note that C5-M356, F*-M89, H*-M69 (including H1-M52 and H2-APT), R2-M124 and L1-M76 probably arose in India, and F*-M89 and H*-M69 may have shared demographic history. Similarly, J2a-M410 and J2b-M12 probably came through the Indus valley, whereas O2a-M95 and O3e-M134 came from SE Asia, the former probably through Orissa. A more detailed picture of the arrival of the O haplogroup in India possibly in multiple migrations from 19 Kya to 3 Kya is described in a recent paper.
The same study also finds considerable diversity in R1a1-M17 (and R2), especially in the northwest, possibly exceeding 10-15 Ka in time depth, and this has been confirmed in another study. This may be inconsistent with a single recent (i.e. about 5 Ka) entry of the comparatively recent (about 7 Ka) linguistic group called Indoeuropeans into India, though complicated exogamy rules can confound such simple conclusions. In fact, since the maximal diversity is around the Hindukush mountains, one can even postulate that as the source region, but the strong association with the Indoeuropean languages (which are unlikely to have arisen in that region), and its higher frequency (and lower diversity!) among caste Indians compared to tribals, both features confirmed in both these studies as well, points to a more complicated demographic history than the paper describes as its results. Similar remarks apply to the spread of the other haplogroups like the Dravidian and neolithic associated J. A similar conclusion is drawn by Sahoo et al. who show that the prevalence maps vary significantly between caste and tribal populations. They also conclude that there is very little to show the direction of R1a migrations: into or out of India. The data in the Sengupta et al., however, argues that no such simple scenario is likely to fit: R1a1 probably marks multiple separate population movement which still remains to be deciphered. The issue of R1a1 is, studied in much more detail in a newer paper whose conclusions I summarize in my genealogy.
The R1a1 fraction in different populations (Sengupta et al. and Qamar et al.): West Bengal Brahmins: 72%, Konkanasth Brahmins: 63%, Muslims: 58%, Sindhi Pakistani: 52/49%, Kashmiri Pakistani: 51%, Pathan Pakistani: 49%, Balti Pakistani: 46%, Tanti: 41%, Pathan Pakistan: 40/49%, UP Brahmins: 36%, Rajput: 31%, Baluchi Pakistanis: 28%. J2a is more common in India amongst the Iyengar, Iyer, and Kurumba and in Pakistan among the coastal, Sindhis, Makranis, and Baluchis. See also here for another study which broadly agrees with this.
One possible summary
The National Geographic site tries to assign times to these migrations as follows, the details may sometimes need to be reconciled with what would be considered habitable at the different time periods. There were two ancient migrations–haplogroup C (marker M130) that arose in Arabian region around 50000 years ago out of the M168 lineage of ‘Nonafrican Adam’ who may have lived 80000 yrs ago in the African rift valley region of Sudan or Ethiopia, and spread through the coastal regions of Southern India, Sri Lanka and further on; and haplogroup D (marker M174) which probably branched off from M168 early in Africa and accompanied them along the same coastal route (not found in mainland India, but in the Andamans). About 30000 years ago, two Indian lineages arose and populated large tracts of India for the first time–haplogroup L (marker M20) from Eurasian/American ancestor haplogroup K (marker M9) which arose around 40000 years ago from the haplogroup F (marker 89) in Central Asia; and the slightly later haplogroup H (marker M52) which arose out of an M69 lineage (called the ‘Indian’ marker, though it arose possibly in south central Asia around 30000 years ago), ultimately from the same common nonAfrican haplogroup F (marker M89) which itself had arisen out of the M168 lineage 45000 years ago. The precise relation of the haplogroup G (marker M201) which arose around 20000 years ago in the Indus region is not clear. The haplogroup O (marker M175) which arose 35000 years ago from haplogroup K (marker M9) might also have moved through eastern India. North India also has a large fraction of R1a individuals, probably associated with the Indoeuropean speakers, though one should be careful about possible caveats in genetically characterizing any cultural group. I myself belong to this lineage, and you can see its history as part of my genealogy. A different branch of the R* M207 lineage described there is the M124 R2 lineage which probably arose 25000 years ago in Central Asia and a branch of them reached India. Similarly from the M45 P lineage described there, the Q M242 lineage arose, probably in Siberia around 15 to 20 thousand years back. This is the lineage that populated the Americas, but a few clades, such as the Q6 (M346) and Q1 (M120, M265=N14), especially Q1a (M378), is found in small proportions in India and Pakistan; and in East Asia.
On the female side, the African haplogroup L3 originated in the same region about the same 80000 years ago, and gave rise to the haplogroup M which then spread out into Southern Asia including India, after the daughters C, D, and Z branched off. L3 also gave rise to N* in Africa. This gave rise to many of the lineages of Eurasia and Americas. In particular, the R arose somewhere in the middle east out of this group, and a few of its descendants are typical Indian. About 55000 years ago the haplogroup U arose from this somewhere in central Asia and some of its lineages are prominent in India. Haplogroup K arose 16000 years ago as a part of this and spread mainly in Europe. Haplogroups J and T arose 10000 years ago from the R, and have been associated with the spread of farming. H and V arose in Europe around 10–20000 years ago out of the preHV that arose around 40000 years ago from the R. The haplogroups A, B, F, and X are also possibly daughters of R. The haplogroups N1, I, and W are daughters of the N*.
It should be noted that the history of one or two blocks on our chromosome is not the history of the entire human populations. The difference between these is discussed briefly in my page on human evolution.
Autosomal DNA
A similar caste linkage is also found in the autosomal studies: overall upper caste Indians are significantly closer to Europeans than other Indians. The autosomal locii are however inherited biparentally, so population admixture needs to be treated differently.
A new study of 25 Indian populations and a few outside ones tries to draw a picture of migrations and intermixing. Assuming a notional generation time of 25 years in this period (so the early dates are likely to be too early in this discussion), one model they find to be consistent with their data is an out of Africa scenario in which an effective population of about 9,000 individuals expanded into a 18,000 strong West African and a 5,000 individual Eurasian population some 100,000 years back. The Eurasian population then expanded into a 10,000 large Ancestral European, and a 5,000 strong Ancestral East-Eurasian populations about 50,000 years back. Within about 7500 years, this East Eurasian lineage expanded to 10,000 who gave rise to modern East Asian populations, a 3800 group of Andamanese, and about 10,000 of a group called Ancestral South Indians. The Onge among the Andamanese remained almost unmixed when the Ancestral South Indians were undergoing further mixings later, but the Great Andamanese seem to have received recent gene flow, dominantly paternal, from the mainland for a couple of generations today. The European lineage may have gotten a gene-flow from the East Asian group as late as 15,000 years back, but, the by then 20,000 strong lineage split off into the 30,000 individual Caucasian and 25,000 big West European groups about 7,000 years ago. Around 5,000 years back, a group of the West Europeans called Ancestral North Indians (ANI) started mingling with the Ancestral South Indians (ASI) to form the various Indian populations: Pathans about 80% ANI, Sindhi 75%, Kashmiri Pandit 70%, Vaish 65%, Meghawal 60%, Srivastava and Velama 55%, Tharu, Naidu, and Lodi 50%, Vysya, Kamsali, Kurumba, and Bhil 45%, to Chechu, Madiga, and Mala about 40%. They correctly caution, however, that this is only a sketch of the story: gene flows between sister groups after a split (e.g. between African and Eurasians before 50,000 years back; or between the Andamanese and the ASI before 5000 years back) is not detectable in their models and is thus consistent with mtDNA evidence that Andamanese and the tribal East Indians share a common ancestry in the last 24,000 years. Moreover, there is nothing to suggest that the mixture event that led to the Indians happened at an instant 5000 years ago: in fact, many groups seem to have small founder sizes, some as recently as a few hundred years back, others as much as a thousands of years back. Overall, caste divisions seem to be deep, with limited gene flows across caster boundaries in the historical period.
Physical Anthropological evidence
Physical anthropological studies very clearly separates the Indian populations (except some Andamanese tribals) from most of the other Asian populations, with people from the persian gulf, Arabia, Burma, SW China, Vietnamese and Malayan forming the border along the first principle coordinate. This component seems to be highly correlated with stature, and hence with temperature. The second principle coordinate, which mainly measures facial and nasal shape, serves to separate the various groups of Indians: (i) Maharashtra upper caste, (ii) Gujarat and Konkan, (iii) West tribal and lower caste, (iv) Central and Eastern tribal, (v) Bihar and Bengal, (vi) Vedda and South Deccan tribal, (vii) Orissa upper caste, (viii) UP upper caste, (ix) Pahari bhotia, (x) South India and Ceylon and (xi) Kashmiri, Punjabi and Pahari. The third component clarifies the separation of (i)-(iv), (v)-(vii) and (ix) out of the rest.
In a limited genetic tree, Indians form a number of distinct clusters: (i) Central Indian and Brahmins, together with South Indians cluster with Westen Asians (cluster formed by Iranians, Uzbeks, Caucasians, Lebanese and Turkish, Jordanian, Assyrian, Armenians), (ii) Sri Lankans and South Dravidians break off earlier, and (iii) North and Central Dravidians along with the East Indians break off before the cluster formed by the previous two groups and the Arabians including Bedouins. The first two principle components do not separate the Indian population: they only separate the caucasoid group discussed so far, from the South East Asians with Gurkhas, and from the North East and East Asians with the Bhutanese.
When only the Indian populations are analyzed, the branching order changes somewhat. Now, the third of the Indian clusters mentioned is an inner group and consists of a cluster of Munda and North Dravidians with Central Dravidians and a separate one of Marathan and Maharashtrian Brahmins with Bhils and then Rajbanshis, with a cluster consisting of Bengali Brhamins and Parsis splitting off its base. A cluster consisting of the second and most of the first of the previous groups is sister to it. (The first group, of course, is now resolved: Punjabi, Central Indian form a group with Punjabi Brahmins and the Rajputs; Vania and Jats form a sister cluster with Bombay Brahmins. Koli and Kerala Brahmins along with Pakistanis form a cluster off the base of all this.) Kanet and UP Brahmins seem to form a cluster branching off earlier, and Gurkha and Tharu a cluster even earlier. The Kerala Kadar seems to come from a completely different branch.
The detailed structure of the clusters probably needs more data to be established. As far as Bengal is concerned, the tribals cluster with North and Central Dravidians; and Bengalis as a whole cluster with these and Maharashtrians. However, the importance of caste shows up; except in Punjab and Maharashtra, the Brahmins do not cluster with the other castes. On the other hand, the Brahmins of different regions do not cluster together either; in a two principle component analysis, brahmins from Bombay, Kerala, UP, Punjab, Maharashtra and West Bengal show a steady progression along the diagonal. This could be due to genetic drift in these highly endogamous units.
Miscellaneous genetic evidence
An old study in bengal found that the main blood group is O, though B dominates among the kAYastha caste (vaNika show both), and A among the tribals and shaGkhavaNika. A later study agreed that the main blood group was O, but found the same in kAYastha and vaidya; but found B dominate the rest. The muslim population shows all of O, A, and B.
Diversity of Physical Types.
It is a familiar experience that the ordinary untravelled European on first arriving in India, finds much difficulty in distinguishing one native of the country from another. To his untrained eye all Indians are black; all have the same cast of countenance; and all, except the ‘decently naked’ labouring classes, wear loose garments which revive dim memories of the attire of the Greeks and Romans. An observant man soon shakes off these illusions, and realises the extra ordinary diversity of the types which are to be met with everywhere in India. The first step in his education is to learn to tell a Hindu from a Muhammadan. A further stage is reached when it dawns upon him that the upper classes of Hindus are much fairer than the lower and that their features are moulded on finer, lines. Later on, if opportunity favours him, he comes to recognise at a glance the essential differences between the Punjabi and the Bengali, the Pathan and the Gurkha; the Rajput and the ‘Jungly’ tea coolie; he will no longer take a Maratha Brahman for a Madrasi; or an Oriya for a native of Kashmir. He learns, in short, to distinguish what may be called the Provincial types of the people of India, the local, racial or linguistic aggregates, which at first sight seem to correspond to the nations of Europe. But the general impressions thus formed, though accurate enough so far as they go, are wanting in scientific precision.
Classification of Types.
The modern science of ethnology endeavours to define and classify the various physical types, with reference to their distinctive characteristics in the hope that when sufficient data have been accumulated it may be possible in some measure to account for the types themselves, to determine the elements of which they are composed and thus to establish their connexion with one or other of the great families of mankind. For ethnological purposes physical characters may be said to be of two kinds, indefinite characters which can only be described in more or less appropriate language, and definite characters which admit of being measured and reduced to numerical expression. The former class, usually called descriptive or secondary characters, includes such points as the colour and texture of the skin; the colour, form and position of the eyes; the colour and character of the hair; and the form of the face and features. Conspicuous as these traits are the difficulty of observing, defining, and recording them is extreme. The difficulty which besets all attempts to classify colour is enhanced in India by the fact that for the bulk of the population the range of variation, especially in the case of the eyes and hair, is exceedingly small. The skin no doubt exhibits extreme divergences of colouring which anyone can detect at a glance. At one end of the scale we have the dead black of the Andamanese, the colour of a black-leaded stove before it has been polished, and the somewhat brighter black of the Irulas of the Nilgiri Jungles of whom it is said that charcoal leaves a white mark upon them. At the other end one may place the flushed ivory skin of the traditional Kashmiri beauty, and very light transparent brown-wheat coloured is the common vernacular description of the higher castes of Upper India which Emil Schmidt compares to milk just tinged with coffee and describes as hardly darker than is met with in members of the swarthier races of Southern Europe: Between these extremes we find countless shades of brown, darker or lighter, transparent or opaque, frequently tending towards yellow, more rarely approaching a reddish tint, and occasionally degenerating into a shade of greyish black which seems to depend on the character of the surface of the skin.
Still less variety is traceable in the character of the eyes and hair. From one end of India to the other the hair of the great mass of the population is black or dark brown, while among the higher castes the latter colour is occasionally shot through by something approaching a tawny shade. Straight hair seems on the whole to predominate but the wavy or curly character appears in much the same proportion as among the races of Europe. The Andamanese have woolly or frizzly hair, oval in section and curling on itself so tightly that it seems to grow in separate spiral tufts while in fact it is quite evenly distributed over the scalp. The eyes are almost invariably dark brown. Occasional instances of grey eyes are found among the Konkanasth Brahmans of Bombay and the combination of blue eyes, auburn hair and reddish blonde complexion is met with in the North-Western Frontier. On the Malabar coast are instances of pale blue and grey eyes combined with a dark complexion.
Caste and Genetics.
When we turn to the definite or anthropometric characters we find ourselves on firmer ground. Nowhere else in the world do we find the population of a large continent broken up into an infinite number of mutually exclusive aggregates, the members of which are forbidden by an inexorable social law to marry outside the group to which they themselves belong. In a society thus organised, differences of physical type, however, produced in the first instance, may be expected to manifest a high degree of persistence.
The Indian endogamous Caste with its exogamous divisions is a perfect method of preserving what is called in Genetics the ‘pure line’. The endogamy prevents external hybridisation, while the exogamy prevents the possibility of a fresh pure line arising within the old one by the isolation of any character not common to the whole line. With the preservation of the pure line the perpetuation of all characters common to it necessarily follows. (Bombay. 1921. p. 103).
The measurements themselves require a few words of explanation. Thus the form of the head is ascertained by measuring in a horizontal plane the greatest length from a definite point on the forehead (the glabella) to the back of the head, and the greatest breadth a little above the ears. The proportion of the breadth to the length is then expressed as a percentage called the cephalic index, the length being taken as 100. Heads with a breadth of 50 per cent, and over are classed as broad or brachycephalic; those with an index under 50, but not under 75, are called medium heads (meso- or mesati-cephalic); long or dolicho-cephalic heads are those in the ratio of breadth to length below 75 per cent. It may be added that neither the shape nor the size of the head seems to bear any direct relation to intellectual capacity. People with long heads cannot be said to be cleverer or more advanced in culture than people with short heads!
The proportions of the nose are determined on the same principle as those of the skull. The height and breadth are measured from certain specified points and the latter dimension is expressed as a percentage of the former. The nasal index, therefore, is simply the relation of the breadth of the nose to its height. If a man’s nose is as broad as it is high, his index is 100. The results thus obtained are grouped in three classes – narrow or fine noses (leptorrhine) in which the width is less than 70 per cent. of the height; broad noses (platyrrhine) in which the proportion rises to 85 per cent and over, and medium noses (mesorrhine) with an index of from 70 to 85. (India. 1901. I. p. 489 sq.)
Modern Methods.
For the 1931 census measurements were taken on persons belonging to at least 51 racial groups from all parts of India on 18 different characters. Besides these a large number of observations were recorded including tints of skin, eye and hair colours. For a satisfactory study of the resemblance or difference of the physical characters of two races a co-efficient known as the Co-efficient of Racial Likeness (C.R.L.) has been suggested which takes into account not only the mean characters and their standard deviations but also the numbers of the individuals and characters measured. It should not, however, be forgotten that though the method of the Co-efficient of Racial Likeness is without doubt the best available criterion of racial divergence, it is nevertheless not an absolute test but only a rough measure of how far on the given data significant resemblance or divergence can be asserted. In assigning an equal value to every one of the characters, it furthermore neglects the differences in the relative biological significance of the various characters as measures of racial difference. Other factors such as the systematic observations of non-measurable characters, should therefore be duly considered.
Racial Element A.
In the racial composition of the peoples of India we can discern; (A), a short statured long headed element with high cranial vault but faintly marked supra-orbital ridges and broad, short but ortho-gnathous face, with medium lips. The nose is prominent and long but the alae moderately spread out, giving a mesorrhine index. The colour of the skin varies from light brown in the Telugu Brahmin to a dark tawny brown among the Kalla, but the eye colour is dark brown and colour of the hair is usually black. The latter is in general straight but is inclined to waviness and the amount is moderate both on the face and body. It is found in its purest form among the Telugu Brahmins, but the Kallas of Southern Tamil country and the Illuvas of Cochin also furnish good examples. This type forms the predominant element in the greater part of the lower stratum of the population of Northern India, including to some extent the Punjab, where among the Chubra and Chamar is a small-headed, broad-nosed element which appears to be closely related to the Mediterranean stock of Europe.
Racial Element B.
On this basic substratum there appears to have superimposed:—
In the western littoral and Bengal (B) a brachycephalic element of medium stature with flattened occiput but having also high head and not infrequently receding forehead. Like the former the face is short and orthognathous but somewhat broader. The nose is long and quite often arched and convex. The skin colour varies from a pale white to light brown among the Nagas Brahmin, to tawny brown among the Kannada non-Brahmins. The colour of the eye is usually dark brown but a small per cent shows light eyes. The hair colour is black with a small proportion showing a dark brown tint. The hair is generally straight and the pilous system well developed. The Nagar Brahmin of Guzrat, the Kayastha of Bengal and the Kannada non-Brahmin are representatives of this type.
And in Northern India:—
Racial Element C.
(C) Another long-headed strain with comparatively lower but longer head and tall stature and possessing a long face and prominent narrow long nose. It its purest form it is found in the North-west Himalayan tribes like the Kaffirs and the Pathan where the skin colour is predominantly of a rosy white tint and an appreciable number have grey-blue eyes and chestnut hair. In the plains of Northern India, among the Sikhs of the Punjab and the Brahmin of the U.P. the skin colour changes to a light transparent brown. Here also there is a small proportion of people having light eyes and brownish hair. Among this type also the hair is usually straight and the pilous system well developed.
Distinction Between A And C.
The two long-headed strains (A) and (C) show some similarity in the shape of the head. Significant differences are, however, visible not only in stature, in the absolute length and height of the cranial vault, but also in the proportions and form of the face and nose. These together with the differences in the integumentary colours mark out the long-headed people of Southern, from those of Northern India. If long and high-headedness are associated with dark hair and eyes and are the characteristics of a very early type of modern man, the type here designated as (A) must be a south-eastward drift of this race, which reached India in very early times. The other long-headed type, as history would seem to suggest, belonged to a later drift from the north-west though both may have been evolved of a common ancestral stock like the Cromagnon or some pre-Cromagnon race but were differentiated very rarely.
Racial Element D.
In addition to these three types, the aboriginal population of India discloses – (D) a short and moderately high-headed strain with very often strongly marked brow ridges, broad short face, the mouth slightly inclined forwards and small flat nose with the alae extended. The hair varies from wavy to curliness and the skin is of a shade of dark chocolate brown approaching black. This type is predominant among the aboriginal tribes of Central and Southern India, but seems also to have entered in a considerable degree in the lower stratum of the Indian population. This type is closely allied to the Veddas of Ceylon, the Toalas of Celebes, and the Sakais of the Malay Peninsula. A more primitive form of this type is seen among the aborigines of Australia, among whom some of its traits are found in an intensified form. The Bhils of the Vindhya and the Chenchus of the Farhabad Hills may be regarded as representatives of this type.
Racial Element E.
It seems probable that at a very early time this type displaced and partially intermixed with:— (E) a dark pigmy strain having spirally curved hair, remnants of which are still found among the Kadars and the Pulayans of the Perambucullan Hills but which is mostly submerged in India at the present time. Hutton has drawn attention to the presence of the negrito type among the Angairti Nagas and examination of the large series of skulls brought back by the Triangular expedition has made it quite clear that it extends beyond the Assam frontiers into the trans-Namphuk area of Burma. The Andamanese are racially homogeneous and of distinct type, characterised by a dwarfish stature, black complexion and woolly hair who have survived as a result of isolation.
Racial Element F.
The mongoloid racial strain does not appear to have entered in any considerable extent in the population of the mainlands of India. The true Mongol element as seen among the Uzbegs, still remains outside the Indian frontiers but all along the sub-Himalayan region of N.E. Kashmir to Bhutan:—
F: a brachycephalic mongoloid type, having, not improbably some affinities with the former, seems to have penetrated and constitutes to-day the main component of the population of these parts. The type that forms the dominant element in Burma is also brachycephalic but somewhat shorter in stature and having a short flat nose and a tendency to alveolar prognathism. It appears to exhibit certain affinities with the Siamese, the Malay and the Cochin Chinese.
Racial Element G.
In Assam and Northern Burma there seems to have entered:—
G: a second Mongoloid strain characterised by medium stature, longish head and medium nose, but exhibiting like (F) the typical Mongoloid characteristics of the face and eye. This element constitutes the major strain in the population of the hills and not inconsiderably of that of the Brahmaputra Valley. The Angami Nagas may be considered to be the best representatives of this type but the Mikir-Bodo group also furnishes a good example. (India. 1931. I. iii. p.v.sqq).
Pre-Historic Races.
From the beginning of the 4th millennium B.C. North-western India seems to have been in the occupation of a long-headed race with high cranial vault, long face and narrow prominent nose. Side by side with them we find another very powerfully built race also long-headed, but with lower cranial vault, and equally long-faced and narrow nose, though the latter was not so high pitched as that of the former. A third type with broader head and apparently Armenoid affinities also existed but whose advent occurred probably somewhat later. The presence at Bayana of a small, long, and moderately high vaulted skull with prominent nose seems to indicate that a drift of this race eastwards had taken place even earlier and the whole of the Indo-Gangetic basin seems to have been occupied by it as early as these times. Later on in the Iron Age the Peninsula seems to have been occupied by a long but high-skulled race, with low broad face and nose, resembling the Combe-Capelle type. Though we have no direct evidence of the Negrito race in the old skeletal remains of India, the skull of a victim of human sacrifice found in a cairn at Jewurgi is unmistakably negroid. The Australoid type found so largely in the present day aborigines is, however, abundantly represented both in the Southern Indian and Chota Nagpur sites. The Combo Capelle type, or a race very closely allied to it, entered probably with that culture as early as Neolithic times. Mixed with the Mediterranean race which constituted the major part of the Indus Valley people in the Chalcolithic times, it forms to-day the bulk of the population of the Peninsula and a considerable portion of Northern India, in the upper classes of which there is another strain with undoubted northern affinities. It is probable that the powerfully built large-headed strain found at Mohenjo-daro forms one of the constituents of this Northern race whose advent in India appears to synchronise with the Aryan invasion.
The brachycephalic race, who form the dominant element in the population of the western and south-western parts of India as well as Bengal, must have come at an earlier period, as judged by the remains at Harappa. But that it penetrated Southern India somewhat later seems certain, as judged by the age of the Aditanallur and Raigur skeletons. When it had moved eastwards into Bengal we have no definite evidence but probably earlier than in Southern India as racial drifts along the Gangetic Valley would seem to have been easier and more rapid. The brachycephalic types in South Arabia according to Keith must have come from Persia and Baluchistan. There seems no reason to think that the Indian brachycephals with definite Armenoid affinities had a different origin. (India. 1931. I. iii pl/xix sq).
Racial and Cultural History.
The earliest occupants of India were probably of the Negrito race but they have left little trace on the mainland of the peninsula. The proto-Australoids who followed them and whose origin must be sought in Palestine (unless the recently found remains of ‘Solo’ man in Java prove to be earlier) may claim to be the true aborigines on the ground that their racial type was ultimately fixed in India. They were followed by an early stock probably of the Mediterranean race, speaking an agglutinative tongue from which the present Austro-asiatic languages are derived, which migrated down the Ganges valley mingling no doubt with the Proto-australoids and in the van at any rate penetrating to the farthest south-east of the Asiatic continent. This early branch of the Mediterranean race may have carried with it the beginnings of culture with a rudimentary knowledge of agriculture. They may also have taken the practice of erecting rude stone monuments and perhaps of primitive navigation. This migration was followed by a later immigration of civilised Mediterraneans from the Persian Gulf, but ultimately from eastern Europe, who brought with them the knowledge of the metals but not of iron and were followed by later waves of immigrants and a generally advanced culture, which maintained a connection with the cities of Mesopotamia and evolved or developed the pre-historic civilisation of the Indus valley and in all probability a similar civilisation in the Ganges valley. All these immigrants were of the dolichocephalic type but mixed with this last race was a brachycephalic element coming ultimately from the Anatolian plateau in the form of the Armenoid branch of the Alpine-race. The civilisation which arose in India under the auspices of these races had developed by the end of the 4th millennium B.C. a high standard of comfort, art and sanitation in city life, and a religion which bears many resemblances to the earlier religions of the eastern Mediterranean. The language in use was probably Dravidian and there was a pictographic script analogous to those in use in prehistoric Mesopotamia. This civilisation was flooded in the west during the third millennium B.C. by an immigration from the Iranian plateau and the Pamirs of a brachy-cephalic race speaking perhaps an Indo-European language of the Pisacha or Dardic family, the main course of which migration went down the west of India and across the Mysore plateau to the south, missing the Malabar coast which has thus preserved much of the ancient civilisation of Dravidian speaking India. Another branch of these, fewer in number, penetrated the Ganges valley but was not strong enough to obliterate the Armenoid-Mediterranean civilisation, though it probably modified it a good deal. Meanwhile in the extreme east of India other movements were going on as there was a widespread race movement of the southern Mongoloids southwards to the Bay of Bengal and into Indonesia, which had some reflex influence on India from the east. Finally about 1,500 B.C. came the Indo-Aryan migration into the Punjab, which first occupied the area between the Indus and the Jamna and later sent colonies into Hindustan. These imposed themselves upon the surviving civilisation there which so reacted to this powerful stimulant as to produce from the combined material the philosophy, religion, art and letters that were the glory of ancient India. (India. 1931. 1. i. p. 460).
Racial and Religious History.
A number of successive racial intrusions have contributed to the elements now found in the Hindu religion which took its final form as the result of the impact of the social ascendancy of the Indo-European invaders of the 2nd millennium B.C. on pre-existing religious institutions. The first occupants of India were probably Negritos, and elements of their belief, perhaps including the reverence for the pipal tree and possibly a primitive phallic fertility cult, may have been perpetuated by the proto-australoids who were the next comers and probably contributed the totemic theory or at least the basis thereof. The next elements were probably of Mediterranean origin contributing a phallic and a megalithic culture and the life-essence theory but the relative positions of the Dravidian speaking Mediterranean-Armenoid, the proto-Australoid and the Munda and Mon-Khmer or Austro-asiatic races is difficult to determine and there is little material from which to draw a conclusion and many would identify the proto-Australoid and Munda racial elements. If the Munda speaking elements be distinct from the proto-Australoid, it would be conveniently orderly to suppose that the Mundas came after them with a life-essence theory and the Mediterraneans still later to develop it into reincarnation, and bringing in the worship of the Great Mother, but it is conceivable that the Mediterraneans brought both the theory and its development and the Munda came later as a barbarian invader though no doubt already in possession of the soul-matter philosophy, since at any rate the hill tribes of Assam, Burma and Indo-China appear to contain an element of Caucasian stock which penetrated to S.E. Asia before the southern migration of Mongolians of the Paroean branch and the soul-matter theory must have arisen very early in the history of the human race. Both Munda and Mediterranean must have been followed by religious elements from Asia Minor, brought via Mesopotamia by traders and settlers from the west which superseded the fertility and soul-matter cult by one of personified deities, sacrificial propitiation and a formalised worship, again with phallic elements and such institutions as that of the deva-dasi, together with astronomical lore and cults of the heavenly bodies and priestly institutions which formed the basis of modern Hinduism, the final form of which was determined by the successful conflict of this proto-Hinduism on the religious side with the imported religion of the ‘Aryan’ invaders, to whom, however, it had to concede much socially, resulting in the socio-religious position of the priestly order to familiar in India. (India. 1931. I. i. p. 393).
The Vernaculars of India.
Four great families of human speech have their homes, as vernaculars, in India. These are the Indo-European, the Dravidian, the Austric, and the Tibeto-Chinese. If we include the territories subject to Aden, we have to add the Semitic and the Hamitic. These families will now be described in the above order. The oldest languages of India are probably those which we class as Austric. Practical reasons compel us to begin with the Indo-Aryan forms of speech, for, whether we consider the influence which they have exercised upon the development of Indian civilisation, or the total number of their speakers, they are by far the most important.
By LANGUAGE
The Aryan Languages.
The modern Indo-Aryan vernaculars, although derived from languages which were highly synthetical in structure, are now essentially analytical. The terminals of their nouns and verbs have given place to post-positions, and to disjointed modern particles to indicate time, place, and relation.
These tongues have spread over the whole of Northern India as far as Dibrugarh in the extreme east of Assam, and reaching south to Kanara in Bombay. They have preserved their identity and have superseded, and are still superseding, the indigenous forms of speech. When an Indo-European tongue comes into contact with an uncivilised aboriginal one, it is invariably the latter which goes to the wall. The necessities of intercourse compel the aborigine to learn to use a broken ‘pigeon’ form of the language of a superior civilisation. In process of time the old aboriginal language is forgotten and dies a natural death. The reverse process, of an Aryan tongue being superseded by an aboriginal one, never occurs. In Chota Nagpur, the stronghold of Austro-Asiatic speech in India, the use of the old original language survives practically cent per cent.
The Indo-European Languages.
The Indo-Aryan languages form one branch of the great Indo-European family of speech.
From the point of view of language, the first great division of the Indo-Europeans was into the so-called centum-speakers and satem-speakers. The former, who originally began the word for ‘hundred’ with the letter k, travelled westwards. The latter, who expressed the same idea with some word beginning with a sibilant, mostly wandered to the east, and from their language have descended the speech-families which we call Aryan, Armenian, Phrygian, Thracian, Illyrio-Albanian, and Balto-Selavonic. We have only to do with the first of these six.
One of the clans of these satem-speakers, who called themselves Aryans, migrated eastwards. In the highlands of Khokand and Badakhshan, they split up into two sections, one portion marching south, over the Hindu Kush, into the valley of the Kabul, and thence into the plains of India; and the other eastwards and westwards, towards the Pamirs and towards what is now Merv and Eastern Persia. After the separation, the common speech developed on two different lines, and became, on the one hand, the parent of the Indo-Aryan, and, on the other hand, the parent of the Eranian (often spelt ‘Iranian’) family of languages.
Eranian Languages.
At the earliest period of which we have documentary evidence, we find Eranian divided into two not very different dialects, commonly called Persic and Medic. Persic was the official language of the Court of the Achaemenides, and was employed by Darius I (B.C. 522-486), in the celebrated Behistun inscription. It developed into the Middle Persian or Pahlavi of the Sassanids (third to seventh centuries A.D.), and finally became modern Persian. Persian is spoken in Baluchistan. Under Mussalman dominion it become one of the great vehicles of Indian literature, and some of the most famous Persian books, including the great lexicographical works, have been composed in Hindustan. Medic, on the other hand, was the language of the Avesta. It was spoken not only in Media (North-western Persia), but all over East Eran. From it are descended the two great Eranian languages belonging to India – Pashto and Baloch; and also, besides others, the so-called Ghalehah languages of the Pamirs and Suriqol.
Baloch.
Commencing from the south, the first of these is Baloch. It is in its outward shape the most archaic of all the Eranian tongues, still possessing forms which fifteen hundred years ago had already begun to decay in the cognate Persian. As its name implies, it is the principal language of Baluchistan, and is geographically split up by the Dravidian-speaking Brahuis of the central hills into two dialects – that of the north, and that of Makran in the south and west. Its southern boundary is the Arabian Sea, from near the Indus to about the fifty-eight degree of east longitude. Northwards it extends to near Quetta, and as we go westwards it is found even farther than this, up to the valley of the Helmand. The Indus valley itself is occupied by speakers of Indo-Aryan languages, but the eastern boundary of Baloch follows the course of that river at a short distance to the west up to about Dera Ghazi Khan. The northern dialect is much more rich in Indian loan-words than is Makrani, and both dialects borrow freely from Arabic and Persian, words from the former often appearing in curiously distorted forms, Baloch can hardly be called a written language, although both the Persian and the Roman alphabets have been employed for transcribing it.
Pashto.
To the north of Baloch lies Pashto, the main language of British and independent Afghanistan. In the latter it is not the vernacular of the Hazara country or of the tract lying to the north of the Kabul river, including Laghman and Kafiristan, but elsewhere it is in general use. It is the principal language of Swat and Buner, and of the country to the west of the Indus as far south as Dera Ismail Khan. The Indus is almost, but not quite, the eastern boundary; for, while the valley itself in its lower course is peopled by speakers of Indo-Aryan dialects, in the north Pashto has crossed the river and occupied parts of the British Districts of Hazara and Rawalpindi. As a lingua franca it is in common use still farther up the Indus, at least as far as the junction with the river Kandia where the Indus turns to the south. Pashto is spoken by Pathans, while the Hindus employ an Indo-Aryan dialect locally known as Hindko.
Pashto is a written language possessing an alphabet of its own based on that employed for Persian, and has a fairly copious literature. The rugged character of its sounds suits the nature of its speakers and of the mountains which form their home, but they are most inharmonious to the fastidious Oriental ear. Although harsh-sounding, it is a strong, virile language, which is capable of expressing any idea with neatness and accuracy. It is less archaic in its general characteristics than Baloch, and has borrowed not only much of its vocabulary, but even part of its grammar, from Indian sources. It has two recognised dialects, a north-eastern, or Pakhto, and a south-western, or Pashto, which differ little except in pronunciation, the two names being typical examples of the respective ways of uttering the same word. Each has many tribal sub-dialects, which again differ merely in the pronunciation of the vowels. There is, for instance, the Afridi sub-dialect, noted for the broad sound of its a; while the Waziris change every a to o, and every o to i.
The Pathans have been identified with the Pakthas, a tribe mentioned in the Rig-veda, and with the Paktues of Herodotus; while the Aparutai of the Father of History are probably the same as the Afridis, or, as they call themselves, Apridis.
Ormuri.
Allied to Pashto, although quite a distinct language, is Ormuri, spoken by a small tribe settled round Kanigoram in Waziristan. It is employed by members of the Bargista tribe, who claim to be descendants, of the Barakis that accompanied Mahmud of Ghazni in his invasions of India. These Barakis are said to have taken a prominent part in the capture of the famous gates of Somnath, and, pleased at the service rendered by them, the Sultan gave them a perpetual grant of the country round Kanigoram. The language, like Pashto, belongs to the Medic branch of Eranian speech. It is even more inharmonious than Pashto, and possesses one consonant, imperfectly represented in English letters by kshr, which even Pathan mouths find difficult to pronounce.
The Ghalchah Languages.
The only other Eranian languages with which we are called upon to deal are the Ghalchah languages of the Pamirs. The home of these tongues, Wakhi, Shighni, Sariqoli, Ishkashami, and Munjani, is beyond the British frontier, but the last-named has crossed the Hindu Kush by the Dora pass, and is also spoken in the Leotkuh valley of Chitral where it is known as Yudgha. This differs considerably from the standard language of Munjan and has developed into an independent dialect. The spill of an Eranian language over the great watershed of the Hindu Kush is but a repetition of what occurred centuries ago when the Aryans first settled in the Pamirs. At that early time, if linguistic evidence may be accepted, some of these Aryans crossed the passes and settled in what is now Laghman, Kafiristan, Chitral, Gilgit, and Kashmir. They migrated at a period when all the typical characteristics of Eranian languages had not yet become fixed, and in their new home their tongue developed on its own lines, partly Eranian and partly Indo-Aryan. The Aryans of India proper, who had entered the Punjab by the valley of the Kabul, had little intercourse or sympathy with these tribes, and nicknamed them Pisachas, or flesh-eaters, and in later years gruesome traditions attached to the name.
These Pisacha (or Dardic) tribes must at one time have extended to some distance beyond their present seats. Sanskrit writers mention colonies of them in the Western Punjab and in Sind, and examples of the dialects spoken by them are found in the words which the Greeks employed to record names heard by them in North-western India, and in the versions of the inscriptions of Asoka found in the same locality. Indeed, there are traces of their influence still existing in the modern vernaculars of the Lower Indus valley. At the present day the languages are found only in the country between the Punjab and the Hindu Kush. They possess an extraordinarily archaic character. Words are still in everyday use which are almost identical with the forms they assumed in Vedic hymns, and which now survive only in a much corrupted state in the plains of India.
In their essence these languages are neither Eranian nor Indo-Aryan, but are something between both. In the southern portion of the area in which they are spoken they are much mixed with Indian idioms; and this is specially the case with Kashmiri, which has a Dardic substratum, overlaid by another language of Indian origin, which effectually conceals the original basis.
The Dardic Languages.
The true Dardic languages of the present day are Pashai, spoken in Laghman of Afghanistan; a number of Kafir dialects, of which the principal are Bashgali, Wai, and Kalasha; Khowar, the language of Chitral; Shina, that of Gilgit and the neighbourhood and Kashmiri. Shina is the basis of Kashmiri, and the foundation of several mixed dialects, spoken in the Indus and Swat Kohistans, which are now being superseded by Pashto. Khowar occupies a somewhat independent position in regard to the others, while the Kafir dialects differ considerably among themselves. Wasin Veri, the most western of them, in some phonetic peculiarities shows points of agreement with the purely Eranian Munjan. The Dardic languages, except Kashmiri, are without literatures. At the same time it may be remarked that the great collection of Indian folk-lore entitled the Brihat Katha, of which no copy is known to exist at the present day, is said by tradition to have been composed in a Dardic tongue.
Indo-Aryan Languages.
The immigration of the Indo-Aryans through the Kabul valley from the west, was a gradual affair extending over centuries. The latest comers would not necessarily be on good terms with their predecessors, who quite possibly opposed them as intruders, nor did they speak the same language. At the earliest period of which we have any cognisance, we see the Punjab peopled by various Indo-Aryan tribes, one at enmity with another, and sometimes alluding to its opponents as a set of unintelligible barbarians.
The Language of the ‘Midland’.
In Sanskrit geography India is divided into the Madhyadesa, or ‘Midland’, and the rest. The Midland is constantly referred to as the true pure home of the Indo-Aryan people, the rest being, from the point of view of Sanskrit writers, more or less barbarous. The Midland extended from the Himalayas on the north to the Vindhya Hills on the south, and from Sahrind (vulgo Sirhind) in the Eastern Punjab on the west to the confluence of the Ganges and the Jumna on the east. It thus consisted of the Gangetic Doab, and of the country immediately to its north and south. The population of this tract had expanded from its original seat near the Upper Doab and the sacred river, the Saraswati. The particular Indo-Aryan dialect of these people developed into the modern language of the Midland. It also received literary culture from the most ancient times, and became fixed, in the form of Sanskrit (literally the ‘purified’ language), by the labours of grammarians, which may be said to have culminated in the work of Panini about the year 300 B.C. Sanskrit thus represents a polished form of an archaic tongue, which by Panini’s time was no longer a vernacular [1], but which, owing to political reasons and to the fact that it was the vehicle of literature, became a second language understood and used by the educated in addition to their mother tongue, and has so continued with a fluctuating popularity down to the present day. We may take the language of the Rig-veda as representing the archaic dialect of the Upper Doab, of which Sanskrit became the polished form. It was a vernacular, and, besides receiving this literary cultivation, underwent the fate of all vernaculars. Just as the spoken dialects of Italy existed side by side with Latin, and, while the evolution of Latin was arrested by its great writers, ultimately developed into the modern Romance languages, so the ancient Vedic form of speech developed first into that stage of language known as Prakrit, and then into one or more modern Indo-Aryan vernaculars. It is thus a mistake to say that any modern Indian language is derived from Sanskrit. The most that can be said is that it and Sanskrit have a common origin.
Note 1. Some scholars consider that Sanskrit was a vernacular of certain classes in Panini’s time and for long afterwards.
The Languages of the ‘Outer Band’.
So far for the language of the ‘Midland’. Round it, on three sides – west, south, and east – lay a country inhabited, even in Vedic times, by other Indo-Aryan tribes. This tract included the modern Punjab, Sind, Gujarat, Rajputana and the country to its east, Oadh, and Bihar. Rajputana belongs geographically to the Midland, but it was a late conquest, and may be considered as belonging to the Outer Band. Over this band were scattered different tribes, each with its own dialect; but a comparison of the modern vernaculars shows that these outer dialects were all more closely related to each other than any of them was to the language of the Midland. In fact, at an early period of the linguistic-history of India there must have been two sets of Indo-Aryan dialects – one the language of the Midland, and the other the group of dialects forming the Outer Band. From this it has been argued that the inhabitants of the Midland represent the latest stage of Indo-Aryan immigration. The earliest arrivals spoke one dialect, and the new-comers another. The latest invaders probably entered the Punjab like a wedge, into the heart of the country already occupied by the first immigrants, forcing the latter outwards in three directions, to the east, to the south, and to the west. The next process in the geographical distribution of the Indo-Aryan languages is one of expansion. The population of the Midland increased, and exercised an important influence over the rest of India. The imperial cities of Delhi and Kanauj, and the holy city of Mathura (Muttra), the Modura He rou theou of Ptolemy, lay within its territory. With increased population and increased power it expanded and conquered the Eastern Punjab, Rajputana and Gujarat (where it reached the sea, and gained access to maritime commerce), and Oudh. With its armies and with its settlers it carried its language, and hence in all these territories we now find mixed forms of speech. The basis of each is that of the Outer Band, but its body is that of the Midland. Almost everywhere the nature of the phenomena is the same. In the country near the borders of the Midland, the Midland language has overwhelmed the ancient language, and few traces of the latter can be recognised. As we go farther from the centre, the influence of the Midland weakens and that of the Outer Band becomes stronger and stronger, till the traces of the Midland speech disappear altogether. The present language of the Eastern Punjab is closely allied to that of the Upper Doab, but it gradually becomes the Lahnda of the Western Punjab, which has nothing to do with the Midland. So the language of North-eastern Rajputana is very similar to that of Agra, but as we go south and west we see more and more of the original language of the Outer Band until it is quite prominent in Gujarat. Again, in Oudh, which was a country with a literature and history of its own, there is a mixture of the same nature, although here the Midland language has not established itself so firmly as it has in the west and south.
Finally, where possible, the inhabitants of the Outer Band also expanded to the south and east. In this way we find Marathi in the Central Provinces, Berar, and Bombay; and, to the east, Oriya, Bengali, and Assamese, all of them true Outer languages unaffected in their essence by the speech of the Midland.
Present State of Affairs.
The state of affairs at the present day is therefore as follows. – There is a Midland Indo-Aryan language, occupying the Gangetic Doab and the country immediately to its north and south. Round it on three sides is a band of Mixed languages, occupying the Eastern Punjab, Gujarat, Rajputana, and Oudh, with extensions to the south in Baghelkhand and Chhattisgarh. Again, beyond these, there is a band of Outer languages, occupying Kashmir, the Western Punjab, Sind (here it is broken by Gujarat), the Maratha country, Orissa, Bihar, Bengal, and Assam. To these should be added the Indo-Aryan languages of the Himalayas north of the Midland, which also belong to the Intermediate Band, being recent importations from Rajputana. The Midland language is therefore now enclosed in a ring fence of intermediate forms of speech.
The Prakrits.
The word ‘Sanskrit’ means ‘purified’. Opposed to this is the word ‘Prakrit’ or ‘natural, unartificial’. ‘Prakrit’ thus connotes the vernacular dialects of India as distinguished from the principal literary form of speech. The earliest Prakrit of which we have any cognisance is the Midland vernacular current during the Vedic period. We have no record of the contemporary Prakrits of the Outer Band. We may call all these vernaculars (including the tongue of the Midland) the Primary Prakrits of India. These Primary Prakrits were in a linguistic stage closely corresponding to that of Latin as we know it. They were synthetic languages, with fairly complicated grammars, and with no objection to harsh combinations of consonants. In the course of centuries they decayed into what are called Secondary Prakrits. Here we find the languages still synthetic, but diphthongs and harsh combinations are eschewed, till in the latest development we find a condition of almost absolute fluidity, each language becoming an emasculated collection of vowels hanging for support on an occasional consonant. This weakness brought its own nemesis and from, say, 1000 A.D. we find in existence the series of modern Indo-Aryan vernaculars, or, as they may be called, Tertiary Prakrits. Here we find the hiatus of contiguous vowels abolished by the creation of new diphthongs, declensional and conjugational terminations consisting merely of vowels worn away, and new languages appearing, no longer synthetic, but analytic, and again reverting to combinations of consonants under new forms, which had existed three thousand years ago, but which two thousand years of attrition had caused to disappear.
Returning to the Secondary Prakrits, they existed from, at least, the time of the Buddha (550 B.C.) down to about 1000 A. D. During these fifteen hundred years they passed through several stages. The earliest was that now known as Pali. Two hundred and fifty years before Christ, we find the edict of Asoka written in a form of this language, and it then had at least two dialects, and eastern and a western. In this particular stage of Pali one of the Secondary Prakrits was crystallised by the influence of Buddhism, which employed it for its sacred books. As vernaculars, the Secondary Prakrits continued the course of their development, and in a still more decayed form reached the stage of what, in various dialects, is known as The Prakrit par excellence. When we talk of Prakrits, we usually mean this later stage of the Secondary Prakrits, when they had developed beyond the stage of Pali, and before they had reached the analytic stage of the modern Indo-Aryan vernaculars.
At this stage, so far as materials are available, we notice the same grouping of the Prakrit dialects as exists among the vernaculars of the present day. We have no definite information what was the language of the Punjab; but, as for the rest of India, there was a Prakrit of the Midland, the so-called Sauraseni, called after the Sanskrit name, Surasena, of the country round Mathura (Muttra). It was close to the great kingdom of Kanauj, the centre of Indo-Aryan power at this time. To its south and east was a band of dialects agreeing in many points among themselves, and also in common points of difference when compared with Sauraseni. These were: in the east, in the country now called Bihar, Magadhi; in Oudh and Baghelkhand, Ardhamagadhi; and, south of Ardhamagadhi and Sauraseni, Maharashtri with its head-quarters in Berar. Ardhamagadhi, as might be expected, was partly a mixed language, showing signs of the influence of Sauraseni, but, in all its essential points, its relationship with Magadhi is undoubted. Maharashtri was closely connected with Ardhamagadhi, which formed the connecting link between it and Magadhi, but in its rather isolated position it struck out on somewhat independent lines. It (under the name of Saurashtri) was once the language of Gujarat, before that country was overwhelmed by the invasion from the Midland.
Vidarbha, or Berar, the home of Maharashtri, was the seat of a powerful kingdom, whose rulers, encouraged literature, not only in Sanskrit but also in the vernacular. Maharashtri received culture at an early period. In its native land it became the vehicle of some of the most charming lyrics ever composed in an Indian tongue; and its popularity carried it over the whole of Hindustan, where it was employed both for epic poetry and also by the later Jain religious writers. But it is best known from the Indian dramas, in which, while most of the vernacular prose was written in Sauraseni, the language of the Midland, the songs are usually in Maharashtri. See Note 1.
Note 1. In the old Indian drama, Brahmans, heroes, kings, and men of high rank are made to speak Sanskrit, other characters employing some Prakrit dialect.
The Apabhramsas.
The next and last stage of the Secondary Prakrits was that known as ‘Literary Apabhramsa’. ‘Apabhramsa’ meaning ‘corrupt’ or ‘decayed’, was the title given by Indian grammarians, after the Prakrits had begun to receive literary culture, to the true vernaculars on which these polished literary dialects were founded. Ultimately, these Apabhramsas became themselves employed in literature, and were even studied by native grammarians, successors of those who in previous generations had despised them. This was a mere repetition of history. Sanskrit became fixed, and in time ceased to be generally intelligible. Then the vernacular Pali was used for popular literature. When literary Pali became generally unintelligible, the vernacular Prakrit was employed for the same purpose. Prakrit itself became crystallised, and in the course of generations glad to yield to Apabhramsa. While the earlier Prakrits had been manipulated for literary purposes by the omission of what was considered vulgar and the reduction of wild luxuriance to classical uniformity, so that the result was more or less artificial, the Apabhramsas were not nearly so severely edited, and the sparse literature which has survived affords valuable evidence as to the actual spoken language at the time of its committal to writing. The modern vernaculars are the direct children of these Apabhramsas. The Saurasena Apabhramsa was the parent of Western Hindi and Punjabi. Closely connected with it were Avanti, whose head quarters were round what is now Ujjain, the parent of Rajasthani; and Gaurjari, the parent of Gujarati. The remaining intermediate language, Eastern Hindi, is sprung from Ardhamagadha Apabhramsa.
Turning to the Outer Band, an unnamed Apabhramsa was the parent of Lahnda and Kashmiri, the latter having as its base some Dardic language akin to Shins, Sindhi is derived from a Vrachada Apabhramsa spoken in the country of the lower Indus, and Marathi is the child of the Apabhramsa of Maharashtra. In the east, the great Magadha Apabhramsa is not only the parent of Bihari in its proper home, but has also branched out in three directions. To the south it became Oriya to the south-east it developed into the Bengali of Central Bengal; while to the east, keeping north of the Ganges, its children are Northern Bengali, and, farther on, Assamese. These three branches can be distinctly traced. In some respects Oriya and Northern Bengali preserve common features which have disappeared in Central Bengal.
Sanskrit.
Concurrently with the development of the Indo-Aryan vernaculars, we have Sanskrit, the literary language of the Brahmanical schools, endowed with all the prestige which religion and learning could give it. In earlier times its influence was strongest in its proper home, the Midland. Allowing for phonetic corruption, the vocabulary of Sauraseni Prakrit is practically the same as that of Sanskrit. The farther we go from the Midland the more strange words we meet, words which are technically known as desya or ‘country-born.’ These, though Indo-Aryan, are not descended from the particular archaic dialect from which Sanskrit sprang, but belong to the vocabularies of the dialects of distant parts of India which were contemporary with it. On the other hand, the prestige of the literary Sanskrit has exercised a constant influence over all the Aryan vernaculars of India. Universally, wrongly, believed to be the parent of all of them, the would-be children have freely borrowed words from the vocabulary of their adoptive parent and this tendency received an additional impetus with the revival of learning which dates from the early part of the last century. In some of the modern languages it then became the fashion to eschew as much as possible all honest vernacular words derived from the Prakrits, and to substitute borrowed Sanskrit words. Native grammarians call these borrowed wordstatsamas, or ‘the same as “that” (sc. Sanskrit),’ while the true vernacular words derived from Prakrit are tadbhavas, or ‘having “that” (sc. Sanskrit)’ for its origin. Thus we see the Aryan portion of the vocabulary of a modern Indo-Aryan vernacular is composed of three elements: tatsamas, tadbhavas, and desyas. The distinction is of some importance, for the literary language of some of them, such as Bengali, is so overloaded with the fashionable tatsamas that it may almost be called a national misfortune. For the sake of a spurious dignity the written word has been rendered unintelligible to the vast multitudes who have not received the education imparted by the higher schools.
Other languages have contributed their quotas to the Indo-Aryan vernaculars. Many words have been borrowed from Dravidian languages, generally in a contemptuous sense. Thus the common wordpilla, ‘a cub’ is really a Dravidian word meaning “son”. The most important additions have come from Persian, and through Persian from Arabic. These are due to the influence of Mughal domination, and their use is universal. Every peasant of Northern India employs a few, while the literary Urdu of Lucknow is so full of them, that little of the true vernacular remains except an occasional postposition or auxiliary verb. A few words also have been borrowed from. Portuguese, Dutch, and English, often in quaintly distorted forms. Few Englishmen would recognise the railway term ‘signal’ in sikandar, which also, as a true Hindustani word, means ‘Alexander the Great’.
Indo-Aryan Vernaculars.
We thus arrive at the following list of the modern Indo-Aryan vernaculars:
A. Outer Sub-Branch.
I. North-Western group: Lahnda, Sindhi.
II. Southern group: Marathi.
III. Eastern group: Oriya, Bihari, Bengali, Assamese.
B. Mediate Sub-Group.
IV. Mediate group: Eastern Hindi.
C. Inner Sub-Branch.
V. Central group: Western Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Bhili, Khandeshi, Rajasthani.
VI. Pahari group: Eastern Pahari or Naipali, Central Pahari, Western Pahari.
Hindi.
The word ‘Hindi’ is very laxly employed by English writers. It properly means ‘Indian’, and can be used to signify any Indian language. By Europeans it is sometimes reserved for a particular form of Hindustani which will be described below, but is more often employed as a vague term to denote all the rural dialects of the three languages – Bihari, Eastern Hindi, and Western Hindi – spoken between Bengal proper and the Punjab. Here it is used only as meaning that form of Hindustani which is the prose literary language of those Hindus who do not employ Urdu. In English ‘Hindi’ is specially applied to the languages of Oudh and of the Midland, and, to avoid the introduction of a strange terminology, these are here called ‘Eastern Hindi’ and ‘Western Hindi,’ respectively. They are two quite distinct languages.
Western Hindi.
Western Hindi is the modern Indo-Aryan vernacular of the old Midland, i.e., of the Gangetic Doab and the country to its north; and, as in ancient times, it is by far the most important of all the languages of India. Hindustani, the principal dialect of Western Hindi, is not only a local vernacular, but is also spoken over the whole of the north and west of continental India as a second language, a lingua franca employed alike in the court and in the market-place by every one with any claim to education. Hindustani is that dialect of Western Hindi whose home is the Upper Gangetic Doab, in the country round Meerut. The city of Delhi lies close to the southern border of this tract. Here the dialect was in general use, and from here it was carried everywhere in India by the lieutenants of the Mughal empire. It has received considerable literary cultivation at the hands of both Musalmans and Hindus. The former employed the Persian character for recording it, and enriched its vocabulary with a large stock of Persian and Arabic words. When this infusion of borrowed words is carried to and extreme, as is the fashion, for instance in Lucknow, the language is intelligible only to educated Musalmans and to those Hindus who have been educated on Musalman lines.
Urdu.
The Persianised form of Hindustani is known as Urdu, a name derived from the Urdu-e-mu’alla, or royal military bazar outside Delhi Palace, where it took its rise. When employed for poetry, Urdu is called Rekhta (‘scattered’ or ‘crumbled’), from the manner in which Persian words are ‘scattered’ through it. The extreme Persianisation of Urdu is due to Hindu rather than to Musalman influence. Although Urdu literature is Musalman in its origin, the Persian element was first introduced in excess by the pliant Hindu Kayasths and Khattis employed in the Mughal administration and acquainted with Persian, rather than by Persians and Persianised Mughals, who for many centuries used only their own language for literary purposes. Urdu literature took its rise in the Deccan. ‘Dakhini Hindustani,’ as it is called, differs somewhat from the modern standard of Delhi and Lucknow, and retains several archaic features which have disappeared in the north. During the first centuries of its existence Urdu literature was entirely poetical. Prose Urdu owes its origin to the English occupation of India, and to the need of textbooks for the College of Fort William. The Hindi form of Hindustani was invented at the same time by the teachers at that College. It was intended to be a Hindustani for the use of Hindus, and was derived from Urdu by ejecting all words of Arabic and Persian birth, and substituting in their place words borrowed or derived from the indigenous Sanskrit. Owing to the popularity of the first book written in it, and to its supplying the need for a lingua franca which could be used by the strictest Hindus without their religious prejudices being offended, it became widely adopted and is now the recognised vehicle for writing prose by those inhabitants of Upper India who do not employ Urdu. Although originally differing from that language merely in vocabulary, it has in the course of a century developed idioms of its own.
Urdu is usually written in a modified form of the Persian character, while Hindi is generally written like Sanskrit, in the Deva-nagari character. While the former is enlisted into the service of both prose and poetry, the latter is employed only for prose. When a Hindu writes poetry he betakes himself to one of the naturally-born dialects of Eastern or Western Hindi, usually Awadhi or Braj Bhasha. The name ‘Hindustani’, when connoting any particular form of speech, is properly reserved for a language whose vocabulary is neither excessively Persianised nor excessively Sanskritised.
The other dialects of Western Hindi are Bangaru, Braj Bhasha, Kanauji, and Bundeli. The first is the language of the Bangar, or highland of the South-eastern Punjab, immediately to the west of the Ganges. It is sometimes called Hariani, and is much mixed with Punjabi and Rajasthani. Of all the dialects, Braj Bhasha is the nearest relative to Sauraseni. It is spoken round Mathura (Muttra) and in the Central Gangetic Doah. It has a copious literature, mainly poetical, and was the principal literary form of Western Hindi employed by Hindus before the invention of Hindi. Kanauji is almost the same as Braj Bhasha. It is spoken in the lower part of the Central Doah as far down as, say, Cawnpore, and in the country to its north. Bundeli is the dialect of the greater part of Bundelkhand, and also of a good portion of the Narbada valley in the Central Provinces. It has a respectable literature.
As languages, Western Hindi, and its neighbour Eastern Hindi, rival English in their flexibility and copiousness. When not spoiled, as Western Hindi too often is, by an excessive display of Arabic and Persian or of Sanskrit words, they are two beautiful, vigorous forms of speech, not overburdened by complicated grammars, and capable of expressing any idea which the mind of man can conceive with ease, elegance, and crystal clearness. They both have enormous native vocabularies and each has a complete apparatus for the expression of abstract terms. Their old literatures contain some of the highest flights of poetry and some of the most eloquent utterances of religious devotion which have found their birth in Asia.
Rajasthani.
Rajputana, in which Rajasthani is spoken, is divided into many states and many tribes. Each claims to have a language of its own, but all these are really dialects of one and the same form of speech. They fall into four main groups – a northern, a southern, an eastern, and a western. The typical dialect of the north is Mewati or Bighota. Of all the dialects of Rajputana it is, as might be expected, that which most nearly resembles Western Hindi. To the north-east it shares off into Braj Bhasha, and to the north-west into Bangaru. Malvi, the main dialect of Southern Rajputana, is spoken in Malwa. Neither it nor Mewati has any literature to speak of. In Eastern Rajputana we have Jaipuri, with many sub-dialects, and many closely connected forms of speech with various names. The western dialect, Marwari, is by far the most important. It is the vernacular of Marwar, Mewar, Bikaner, and Jaisalmer, and its speakers, who are enterprising merchants and bankers, have carried it all over India. It is the most typical of the Rajasthani dialects, and has a copious literature, written in a peculiar character, the aspect of which is familiar to every Indian official who has had occasion to inspect the accounts of native bankers.
Pahari.
Rajputana has sent out many colonies into Northern India. The most important are the inhabitants of the Himalayas from Chamba in the Punjab to Nepal. Some centuries ago bands of Rajputs at various times invaded and conquered these hills. They settled there and intermarried with the original inhabitants, on whom they imposed their language. The Rajasthani here transplanted has developed on independent lines, and was no doubt influenced by the form of speech which it superseded. What that form of speech was we do not know, except that we have some old plays in one of the original languages of Nepal. This was akin to what is now modern Bihari. The modern Rajasthani dialect now spoken in Nepal is called by Europeans ‘Naipali’ – a wrong name, it is not the main language of the country but is spoken only by the ruling classes. The other inhabitants employ various Tibeto-Burman dialects. Its speakers call it ‘Khas’, from the name of one of the tribes which employ it. Farther west these dialects are simply called ‘Pahari’, or ‘the Language of the Hills’. We have a Western Pahari spoken north of the Central and Eastern Punjab, and a Central Pahari north of the United Provinces. To these Khas may be added, under the name of ‘Eastern Pahari’. Other offshoots of Rajasthani are Gujari, the language of the Giljars wandering with their herds over the mountains of Kashmir and the Swat valley; and Labhani, spoken by the Labhanas or Banjaras, the great carrying tribe of Central and Western India. There are numerous Gujars in the plains of the Punjab, where they have given their name to two Districts, but these nowadays speak ordinary Punjabi.
Gujarati.
Marwar is bounded on the west by the Indian Desert beyond which we find Sindhi, one of the Outer languages, but to the south we enter easily into Gujarat. Gujarati, the language of this country, is the most western of those over which the language of the Midland exercises sway, and at its base we can see distinct traces of the old Saurashtri Prakrit, which belonged to the Outer Band. Gujarati has a printed character of its own, modelled on the cursive form which Deva-nagari takes all over Northern India, especially in Marwar. Owing to the survival of a number of ancient grammars, we have a connected history of the language from the time when it first came into existence as a modern Indo-Aryan vernacular some nine hundred years ago. Literature has always flourished in Gujarat from very early times, and the modern vernacular presents no exception. The Bhils and the inhabitants of Khandesh speak mixed forms of speech which are dialects of Gujarati.
Punjabi.
Punjabi most nearly agrees with the modern speech of the Midland. It is spoken in the Central Punjab, and is the vernacular of the Sikhs. Immediately to its west lies Lahnda, an Outer language, and the change from the one to the other is most gradual. It is quite impossible to fix a definite boundary between these two. Lahnda once extended far to the east, but was there superseded by the language of the Midland. This mixed language became the modern Punjabi. Its proper written character is related to that employed in Marwar. It is known as Landa or ‘clipped’ (quite a distinct word from Lahnda, the name of the language of the Western Punjab), and is distinguished for its illegibility when once it is put upon paper. Only its writer, and not always he, can read Landa as commonly scrawled. An improved, and legible, form of Landa is known as Gurmukhi. This was invented about three hundred years ago for writing the Sikh scriptures, and is now the character in ordinary use for printing, although the Persian and the Deva-Nagari are also employed. The standard Punjabi is that spoken in the neighbourhood of Amritsar; and the only real dialect is Dogri, the vernacular of the State of Jammu, and, with slightly varying inflexions, of a part of Kangra. Of the languages connected with the Midland, Punjabi is the purest and most free from the burden of terms borrowed from either Persian or Sanskrit. While capable of expressing all ideas, it has a charming rustic flavour indicative of the national characteristics of the sturdy peasantry that use it.
Eastern Hindi.
Eastern Hindi is based on the eastern languages of the Outer Band, and the influence of the language of the Midland is not nearly so strong as in Rajputana and the Punjab. Here the two elements meet in nearly equal proportions. It is the language of Oudh, of Baghelkhand, and of Chhattisgarh in the Central Provinces, and has a long history behind it. It is the vernacular of the country in which the hero Rama-chandra was born; and the Jain apostle Mahavira used an early form of it to convey his teaching to his disciples. The local Prakrit, Ardhamagadhi, thus became the sacred language of the Jains. Its modern successor, Eastern Hindi, through the work of a great genius, became the medium for celebrating the Gestes of Rama, and, in consequence, the dialect employed for nearly all the epic poetry of Hindustan. It is spoken nowadays not only in its own tract, but is also used by uneducated Musalmans far to the east – right into the heart of Bihar; and Oudh men, who are accustomed to travel to distant parts in quest of service, have carried it far and wide over the whole of India. It is commonly heard even in the streets of Calcutta and Bombay.
Eastern Hindi has a great literature, probably larger than that of any other of the modern Indo-Aryan vernaculars; and this literature, being founded on the genuine tongue of the people, and acquiring no fictitious dignity by bastard additions of Sanskrit words, has reacted on the spoken language, so that the form of speech heard in the fields of Oudh possesses the characteristic beauties of poetry and clearness. Every Oudh rustic is soaked in his national literature, and quotations from his great writers fall more naturally from his lips than the words of Burns fall from those of a Scotsman.
In the Central Provinces, Eastern Hindi meets Marathi and shades off into that language through a number of mixed dialects. It and Oriya are the only forms of speech which are not separated from Marathi by a distinct dividing line, and it thus still bears witness to the intimate relationship which existed between the Ardhamagadhi and the Maharashtri Prakrits two thousand years ago.
Eastern Hindi has three main dialects. Besides the standard Awadhi spoken in Oudh, there is the Bagheli of Baghelkhand, and the Chhattisgarhi of the eastern part of the Central Provinces.
59. Kashmiri.
Owing to its somewhat isolated position, and to the influence of the Dardic languages already referred to, the language of the northern State of Kashmir has struck out on independent lines. At the bottom we find a layer of Shina words [see note] and idioms, almost entirely hidden by an overlayer of a second language, closely allied to the Lahnda of the Western Punjab. Owing to the large number of broken vowels which it possesses, and to the changes which they undergo through the influence of others which follow them but are themselves silent, Kashmiri is almost as difficult for a foreigner to pronounce as is English. It has an old literature of considerable extent, but the modern language has borrowed so freely from Persian and Arabic that the books written two or three centuries ago are hardly intelligible to natives at the present day. The bulk of the population is now Muhammadan, only a few Pandits preserving the memory of the ancient language. Kashmiri has two or three dialects, of which the most important is Kashtawari.
Note: The commonest words, such as those for ‘father’, ‘mother’, etc., are Shina, not Indian, at the present day.
Kokistani.
Kohistani is the old language of the Indus and Swat Kohistans. It is now nearly superseded by Pashto, only a few tribes still employing it. Each of these has its own dialect. Very little is known about these forms of speech. Like Kashmiri, they have a Shina basis, covered by an overlayer from the Western Punjab.
Lahnda.
Lahnda or Western Punjabi is a language which appears under many names, such as Pothwari, Chibhali, Jatki, Multani, or Hindko. None of these names is suitable, as each indicates only the dialect of some special tribe or of some special locality. ‘Lahnda’, i.e., ‘Western’, has been tentatively adopted, although far from satisfactory. The name ‘Western’ Punjabi, suffers from the disadvantage of suggesting a connexion which does not exist with Punjabi proper. Lahnda, is spoken in the Western Punjab as far east as, say, the seventy-fourth degree of east longitude. It once extended much farther to the east, but has there been superseded by the language from which the modern Punjabi has sprung. There is no definite boundary between these two languages. If we take the conventional boundary line just suggested, we find plenty of Lahnda characteristics to its east, gradually diminishing as we proceed, and at the same time many traces of Punjabi for a considerable distance to its west. The population is mixed and has been mixed for centuries. The Sanskrit writers had a very poor opinion of the Central and Western Punjab, although these tracts were not far from the holy Saraswati. The inhabitants are described as possessing no Brahmans, living in petty villages, and governed by princes who supported themselves by internecine war. The population was casteless, had no respect for the Vedas, and offered no sacrifices to the gods. They were flesh-eaters (a Pisacha characteristics) and hard drinkers, and their women were charged with polyandry like the Jats of the present day.
West of the Indus, up to the Afghan border, Lahnda under various names is spoken by Hindus, while the Pathan Musalmans speak Pashto. Lahnda has two main dialects, one spoken north and the other south of the Salt Range. It has no literature. Its written character is, properly, the Landa, also employed for Punjabi, but this has been nearly superseded by a modification of the Persian.
Sindhi.
Sindhi is the language of Sind and the neighbourhood. It is closely connected with Lahnda, and, owing to its isolated position, it preserves many phonetic and flexional peculiarities which have disappeared elsewhere. There was, in former days, a Dardic colony in Sind, and traces of their language are still to be found in Sindhi, which is, in other respects, a typical speech of the Outer Band of languages. It has no literature to speak of, and has received little cultivation of any kind. The population which employs it being largely Musalman, its vocabulary borrows freely from Persian; and an adaptation of the Persian character has been employed for writing it, although Landa is also used for personal memoranda and accounts. Sindhi has four main dialects – Siraiki, spoken in Upper Sind; Lari (the standard dialect) in Laru or Lower Sind; Thareli in the Thar or Desert; and Kachchhi in Cutch. The first approaches Lahnda, while Thareli represents Sindhi merging into Marwari. Kachchhi is a mixture of Sindhi and Gujarati, in which the former predominates.
Marathi.
South of Sindhi the Outer Band of Indo-Aryan vernaculars is interrupted by Gujarati, the Inner language which has reached the sea-board. South of Gujarati, extending from near Daman along the coast of the Arabian Sea to beyond Goa, we come to the southern Indo-Aryan language, Marathi. The Saurashtri dialect of Maharashtri once covered Gujarat, but has been superseded by the Midland language. We find, however, traces of Saurashtri not only in Gujarati, but probably also right down the coast as far as the modern Marathi extends. In the Bombay Presidency Marathi covers the north of the Deccan plateau and the strip of country between the Ghats and the Arabian Sea. It is also the language of Berar and of a good portion of the north-west of the Nizam’s Dominions. It stretches across the south of the Central Provinces (except a small portion of the extreme south, in which Telugu is the language) and, in a very corrupt form, occupies most of the State of Bastar. Here it merges into Oriya through the Bhatri dialect of that language. It has to its north, in order from west to east, Gujarati, Rajasthani, Western Hindi, and Eastern Hindi. The first three are connected with the Midland, and Marathi does not merge into them. On the contrary, there is a sharp border-line between the two forms of speech. In the east it shows several points of agreement with the neighbouring Chhattisgarhi dialect of Eastern Hindi, and it shades off gradually into Oriya, both these languages being based on Prakrits of the Outer Band. Oriya is its near neighbour to the east. On the south lie Dravidian languages, and it is bounded on the west by the Arabian Sea. In Marathi we first meet in general use a past participle, and its resulting past tense, of which the characteristic is the letter i. This extends through all the remaining languages of the Outer Band – Oriya, Bengali, Bihari, and Assamese. It is also found, in restricted use, in Gujarati, alongside of the Midland form without the i, and is there one of the relics of the old Saurashtri Prakrit. This i-participle, therefore, covers the whole of Aryan. East India, reaches, through an almost unbroken chain of dialects all imperceptibly shading off into each other, to the Arabian Sea, and illustrates the intimate relationship which exists among all these forms of speech. Although Assamese is widely different from Marathi, and although a speaker of the one would be entirely unintelligible to a speaker of the other, a man could almost walk for 1,500 miles, from Dibrugarh to Goa, without being able to point (except, perhaps, in Bastar) to a single stage where he had passed from one language to another. Marathi differs from all other Indo-Aryan vernaculars by retaining many traces of early tones.
Marathi has a copious literature of great popularity. The poets wrote in the true vernacular of the country, and employed a vocabulary mostly composed of honest tadbhavas. The result is that the language at the present; day is rich in them; and though the scholars for whom the Maratha country is famous have in later times striven with some success to heighten the style of the language by the use of tatsamas, these parasites have not obtained the complete mastery over the literary form of speech that they have in Bengal. The country was not invaded by the Musalmans till a comparatively late period, and was ultimately successful in repelling the invasion, so that the number of words borrowed from and through Persian is small. Marathi delights in all sorts of jingling formations, and has struck out a larger quantity of secondary and tertiary words, diminutives and the like, than any of the cognate languages.
Standard Marathi is printed in the Devanagari character, but for purposes of writing of a current hand, known as modi or ‘twisted’, is in common use. It has three main dialects. The standard dialect, commonly called: ‘Desi Marathi’, is spoken in its greatest purity in the country round Poona. Sub-dialects of it are also found in the Northern and Central Konkan. In the Southern Konkan there is a distinct dialect known as ‘Konkani’. It differs so widely from standard Marathi that some of its speakers claim for it the dignity of a separate language. To its south and west the Dravidian Kanarese is spoken, so that the Kanarese alphabet is generally employed for recording Konkani. Natives also employ the Devanagari character for the same purpose, while the Portuguese missionaries of Goa have introduced the use of the Roman character among their converts. The Marathi of Berar and of the Central Provinces is the third dialect. It agrees more closely with the standard of Poona, the main differences being those of pronunciation. To these forms of speech may be added Halla, which, however, can hardly be called a true dialect. It is spoken in the State of Bastar and the neighbourhood, by Dravidian tribes who have attempted to abandon their aboriginal tongues. It is a mechanical mixture of bad Marathi, bad Oriya, and bad Chhattisgarhi, which varies in the proportions of its constituents from place to place. On the whole, Marathi inflexions form its most prominent feature.
We now come to those languages of the Outer Band which are directly derived from the ancient Magadhi Prakrit. They form the Eastern group of Indo-Aryan vernaculars, and are Bilhari, Oriya, Bengali, and Assamese. Of these the first-named occupies the original home of the common parent, from which colonies have issued in three directions, to the south, the south-east, and the east, where each developed on its own lines into one of the other three.
Bihari.
Magadha, the land where the Buddha first preached, and in which the famous Asoka had his capital city, corresponds to the Districts of Patna and Gaya. To its north, across the Ganges, lies the land of Tirhut, known in ancient times as Mithila. To its west lies the Bhojpur country, comprising the west of modern Bihar and the east of the United Provinces. It may be taken as extending to the degree of longitude passing a few miles west of the city of Benares. To the south of Magadha lie the two plateaux of Chota Nagpur, the northern coinciding with the District of Hazari-bagh, and the southern with that of Ranchi. To its east lies Bengal proper. With the exception of Bengal, all these tracts together form the home of the present Bihari language. It has three dialects, Maithili, Magahi, and Bhojpuri, the last of which differs considerably from the two others. Maithili, which is spoken in Tirhut, has a most complicated grammatical system, its verb changing its form, not only with regard to the subject, but also with regard to the object. It has a small literature dating from the fifteenth century, and, when written by Brahmans, has a character of its own akin to that employed for Bengali. The people who speak it are among the most conservative in India, and rarely emigrate from their over-crowded fields to other parts of the country. Their character is reflected in their language, which abounds in archaic expressions. The original Aryan language of Nepal before the Rajput invasion was an old form of Maithili. Magahi, the language of the ancient Magadha, or South Bihar, is also spoken on the northern or Hazari-Bagh plateau of Chota Nagpur, immediately to its south. It resembles Maithili in the complexity of its verbal conjugation and in general character; but, owing to the long Musalman domination of this part of India, it is as a rule more flexible and less conservative. The language of Magadha is looked upon by the inhabitants of other parts of India as typically boorish. Although directly descended from the language in which Buddhism was first preached, it has no literature and no traditions.
Bhojpuri is spoken in the east of the United Provinces and in West Bihar. It has also spread to the southern, or Ranchi plateau of Chota Nagpur, where under a slightly altered form, it is called Nagpuri. The Bhojpuri of the United Provinces differs somewhat from that of Bihar, but over the whole area the dialect has the same characteristics, being a flexible form of speech, adapted for current use, easy to learn, and not over-encumbered by grammatical subtilities. Here again the language reflects the national peculiarities. The Bhojpuris are as free from conservatism as the people of Tirhut are the reverse. They wander all over Northern India, and there is hardly a considerable town in which they do not possess a colony.
Apart from the peculiar character employed by the Tirhutia, Brahmans, all the dialects of Bihari are generally written in the current form of Deva Nagari known as ‘Kaithi’.
Oriya.
Oriya is the language of Orissa and of the adjoining parts of Madras and the Central Provinces. It is spoken in an isolated part of India, has been but slightly affected by contact with other languages, and has changed little since the fourteenth century, at which period we find it in use in inscriptions. It has a considerable literature of some merit, and was formerly written by indenting marks with a stylus upon leaves of the talipot palm. On such a a straight indented line along the grain tends to cause a split; and this accounts for the characteristic of its peculiar alphabet, in which the long line familiar to readers of Deva-nagari is replaced by a series of curves.
Oriya is a musical language, with a grammar which is simple but complete. It borrows very freely from Sanskrit, and the chief defect of its literary style in this overloading with tatsamas.
Assamese.
Assamese is the language of the middle and upper parts of the Assam valley. It is more nearly related to colloquial than to literary Bengali; and its claim to be considered as an independent form of speech, and not as a dialect of that language, depends mainly upon the fact that it possesses an important literature. It has also several well-marked peculiarities of pronunciation. The literary style is happily free from the Sanskritisms which deface that of Bengali. The literature itself is of ancient date and is varied in its character, being particularly rich in historical works. Assamese has no real dialects, though it varies slightly from place to place. Mayang, one of the languages spoken in the polyglot State of Manipur, may, however, be classed as a dialect of this language.
Dravidian Languages.
Whether we consider the phonetic systems, the methods of inflexion or the vocabularies, the Dravidian have no connexion with the Austro-Asiatic languages. They differ in their pronunciation, in their modes of indicating gender, in their declensions of nouns, in their method of indicating the relationship of a verb to its objects, in their numeral systems, in their principles of conjugation, in their methods of indicating the negative, and in their vocabularies. The few points in which they agree are points which are common to many languages scattered all over the world.
Most of the forms of speech which are called ‘Dravidian’ by philologists are spoken in Southern India or in the hills of Central India. Two of them have found their way into Chota Nagpur and the Santal Parganas, where they exist side by side with Munda dialects; and one, Brahui, has its home far to the north-west, in Baluchistan. The last was not known to Sanskrit writers, who were familiar with two great languages spoken in their time all over Southern India: namely, the Andhrabhasha and the Dravida-bhasha, the former corresponding to the modern Telugu, and the latter to the rest. This old division agrees with the classification of the modern vernaculars, which is as follows:
A. Dravida group: Tamil, Malayalam, Kanarese, Kodagu, Tulu, Toda, Kota.
B. Intermediate languages: Gond, Kurukh, Malto, etc.
C. Andhra group: Telugu, Kandh, Kolami.
D. Brahui.
Dravidian Features.
“In the Dravidian languages all nouns denoting inanimate substances and irrational beings are of the neuter gender. The distinction of male and female appears only in the pronoun of the third person, in adjectives formed by suffixing the pronominal terminations, and in the third person of the verb. In all other cases the distinction of gender is marked by separate words signifying ‘male’ and ‘female’. Dravidian nouns are inflected, not by means of case terminations, but by means of suffixed post-positions and separable particles. Dravidian neuter nouns are rarely pluralised. Dravidian languages use postpositions instead of prepositions. Dravidian adjectives are incapable of declension. It is characteristic of these languages, in contradistinction to Indo-European, that, wherever practicable, they use as adjectives the relative participles of verbs, in preference to nouns of quality or adjectives properly so called. A peculiarity of the Dravidian (and also of the Munda) dialects is the existence of two pronouns of the first person plural, one inclusive of the person addressed, the other exclusive. The Dravidian languages have no passive voice, this being expressed by verbs signifying ‘to suffer’, etc. The Dravidian languages, unlike the Indo-European, prefer the use of continuative participles to conjunctions. The Dravidian verbal system possesses a negative as well as an affirmative voice. It is a marked peculiarity of the Dravidian languages that they make use of relative participial nouns instead of phrases introduced by relative pronouns. These participles are formed from the various participles of the verb by the addition of a formative suffix. Thus, ‘the person who came’ is in Tamil literally ‘the who-came’.”
Tamil.
Tamil, or Arava, covers the whole of Southern India up to Mysore and the Ghats on the west, and reaches northwards as far as the town of Madras and beyond on the east. It is also the vernacular of the northern part; of Ceylon, and has been widely spread over Further India by emigrant coolies. As domestic servants its speakers are found all over India. It is the oldest, richest, and most highly organised of the Dravidian languages: plentiful in vocabulary, and cultivated from a remote period. It has a copious literature, which is couched in a somewhat artificial dialect known as ‘Shen’ (i.e., ‘perfect’), in contrast with the colloquial form of speech, which is called ‘Kodum’ or ‘Codoon’ (i.e., ‘rude’). Only a few insignificant dialects of the spoken language have been recorded. The name ‘Tamil’ and the word ‘Dravida’ are both corruptions of the same original, ‘Dramida.’ The language has an alphabet of its own.
Malayalam.
Malayalam is a modern offshoot from Tamil, dating from the ninth century A.D. It is the language of the Malabar coast, and has one dialect, Yerava, spoken in Coorg. Its most noteworthy features are that, except among certain tribes, it has dropped all the personal terminations of verbs, and that the words which it has borrowed from Sanskrit are particularly numerous. It has a large literature, and employs the old Grantha character used in Southern India for Sanskrit writings.
Kanarese.
Kanarese is the language of Mysore and of the neighbouring portion of the Ghat country, including the southern corner of the Bombay Presidency. It, also, has an ancient literature, written in an alphabet closely connected with that employed for Telugu. It has two petty dialects, Badaga and Kurumba, both of which are spoken in the Nilgiris. Kodagu, the language of Coorg, is also considered by some to be a dialect of Kanarese. It lies midway between it and Tulu, the language of a portion of the South Kanara District of Madras, Toda and Kota are petty forms of speech spoken by small tribes on the Nilgiris.
Kurukh.
Kurukh, or Oraon, is the vernacular of a tribe in Chota Nagpur and the adjoining portions of the Central Provinces. It is more closely connected with ancient Tamil and with ancient Kanarese than with any other of the great Dravidian languages. The people themselves say that they and the Maler actually did come to their present seats from the Kanara country.
Malto.
Malto is the language of these Maler, a tribe nearly related to the Oraons, and now settled, still farther north, near Rajmahal on the bank of the Ganges. Neither of these two languages has any literature or any alphabet. The Roman alphabet is usually employed for recording them.
Gond.
The Gond language is spoken in the hill country of Central India. Many of the Gonds have abandoned their own dialects and have taken to Aryan forms of speech. The true Gond is intermediate between the Dravida and Andhra tongues, and has numerous dialects. It is unwritten, and has no literature.
Telugu.
Telugu is the only important Andhra language. It is the principal form of speech in the eastern part of the Indian Peninsula, from the town of Madras to near Orissa. It is also spoken in the east of the Nizam’s dominions and in the extreme south of the Central Provinces, extending into Berar. It has an extensive literature, written in a character of its own, akin to Devanagari, which, like Oriya, owes its numerous curves to the fact that it has been written on palm-leaves.
Kandh (Kui), Kolami.
Kandh, or Kui, is spoken by the Khonds of the Orissa Hills. It, like Kolami and other petty dialects of distant Berar, is quite uncultivated.
Brahui, also an uncultivated language, is heard in the central highlands of Baluchistan. Owing to its isolated position, it has developed on lines of its own; but it is undoubtedly a Dravidian language.
Austric Languages.
The Austric family of languages is divided into two sub-families, the Austro-Asiatic and the Austronesian. Its speakers are found scattered over Nearer and Further India and form the native population of Indonesia, Melanesia and Polynesia, including Madagascar and New Zealand. It extends from Madagascar, off the coast of Africa to Easter Island which is less than forty degrees from the coast of South America. In the North, traces of it were discovered in Kanawar in the Punjab and its southern limits included New Zealand. The only Austronesian languages politically connected with India are Salon, spoken by a tribe of sea-gipsies inhabiting the islands of the Mergui Archipelago and Malay spoken in the same locality. The Austro-Asiatic sub-family is represented in India by the great Mon-Khmer branch spoken in Further India, comprising Mon, an ancient literary language now spoken in Thaton and Amherst, Palaung and Wa, less civilised languages spoken in Upper Burma, by Khasi, spoken in the Khasi and Jaintia Hills of Assam, Nicobarese spoken in the Nicobar Islands, which seems to form a connecting link between Mon and the Munda languages of Chota Nagpur and North-East Madras.
The Munda Languages.
The Munda languages are agglutinative, and preserve this characteristic in a very complete manner. Suffix is piled upon suffix, and helped out by infix, till we obtain words which have the meaning of a whole sentence. For instance, the word dat means ‘strike,’ and from it we form the word da-pa-l-ocyo-akan-tahen-tae-tin-a-e, which signifies ‘he, who belongs to him who belongs to me, will continue letting himself be caused to fight.’ Not only may we, but we must employ this posy of speech, if, for instance, my slave’s son was too often getting himself entangled in affrays. As compared with Dravidian languages, Munda languages have a series of semi-consonants which correspond to the so-called ‘abrupt’ tone of the languages of Further India. The distinction of gender is between animate and inanimate nouns, and not between rational and irrational ones. The noun has three numbers – a singular, a dual, and a plural; and the cases of the direct and indirect object are indicated by suffixes added to the verb, while the noun remains unchanged. The numerals are counted by twenties and not by tens. As in Dravidian, the pronoun of the first person plural has two forms, one including, and the other excluding, the person addressed, but in other respects the pronouns are altogether different. There is no agreement whatever between the conjugations of the Munda and of the Dravidian verb. The latter is simple, while the former exhibits an almost bewildering maze of participial forms, which in every case are converted into tenses by the addition of the letter a. Finally, the Munda languages do not possess anything corresponding to the Dravidian system of negative conjugation.
Munda Features.
The principal home of the Munda languages (the race is much more widely spread) is Chota Nagpur. The following is a list of these forms of speech: Kherwari, Kurku, Kharia, Juang, Savara, Gadaba.
Kherwari is much the most important. It has several dialects, which are often wrongly considered to be distinct languages. They are Santali or Har, Munari, Bhumij, Birhar, Kuda, Ho, Turim Asuri, Agaria, and Korwa. Ho is the dialect of the Larka, or ‘fighting’ Kols of Singhbhum, while the others are spoken by petty forest tribes. The home of Santali is the Santal Parganas. The rest are all spoken in Chota Nagpur and in the neighbouring hill tracts of Orissa and the Central Provinces.
Kurku is the Munda language of the Mahadeo Hills. With Kharia and Juang it forms a linguistic sub-group, but is more nearly related to Kherwari than are the other two. Kharia is found in the south-west corner of Ranchi and in the adjoining States of Jashpur and Gangpur. The tribe extends much farther south, but they have as a rule exchanged their own language either for the Dravidian Kurukh or for some broken Aryan patois. The language is dying out, and is nowhere spoken in its original purity. It has borrowed freely from neighbouring forms of speech, and has been compared to a palimpsest, the original writing of which can only be deciphered with some difficulty.
Juang resembles Kharia. It is the language of a small wild tribe in the Orissa Hills. From the leaf-garments of its speakers it is sometimes called ‘Patua’. Savara and Gadaba are two languages spoken in Madras territory close to the Orissa border. They, notably Gadaba, are much mixed with the Telugu spoken round about them, and they may probably be grouped as akin to Kharia and Juang. The Savaras are an ancient and widely spread tribe, who were known to the Indo-Aryans in Vedic times, and are mentioned by Pliny and Ptolemy. The majority still adhere to their own language.
None of the Munda languages have any proper written character of any literature. The Roman character is generally employed for recording them.
The Tibeto-Chinese Languages.
The languages of Further India together with those spoken in Tibet, are usually grouped under the general name of Tibeto-Chinese, which includes two distinct families, the Siamese-Chinese and the Tibeto-Burman. The original home of all these people seems to have been North-western China, between the upper courses of the Yangtse-kiang and the Ho-ang-ho, and from here they spread out in all directions. So far as British India is concerned, they followed river valleys in their migrations, down the Chindwin, the Irrawaddy, and the Salween into Burma, down the Brahmaputra into Assam, and up the Brahmaputra into Tibet. From Tibet they occupied the Himalayas, and are now found in Nepal and in other mountainous tracts lying south of the main watershed. 156 languages belong to this family, 128 of which are Tibeto-Burman, 11 are Tai-Chinese and 17 are Mon and Karen. [India I. i. 1931. p. 351].
All the Tibeto-Chinese languages are monosyllabic. Each word consists of one syllable, and refuses to be classed under any of the well-known categories of noun, verb, and particle. It expresses an indefinite idea, which may be employed to connote any part of speech, according to its position in the sentence and its relation to its neighbours. The words being monosyllables, the necessary paucity of different sounds is eked out by tones, each sound being raised or lowered in pitch, shortened or prolonged, according to the idea which it is intended to convey. For instance, the Shan monosyllable kaumeans ‘I,’ ‘be old,’ ‘nine,’ ‘a lock of hair,’ ‘indifference to an evil spirit,’ ‘an owl,’ ‘a butea-tree,’ ‘complaining of any thing,’ ‘the shin,’ ‘the balsam plant,’ or ‘a mill,’ according to the tone with which it is pronounced. The number of tones differs in various languages. Shan has fifteen, while Western Tibetan is said to have only one. The most characteristic of these languages, Chinese and Siamese, belong to what is known as the isolating class – i.e., every mono-syllable has a distinct definite meaning of its own, and complex ideas are expressed by compounding two or more together. For instance, ‘he went’ would be indicated by three words, one meaning ‘he,’ another connoting the idea of ‘going,’ and a third connoting the idea of ‘completion.’ Others belong to what is known as the agglutinating class, in which certain words are now only used as suffixes to indicate relationship of time or space, and cannot be employed independently with meanings of their own. It is as if the word. ‘completion’ in ‘he-going-completion’ had lost its original meaning and was now only used as a sign to indicate that the idea connoted by some other word performing the function of a verb was also the idea of a completed action.
The Tibeto-Burman Languages.
Bhotia, Tibetan – The Tibeto-Burman branch of the Tibeto-Chinese languages includes two great languages, Tibetan and Burmese, each of which has an alphabet of its own akin to Devanagari, as well as an extensive literature. Tibetan is one of several dialects grouped under the general name of ‘Bhotia’, from Bhot, the Indian name of Tibet. Besides the Bhotia of Tibet or Tibetan, there are the Bhotia of Baltistan or Balti, that of Ladakh or Ladakhi, that of Sikkim or Denjongke, that of Bhutan or Lho-ke, and so on. Connected with Bhotia, but not dialects of it, are a number of Himalayan languages of which the most noteworthy are Newari, (the main language of Newar, i.e., Nepal), Rong or Lepcha (of Sikkim), Mangar, and Murmi. Most of these are really Nepal languages, whose speakers (many of them soldiers in our Gurkha regiments) are temporary visitors to British India. This group is called the ‘Non-pronominalized Himalayan languages,’ to distinguish it from another, of which Kanawari, Limbu, and the so-called Kiranti forms of speech are the most important members, and which Hodgson classed as the ‘Pronominalized Himalayan languages’.
Pronominalised Languages.
Although this latter group is in the main Tibeto-Burman in character, it also shows manifest traces of an older substratum having striking points of resemblance to the Munda tongues. There are the same distinctions between things animate and inanimate, the same system of counting in twenties, the same occurrence of a dual number, and of a double set of plural forms for the first personal pronoun, and the same tendency to conjugate a verb by means of pronominal suffixes. All this cannot be mere coincidence. It inevitably leads to the conclusion that these Himalayan tracts were once inhabited by tribes speaking a language connected with those now in use among the Mundas, who have left their stamp on the dialects spoken at the present day.
North Assam Sub-Branch.
West of Bhutan we come across another Tibeto-Burman group, spoken by wild tribes of the hills to the north of the Assam valley. These are Aka, Dafla, Abor-Miri, and Mishmi. In the lower Assam valley itself and the country to its south (omitting the Khasi Hills) we have the Bodo group, of which the principal languages are Bara or Mech, the tongue of scattered tribes in the valley, Garo of the Garo Hills, and Tipura or Mrung of Hill Tippera. Then we have the Naga languages of Central and Eastern Assam. The most important of these is Mikir of the Mikir Hills in the valley itself. To the south and south-east there are the Naga Hills, inhabited by many tribes each possessing a language of its own. Such are Angami, Sema, Ao, Lhota, and Namsangia, with fourteen or fifteen others. None of them, of course, has any literature, and of many of them little but the names and a few words are known. East of Assam, in the confused mountainous country which forms the north of Upper Burma, are a number of cognate dialects grouped together under the general name of Kachin or Singpho. These wild Kachins were migrating into Burma itself, and had already penetrated far into the Shan States, when we annexed that country.
Kuki-Chin Group.
South of the Naga Hills lies the State of Manipur, and here we first meet the group of languages known as Kuki-Chin. Meithei, the official language of the State, is the only one of them which possesses an alphabet and a literature. Owing to the existence of the latter its development has been retarded, so that it is in an older stage than the rest. The others are scattered in colonies over Manipur and Cachar, and extend south, through the hill country, as far as the Sandoway District of Burma. Since they occupied this latter area, there has been a constant tendency to expand northwards. On the west they were barred by the sea, and on the south and east by the stable government of Burma. Thus wave after wave has been driven to the north by those who were behind. The Kuki-Chins of Manipur and Cachar once occupied the hills immediately to the south, and these are now held by the Lushais, who were originally pushed forward from the south-east and drove them on. This progress has been arrested by our conversion of Cachar into settled territory. There are more than thirty Kuki-Chin languages, some with several dialects. The most important, both politically and in the numbers that speak them, are Lai in the Chin Hills, and Lushei or Dulien in the Lushai Hills. The Kuki-Chin are the most typical of all the Tibeto-Burman languages. They do not possess a real verb, the conception being expressed with the aid of a verbal noun. When a speaker of Lushei, for instance, wishes to say ‘I go,’ he says ‘my going’; and for ‘I went’, ‘my-going-completion’.
Burmese.
Passing over a number of hybrid dialects we come to Burmese, which is the predominant language, even where others are spoken, all over Upper and Lower Burma, except in the Chin Hills, the Shan States, and the Kachin country north of Bhamo. The most important dialect is Arakanese, which branched off from the main stem at an early date, and has developed on independent lines. Burmese has a considerable literature, of which the poetry is written in a special and difficult dialect; and a written character of its own, derived from the ancient square Pali, but abounding in curved lines, and connected through the Pali, with Deva-nagari. The development of the spoken language has proceeded more rapidly than that of the written language, so that words are nowadays seldom pronounced as they are spelt.
Shan.
The only important Tai language (Siamese-Chinese) of British India is Shan, spoken in the south-east of Upper Burma, and closely allied to Siamese. A Tai tribe called the Ahoms made themselves masters of Assam in the year 1228 A.D. They were followed by other Shan colonies, which still survive and speak their own dialects. The most important is Khamti. Ahom has been dead for centuries, though its literature still survives and can be interpreted by a few priests of the old religion. The Ahoms were pagans, but the rest of the Shans, like the Burmese, are Buddhists. Shan has a voluminous literature, and a written character based on that of Burmese.
The Karen tribe is principally scattered over Lower Burma, though its members are also found in the Shan Hills. Their language seems to belong to the Siamese-Chinese branch of the Tibeto-Chinese family. It is probable that both Karen and Man have Austric affinities.
Miscellaneous Languages.
Two languages have not yet been classed by philologists. These are Andamanese and Burushaski. The former is really a group of languages which are agglutinating, make free use of prefix, infix, and suffix, and are adapted only to the expression of the more simple ideas. Burushaski is spoken in the extreme north-west of India on the borders of Turkistan, by the inhabitants of Hunza-Nagar. No one has hitherto succeeded in tracing a connexion between it and any other known form of speech. It has an elaborate grammar, and its most characteristic feature is the frequent use which is made of pronominal prefixes, so as sometimes to alter greatly the appearance of a word.
Gipsy Languages.
The so-called ‘Gipsy’ languages have nothing to do with European Romani. They are a number of dialects spoken by wandering tribes, often of very bad reputation. Some are mere thieves’ jargons, others are hybrids developed in journeys from place to place, and some are real dialects of well-known languages.
Arabic and Somali.
In Aden we find Arabic and Somali spoken. The former belongs to the Semitic and the latter to the Hamitic family.
Bilingualism.
Bilingualism is a marked feature of India and arises from a number of causes of which the admixture of races and the need for backward people to learn another language in their dealings with advanced peoples are perhaps the most important. In addition the poverty of communications in many parts has led to the existence of dialects which have peculiarities that make them difficult for outsiders to understand without some degree of bilingualism. (Bombay, 1931. p. 332).
So deep does bilingualism go in parts of Ganjam that from very infancy many grow up speaking both Oriya and Telugu and are so much at home in both that they cannot tell which is their mother tongue. In point of fact it is perfectly possible for a child to be bilingual from his first learning to speak and the phenomenon is familiar in some parts of india where marriages between persons of different linguistic groups are common. The late Khan of Kalat spoke Brahui to his mother and Balochi to his father from infancy and in Assam there are small villages where the children grow up fluent in five languages each of which would puzzle a Dutchman to learn a little of in two years, and in the State of Manipur the majority of tribesmen are bilingual in their own tongues and Manipuri while a combined knowledge of some Kuki language, some Naga language and the Manipuri language must be extremely frequent. The incredible rapidity with which a Naga or Kuki interpreter acquires an additional language with the most limited opportunity for doing so has to be experienced to be appreciated, and there are some villages which in addition to real languages compose jargons and counter-jargons of their own in order to be able to chatter incomprehensibly in the presence of others, particularly when discussing a proposition of purchase, sale, or barter. Wherever a tribal language is spoken, the great majority of the adult men using it and a large proportion of the adult women, are bilingual. Bilingualism is on the increase.
NOW FOCUS ON
Bengali [language]
In its own home Bengali has a greater number of speakers than any other Indian language. Over the huge area in which it is a vernacular, Bengali is by no means uniform. Its main dialectal division is not however, according to locality, but lies between the literary and the spoken language. If we except the language employed by the Musalman inhabitants of the eastern part of the Gangetic delta, the literary dialect is the same over the whole country. This is never used when speaking, except in formal addresses and the like. Even the most highly educated Bengalis employ the colloquial dialect in their ordinary conversation. The literary form of the language differs from the colloquial not only in its highly Sanskritised vocabulary but in its grammar, in which the dead forms of three centuries ago are retained in a state of fictitious animation. This literary style dates from the revival of learning which took place in Calcutta, under English influences, at the commencement of the last century. Up to that time Bengal had an indigenous poetical literature of its own, written in a purified form of the spoken vernacular. With the advent of the English there arose a demand for prose literature, and the task of supplying it fell into the hands of Sanskrit-ridden pandits. Anything more monstrous than this prose dialect, as it existed in the first half of the nineteenth century, it is difficult to conceive. Books were written, excellent in their subjects, eloquent in their thoughts, but in a language from which something like ninety per cent. of the genuine Bengali vocabulary was excluded, and its place supplied by words borrowed from Sanskrit which the writers themselves could not pronounce. During the past fifty years there has been a movement, with slight success, to reduce this absurd Sanskritisation; but, still, at the present day many words current in literary Bengali are mere ideograms. The Bengali vocal organs are not adapted to the pronunciation of Sanskrit words, and so these words spell one thing, and, when read aloud, sound something quite different. Under such circumstances literary Bengali is divorced from the comprehension of every native to whom it has not been specially taught. It is this which is the official language of Government and of missionaries, and which (with few exceptions) is taught in the grammars written for European students. Bengalis themselves call their Sanskritised book-language ‘Sadhu-Bhasha’, i.e., the ‘excellent speech’, but the adjective which they apply to anything approaching their true vernacular is the significant one of ‘sweet’. It is this ‘sweet’ language which every one with a pen in his hand, be he European or Bengali, endeavours to ignore. It is an instance of history repeating itself. In the old days the classical language was called sanskrit, ‘purified’, but the epithet applied to the true vernacular Prakrit was amia, or ‘nectar’.
The many dialects of spoken Bengali fall into three groups: the western or standard, the eastern, and the northern. Western Bengali is spoken in the country on both sides of the Hooghly and to the west. The centre of Eastern Bengali may be taken as the city of Dacca. It extends to the east into the Districts of Sylhet and Cachar, and, southwards, to beyond Chittagong. The Bengali of Chittagong is very corrupt, and is quite unintelligible to an untravelled native of Calcutta. Farther inland, in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, there is a still more debased dialect called Chakma, which is written in an alphabet akin to that of Burmese. Northern Bengali is spoken north of the Ganges and at the lower end of the Assam valley. It is a dialect which, though closely connected with standard Bengali, really owes nothing to it. It is, by derivation, an intermediate speech between Bihari and Assamese. In some respects it agrees with Oriya rather than with the language of Calcutta.
Bengali and Assamese are written in very nearly the same alphabet, which is related to that employed by the Brahmans of Tirhut. It is of the same stock as Devanagari, but has existed as an independent script since at least the eleventh century A.D.
Genetics
Distribution of R1a (purple) and R1b (red).
Main article: Haplogroup R1a (Y-DNA)
In terms of association with other races, the highest levels of R1a (>50%) are found across the Eurasian Steppe: West Bengal Brahmins (72%), and Uttar Pradesh Brahmins, (67%), the Ishkashimi (68%), the Tajik population of Khojant (64%), Kyrgyz (63.5%), Sorbs(63.39%), Poles (56.4%), Ukrainians (50%) and Russians (50%) and in the Central India among the saharia tribe of Madhya Pradesh R1a(22.8%) and R1a1(28.07%). It is also found in relatively high frequencies in several South Indian Dravidian-speaking tribes including the Chenchu and Valmikis of Andhra Pradesh. To the east, Konkanastha Brahmins(48%) to the west, Khatris (67%) in north and Iyenger Brahmins (31%) of south. It has also been found in several South Indian Dravidian-speaking Adivasis including the Chenchu (26%) and the Valmikis of Andhra Pradesh and the Kallar of Tamil Nadu suggesting that M17 is widespread in Tribal Southern Indians.
R1a has been variously associated with:
the re-colonization of Eurasia during the Late Glacial Maximum.
the expansion of the Kurgan people from the Pontic-Caspian steppe, which is associated with the spread of the Indo-European languages.[9][10]
The Modern studies for R1a1 (M17) suggest that it could have originated in South Asia.[citation needed] It could have found its way initially from Western India (Gujarat) throughCentral Asiaand Russia, before finally coming to Europe"..."as part of an archaeologically dated Paleolithic movement from east to west 30,000 years ago.
[ref : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_R1a_(Y-DNA) ]
Brahmin communities
The Brahmin castes may be broadly divided into two regional groups: Pancha-Gauda Brahmins from Northern India and considered to be North of Vindhya mountains and Pancha-Dravida Brahmins from South of Vindhya mountains as per the shloka. However, this sloka is from Rajatarangini of Kalhana, which was composed only in the 11th century CE.
कर्णाटकाश्च तैलंगा द्राविडा महाराष्ट्रकाः,
गुर्जराश्चेति पञ्चैव द्राविडा विन्ध्यदक्षिणे ||
सारस्वताः कान्यकुब्जा गौडा उत्कलमैथिलाः,
पन्चगौडा इति ख्याता विन्ध्स्योत्तरवासिनः ||
Translation: Karnataka (Kannada), Telugu (Andhra), Dravida (Tamil and Kerala), Maharashtra and Gujarat are Five Southern (Panch Dravida). Saraswata (Punjab & Sindh), Kanyakubja(Uttar Pradesh), Gauda (Bengal), Utkala (Orissa), Maithili (Bihar) are Five Northern (Pancha Gauda). This classification occurs in Rajatarangini of Kalhana and earlier in some inscriptions.
Nepal
Bahun is a colloquial Nepali term for a member of the Pahari or "hill" Brahmin (ब्राह्मण) caste, who are traditionally educators, scholars and priests of Hinduism. They are also known as Barmu in Newari. By tradition—and by civil law until 1962—they represented the highest of the four Hindu varna or castes. Bahuns from the "hills" have been represented disproportionately in Nepal's education system, political parties and civil service since the country was unified by Prithvi Narayan Shah and his heirs in the 18th century. The top leaders of the all the major three parties: Maoist opposition (Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Baburam Bhattarai), Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) Jhalanath Khanal, Madhav Kumar Nepal), and Nepali Congress (Sushil Koirla)) are also Bahuns.
Burma (Myanmar)
Historically, Brahmins, known as ponna in modern-day Burmese (Until the 1900s, ponna referred to Indians who had arrived prior to colonial rule, distinct from the kala, Indians who arrived during British rule), formed an influential group in Burma prior to British colonialism. During the Konbaung dynasty, court Brahmins were consulted by kings for moving royal capitals, waging wars, making offerings to Buddhist sites like the Mahamuni Buddha, and for astrology. Burmese Brahmins can be divided into four general groups, depending on their origins:
Manipur Brahmins - Brahmins who were sent to Burma after Manipur became a Burmese vassal state in the 1700s and ambassadors from Manipur
Arakanese Brahmins : Brahmins brought to Burma from Arakan after it was conquered by the Konbaung king Bodawpaya
Sagaing Brahmins: oldest Brahmins in Burmese society, who had consulted the Pyu, Burman and Mon kingdoms prior to the Konbaung dynasty
Indian Brahmins: Brahmins who arrived with British colonial rule, when Burma became a part of the British Raj
According to Burmese chronicles, Brahmins in Burma were subject to the four-caste system, which included brahmanas , kshatriyas, vaishya, and shudra. Because the Burmese monarchy enforced the caste system for Indians, Brahmins who broke caste traditions and laws were subject to punishment. In the Arakanese kingdom, punished Brahmins often became kyun ponna , literally 'slave Brahmins', who made flower offerings to Buddha images and performed menial tasks. During the Konbaung dynasty, caste was indicated by the number of salwe (threads) worn; Brahmins wore nine, while the lowest caste wore none. Brahmins are also fundamental in the Nine-God cult, called the Nine Divinities (Phaya Ko Su ) which is essentially a Burmese puja [disambiguation needed] (puzaw in Burmese) of appeasing nine divinities, Buddhaand the eight arahats, or a group of nine deities, five Hindu gods and four nats. This practice continues to be practiced in modern-day Burma.
Pancha-Gauda
Pancha-Gauda and Pancha-Dravida are two chief divisions of Brahmins, as per the śloka from Rājatarangini of Kalhaṇa / Kalhana:
कर्णाटकाश्च तैलंगा द्राविडा महाराष्ट्रकाः , गुर्जराश्चेति पञ्चैव द्राविडा विन्ध्यदक्षिणे ||
सारस्वताः कान्यकुब्जा गौडा उत्कलमैथिलाः, पञ्चगौडा इति ख्याता विन्ध्स्योत्तरवासिनः ||
Meaning :(The-) Karnātakas, Tailangas, Dravidas, Mahārāshtrakās and Gurjaras; these five(-types who-) live south of Vindhya (- mountains) are (called-) "five Dravidas" (- brahmins); (whereas-) Sārasvatas, Kānyakubjas, Gauḍa brahmins, Utkala Brahmins, and Maithil Brahmins, who live north of Vindhya (- mountains) are known as "five Gaudas" (-brahmins).
The differentiation of brahmin community is mentioned in a Sanskrit text Brāhmaṇotpatti-mārtaṇḍa.
सृष्टियारम्भे ब्राह्मणस्य जातिरेका प्रकीर्तिता ।
एवम् पूर्व जातिरेका देशभेदादद्विधाऽभवत् ॥
गौड़द्रविड़ भेदेन तयोर्भेदाददश स्मृताः ...
Meaning : There was one caste of Brahmin in the beginning of Creation, but due to difference in country (of residence) it got bifurfated into two, namely Gauda and Dravida (i.e., Panch-Gauda and Panch-Dravida), which was again differentiated into ten (five Panchgaudas and five Panchdravida sub-castes).
Panch-Gauda still include a major portion of all Brahmin communities in North India [5], barring a few migrant Brahmin communities like Shakadvipi [6]. Panch-Gauda includes many branches all of which come under Brahmin communities.
Those from Uttarapatha (Aryavarta) (northern and eastern India.)
Approximately ordered according to geographical regions.
1. Kanyakubja Brahmins
2. Saraswat Brahmins
a) Saraswat Brahmins
b) Goud Saraswat Brahmins
c) Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmins
d) Rajapur Saraswat Brahmins
3. Saryupareen Brahmins
4. Utkala Brahmin (Odisha)
5. Maithil Brahmin (Mithila)
The Sanskrit textBrāhmaṇotpatti-Mārtaṇḍa by Pt. Harikrishna Śāstri mentions according to which a king named Utkala invited Brahmins from Gangetic Valley for performing a yajna in Jagannath-Puri in Orissa; when the yajna ended the invited Brahmins laid the foundation of the Lord Jagannath there and settled there for serving the Lord in around Orissa, Jharkhand,Medinipur.
The Utkala Brahmins are of three classes 1) Shrautiya(vaidika) 2) Ashrautiya or (Sevayata) and 3)Halua Brahman.Again there are sub-classes in these three classes.
Pancha-Dravida (Five Southern)
Those from Dakshinapatha - Andhra, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Dravida (Tamilnadu & Kerala).
Andhra Pradesh
Brahmins of Andhra Pradesh are broadly classified into 4 groups: Vaidiki Brahmins (meaning educated in vedas and performing religious vocations), Vaikhānasa(worships Vishnu), Sri-Vaishnas(worships Vishnu), and Niyogi (performing only secular vocation). They are further divided into several sub-castes.[19]
Vaidiki Brahmins are further divided into following sub-categories
Dravidlu
Vaidiki Velanadu.
Vaidiki Venginadu.
Vaidiki Kosalanadu or Kasalnadu.
Vaidiki Mulakanadu.
Vaidiki Murikinadu.
Vaidiki Telaganya.
Niyogis are further divided into following sub-categories
Pradhama Shakha Niyogi.
600 Niyogi or Aaru Vela Niyogulu.
Golkonda Vyapari.
There is another sub-section "Dravida" made up of Tamil Brahmins who had migrated to Andhra Pradesh.
Gujarat
Gurjara Brāhmans: The Brāhmans of Gujarāt, of whom two subcastes are found in the Central Provinces. The first consists of the Khedāwāls, named after Kheda, a village in Gujarāt, who are a strictly orthodox class holding a good position in the caste. And the second are the Nāgar Brāhmans, who have been long settled in Nimār and the adjacent tracts, and act as village priests and astrologers.[20]
Bardai Brahmins.
Trivedi Mewada Brahmin
Rajgor Brahmin
Palival Brahmin (Dasha and visha)
Bhatt Mewada Brahmin, are from Rajasthan
Chauriyasi Mewada Brahmin
Saurashtra Trivedi Mewad Brahmin
Saurashtra Bhatt Mewada Brahmin
Pushkarna Brahmin
Nagar Brahmin
Audichya Brahmin
Sahastra Audichya Gorwal Brahmin
Tapodhan Brahmin
Modh Brahmin
Girinarayan Brahmin
Shrimali Brahman
Sachora Brahmin
Anavil Brahmin
Sidhra-Rudhra Brahmins
Sree gauda Brahmin
Rajgor Brahmin Basically comes from Rajeshtan .. edited by Jitendra Ravia
Prashnora Brahmin.
Vadadra Brahmin
Kanaujiya or Kanyakumbj Brahmin migrated from kanoj,entered in kutch via sindh along with lohanas have surname Bhatt in kutch,divided as bhuvdiyas,vondhiyas,sandhliyas according to their village temple.others in Gujarat mainly found in jamnagar,morbi,junaghath and rajkot.surnames like Bhatt,Kaileyas,bhaglani,pingal,lakhlani,ghediya etc. are common.
Maharashtra
Deshastha Brahmin
Chitpavan Brahmin (Konkanastha)
Karhade Brahmin
Devrukhe Brahmin
baj Khedawal Brahmin From kheda (Umreth)
Karnataka
Karnāta Brāhmans: The Brāhmans of the Carnatic, or the Canarese country. The Canarese area comprises the Mysore State, and the British Districts of Canara, Dharwar and Belgaum.
Kannada Brahmins
Babbur Kamme Brahmins
Badaganadu Brahmins
Deshastha Brahmin
Havyaka Brahmin
Hasan Iyengars
Hebbar Iyengars
Hoysala Karnataka Brahmins
Karhade Brahmin
Koota Brahmins
Madhva Brahmins
Mandyam Iyengars
Mysore Iyengars
Niyogi Brahmins
Panchagrama Brahmin
Sankethi Brahmins
Shukla Yajurveda Brahmins
Smartha Brahmins
Srivaishnava Brahmins
Sthanika Brahmins
Ulucha Kamme Brahmins
Mysore Iyers
Ashtagrama Iyer
Tuluva Brahmins
Kandavara Brahmins
Karhade Brahmins
Maratha Brahmins
Padia Brahmins
Saklapuri Brahmins
Shivalli Brahmins
Smartha Shivalli Brahmins
Sthanika Brahmins
Tamil Nadu
Iyengar (sub-divided into Vadakalai and Thenkalai)
Iyer (sub-divided further into Vadama, Vathima, Brahacharanam, Ashtasahasram, Gurukkal, Dikshitar, Kaniyalar, Prathamasaki)
Kerala
Namboothiri Brahmins
Kerala Iyers
Embranthiri
Pushpaka Brahmins (Ambalavasis)
Nambissans (Unni)
Sharada Brahmins
Vishwabrahmins (Viśvákarma)
Nagariks or the Brahmin migrants from north India
Gotras and pravaras
Brahmins classify themselves on the basis of their patrilineal descent from a notable ancestor. These ancestors are either ancient Indian sages or kshatriyas (warriors) who chose to become Brahmins. The ten major gotras that trace descent from sages are : Kanva, Jamadagni, Bharadvâja, koundinya, Gautama, Vashista, Atryasa, Kashyapa, Agastya gotra. Two gotras that trace descent from kshatriyas are Mitra and Vishvamitra gotra.
In general, gotra denotes any person who traces descent in an unbroken male line from a common male ancestor. Pāṇini defines gotra for grammatical purposes as 'apatyam pautraprabhrti gotram', which means: "the word gotra denotes the progeny (of a sage) beginning with the son's son". When a person says, "I am Kashypasa-gotra", he means that he traces his descent from the ancient sage Kashyapa by unbroken male descent. This enumeration of eight primary gotras seems to have been known to Pāṇini. These gotras are not directly connected to Prajapathy or latter brama. The offspring (apatya) of these Eight are gotras and others than these are called 'gotrâvayava'.
The gotras are arranged in groups, e. g. there are according to the Âsvalâyana-srautasûtra four subdivisions of the Vashista gana, viz. Upamanyu, Parāshara, Kundina and Vashista(other than the first three). Each of these four again has numerous sub-sections, each being called gotra. So the arrangement is first into ganas, then into pakshas, then into individual gotras. The first has survived in the Bhrigu and Āngirasa gana. According to Baudh., the principal eight gotras were divided into pakshas. The pravara of Upamanyu is Vashista, Bharadvasu, Indrapramada; the pravara of the Parâshara gotra is Vashista, Shâktya, Pârâsharya; the pravara of the Kundina gotra is Vashista, Maitrâvaruna, Kaundinya and the pravara of Vashistas other than these three is simply Vashista. It is therefore that some define pravara as the group of sages that distinguishes the founder (lit. the starter) of one gotra from another.
There are two kinds of pravaras, 1) sishya-prasishya-rishi-parampara, and 2) putrparampara. Gotrapravaras can be ekarsheya, dwarsheya, triarsheya, pancharsheya, saptarsheya, and up to 19 rishis. Kashyapasa gotra has at least two distinct pravaras in Andhra Pradesh: one with three sages (triarsheya pravara) and the other with seven sages (saptarsheya pravara). This pravara may be either sishya-prasishya-rishi-parampara or putraparampara. Similarly, Srivatsasa gotra has five sages or is called Pancharsheya and are the descendants of Jamadagni. When it is sishya-prasishya-rishi-parampara marriage is not acceptable if half or more than half of the rishis are same in both bride and bridegroom gotras. If it is putraparampara, marriage is totally unacceptable even if one rishi matches.
Sects and Rishis
Due to the diversity in religious and cultural traditions and practices, and the Vedic schools which they belong to, Brahmins are further divided into various subcastes. During the sutra period, roughly between 1000 BCE to 200 BCE, Brahmins became divided into various Shakhas (branches), based on the adoption of different Vedas and different rescension Vedas. Sects for different denominations of the same branch of the Vedas were formed, under the leadership of distinguished teachers among Brahmins.
There are several Brahmin law givers, such as Angirasa, Apasthambha, Atri, Bhrigu, Brihaspati, Boudhayana, Daksha, Gautama, Harita, Katyayana, Likhita, Manu, Parasara,Samvarta, Shankha, Shatatapa, Ushanasa, Vashista, Vishnu, Vyasa, Yajnavalkya and Yama. These twenty-one rishis were the propounders of Smritis. The oldest among these smritis are Apastamba, Baudhayana, Gautama, and Vashista Sutras.
Descendants of the Brahmins
Many Indians and non-Indians claim descent from the Vedic Rishis of both Brahmin and non-Brahmin descent. For example, the Dash and Nagas are said to be the descendants ofKashyapa Muni.
Vishwakarmas are the descendants of Pancha Rishis or Brahmarishies. According to Yajurveda and Brahmanda purana, they are Sanagha, Sanathana, Abhuvanasa, Prajnasa, and Suparnasa. The Kani tribe of South India claim to descend from Agastya Muni.
The Gondhali, Kanet, Bhot, Lohar, Dagi, and Hessis claim to be from Renuka Devi.
The Kasi Kapadi Sudras claim to originate from the Brahmin Sukradeva. Their duty was to transfer water to the sacred city of Kashi.
The Padmashalis claim they came from Maharishi Markandeya, who wrote Markandeya Purana.
In one of the stories of the Saini (gardener) community, in they claim descent frm an Brahman and call themselves Parpadh Brahman who in course of time became Phulmali.
Dadheech Brahmins/dayama Brahmin trace their roots from Dadhichi Rishi. Many Jat clans claim to descend from Dadhichi Rishi while the Dudi Jats claim to be in the linear of Duda Rishi.
Lord Buddha was a descendant of Angirasa through Gautama. There too were Kshatriyas of other clans to whom members descend from Angirasa, to fulfill a childless king's wish.
The backward-caste Matangs claim to descend from Matang Muni, who became a Brahmin by his karma.
According to one legend, the nomadic tribe of Kerala, the Kakkarissi, are derived from the mouth of Garuda, the vehicle of Lord Vishnu, and came out a Brahmin.
Historian Udai Narain Roy endorses the suggestion that the imperial Guptas were Brahmins.
Claimants of Brahmin Status
In Gujarat, the Brahmbhatts, Panchals, a claim to be Brahmins.
In Haryana, The Tagas (4000) claim to be a Brahman race, which has abandoned the priestly profession and taken to agriculture.
In Punjab, the misari of the Multan Langrials claim descent Brahmin of Bikanir.Both the Langrail and Golia claim that they were Brahmin Charans.
In Uttar Pradesh the Oudh Belwars have also claimed Brahman descent. Their main subcaste was always Sanadh, which is a Brahman subcaste.
Brahmins taking up other duties
Brahmins have taken on many professions - from being priests, ascetics and scholars to warriors and business people, as is attested for example in Kalhana's Rajatarangini. Brahmins with the qualities of Kshatriyas are known as 'Brahmakshatriyas'. An example is the avatar Parashurama who is considered an avatar of Vishnu. Sage Parashurama was a powerful warrior who had defeated the Haiheya kshatriyas twenty one times, was an expert in the use of weapons, and trained others to fight without weapons. After Sage Parshuram destroyed the Kshatriya race, he was excluded by other Brahmin communities and denied to perform any religious ceremonies for him. At the coast of Arabian sea i.e. the Western Ghats he decided to create a new Brahmin community where he found dead bodies of people came out floating from the sea. He purified them with Agni and brought back to life. Then he taught them all the veda's, weapons, religious knowledge and made the Brahmin known as Chitpavan Konkanastha Brahmins. Chitapavan means Chit + Pavan the Brahmins whose chit/soul was purified, Konkanastha means belong to Konkan region. Chitapavan Konkanastha Brahmin's did not have their own land hence were insulted by other rulers & Brahmins. Hence Sage Parshurama asked the Sea Lord to go back and give some land which he denied. Sage Parshurama got angry and made ready the Brahmastra to destroy the Sea Lord. Sea Lord frightned and asked to forgive him. Sage Parshurama said that as he has made Brahmhaastra on the arrow ready to launch he cannot return the arrow backwards but he will remove the Brahmaastra and wherever the arrow will land till that point sea will leave the Land for his followers Chitpavan Konkanastha Brahmins. The place from where Sage Parshurama released the arrow is there in Konkan area known as Lote Parshuram and has a temple of Sage Parshuram. The Bhumihar Brahmins were established when Parashurama destroyed the Kshatriya race, and he set up in their place the descendants of Brahmins, who, after a time, having mostly abandoned their priestly functions (although some still perform), took to land-owning.[33]Many Brahmins took up the profession of medicine. They are Vaidya Brahmins called Baidya Brahmins of Bengal [gupta, dasgupta and senguptas] are descendants of Dhanavantari, the god of medicine and father of Ayurveda.
The Brahmakhatris caste, descendants of the Khatris, however, are a business caste/community of Punjab and belong to the Kshatriya caste.
Perhaps the word Brahma-kshatriya refers to a person belonging to the heritage of both castes. However, among the Royal Rajput households, Brahmins who became the personal teachers and protectors of the royal princes rose to the status of Rajpurohit and taught the princes everything including martial arts. They would also become the keepers of the Royal lineage and its history. They would also be the protectors of the throne in case the regent was orphaned and a minor.
Kshatriyan Brahmin is a term associated with people of both caste's components.
The Pallavas were an example of Brahmakshatriyas as that is what they called themselves. King Lalitaditya Muktapida of Kashmir ruled all of India and even Central Asia.
King Rudravarma of Champa (Vietnam) of 657 A.D. was the son of a Brahmin father.
King Jayavarma I of Kambuja (Kampuchea) of 781 A.D. was a Brahma-kshatriya.
Hem Chandra Vikramaditya (Hemu), born in a family of Purohits, started the manufacturing of Cannons for the first time in North India with Portugese knowhow and dealt in Gunpowder for supplies to Sher Shah Suri's army. Later he became Prime Minister-cum-Chief of Army of Suris and Emperor of North India in 1556, defeating Akbar's army at Agra and Delhi.
Brahmins with the qualities of a Vaisya or merchant are known as 'Brahmvyasya'. An example of such persons are people of the Ambastha[36] caste, which exist in places like South India. They perform medical work - that is from ancient times have practised the Ayurveda and have been Vaidyas (or doctors) as have been claimed by these people during the British rule when the Govt. expressed the will to promote cast mobilisation, thence from they started bearing the thread also, but neither the Govt. nor the Hindu oligarchs, none expressed any such sanction .
Many Pallis of South India claim to be Brahmins (while others claim to be Agnikula Kshatriyas.) Kulaman Pallis are nicknamed by outsiders as Kulaman Brahmans. Hemu fromRewari, Haryana was also a Brahmin by birth.
Practices
Brahmins, adhere to the principles of the Vedas, Manu Smriti, Sanatana Dharma, and can be found in any of the different religions of Hinduism, such as acceptance of the Vedas.Brāhmaṇas have six occupational duties, of which three are compulsory—namely, studying the Vedas, worshiping the Deity and giving charity. By teaching, by inducing others to worship the Deity, and by accepting charity back, the brāhmaṇas receive the necessities of life. This is also confirmed in the Manu-saḿhitā:
ṣaṇṇāḿ tu karmaṇām asya
trīṇi karmāṇi jīvikā
yajanādhyāpane caiva
viśuddhāc ca pratigrahaḥ
A brāhmaṇa cannot take up any professional occupational duty for his livelihood. The śāstras especially stress this, if one claims to be a brāhmaṇa.[38] Brahmins believe inSarvejanāssukhinobhavaṃtu—Let the entire society be happy and prosperous and Vasudhaiva kuṭuṃbakaṃ—the whole world is one family. Many Brahmins are reformers. Brahmins practice vegetarianism or lacto-vegetarianism which has been a custom since several centuries dating back to B.C. Following this custom is mandatory in Brahmin culture. However, some among the Brahmins inhabiting cold regions of Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Nepal, and coastal areas like Bengal etc., eat fish and other locally available non-vegetarian foods and hence are pesco-vegetarians.
Brahmins have a "choti", a braid that was grown on the back of their heads- the main purpose of this was to help differentiate Brahmins from other Hindu Castes, as well as to show that they possess sacred knowledge, unlike others. But, in fact, choti is for all Hindu (law of Manu).
Sampradayas
The three sampradayas (sects) of Brahmins, especially in South India are the Smarta sampradaya, the Srivaishnava sampradaya and the Madhva sampradaya.
Smartism
Smartism (or Smarta Sampradaya, Smarta Tradition, as it is termed in Sanskrit) is a liberal or nonsectarian denomination of the Hindu religion who accept all the major Hindu deities as forms of the one Brahman in contrast to Vaishnavism, for example. The term Smarta refers to adherents who follow the Vedas and Shastras.
Vaishnavism
One form of Vaishnavism is Madhwa ( Dwaita Sampradaya), and the other is Sri Vaishnava (vishistAdwaita sampradaya). Madhwa Brahmins are mainly located in the Carnatic plains and some of them are seen in Andhra, Tamil Nadu and Kerala areas. They follow the preachings of Sri Madhwacharya, who born in South Canara district of Karnataka in 12th Century. He preached that God and atma (our soul ) is different as against the preachings of Sri Sankaracharya, who preached aham Brahmasmi (God and my soul are the same).
In south India Srivaishnava sampradayam was propagated by Srimad Ramanjuacharya Which has Given as bhakti marga by azhwar saints.
Shaivism
Shaivism (sometimes called Shivaism) is a belief system where Lord Shiva is worshipped as the Supreme Lord. It is a derivative faith of the core Vedic tradition. Saiva sects contains many sub-sects, such as Rudrasaivas, Veerasiavas, Paramasaivas, etc. Ravana the Ruler of Lanka in the Hindu Epic Ramayana was a Devgan Brahmin Grand son of Sage Pulastya & So of Sage Visharva
Buddhism
[Buddhist Brahmins]
Brahmins were treated with the greatest veneration in the time of the Buddha and there are countless references to Brahmins throughout all of the Buddhist scriptures. Furthermore, most of the major Buddhist founders were Brahmins. They include Sariputra, Maudgalyayana, Mahakashyapa, Bodhi Dharma, Nagarjuna, Asvaghosha, Padmasambhava, Shantarakshita,Nagasena, Kumarajiva and Shantideva all of whom have always been referred to their titles as Brahmins in all scriptures. The word Brahmin was not redefined by the Buddha and it continued to be used alongside Arahat in separate capacities. For example, in the Ambattha Sutra, we find the Buddha debated a Brahmin who was clearly not an Arahat. Also, in many important dharanis, Brahmins are mentioned in an entirely different capacity to Arahats and therefore there is a marked difference. The Buddha however insisted that Brahmins had to live up to their great legacy and could not be by birth alone but also had to have the meritorious acts. In the Dhammapada, the Buddha mentions Brahmins and Arahats in very different capacities and dedicates an entire chapter to what it means to be a real Brahmin called the Brahmana-vagga. The Buddha did not believe in caste discrimination but he did endorse a fair division of labour based on merit. Brahmins were not to discriminate against lower castes but were to serve them wholeheartedly. Many sutras believe that the Buddha himself was a Brahmin in a previous life and due to his good merit as a Brahmin, he was re-born as the Buddha. Other experts believe the Buddha descended from Brahmin sage Angiras whose descendants like Dronacharya were Shatra Brahmins or warrior Brahmins that eventually became Kshatriya warriors.
The notion of ritual purity provided a conceptual foundation for the caste system, by identifying occupations and duties associated with impure or taboo objects as being themselves impure. Regulations imposing such a system of ritual purity and taboos are absent from the Buddhist monastic code, and not generally regarded as being part of Buddhist teachings. To the contrary, the early Buddhist scriptures defined purity as determined by one's state of mind, and refer to anyone who behaves unethically, of whatever caste, as "rotting within", or "a rubbish heap of impurity"
There are many places in which the Buddha explains his use of the word brahman. At Sutta Nipata 1.7 Vasala Sutta, verse 12, he states: "Not by birth is one an outcast; not by birth is one a brahman. By deed one becomes an outcast, by deed one becomes a brahman."
Jainism
The first convert of Mahavira, the 24th Tirthankara of Jainism was Indrabhuti (aka Gautamswami) the Brahmin, who headed a group of other Brahmins and converted them to Jainism. He was from the village Gobbar (also called Govarya) near Rajgriha. It is said that at the sight of Gautama, the tapsas who were competing with him to reach the top of a hill once, by seeing the winner Gautama at the top, achieved moksha.
Sajjambhava was another born from Rajgriha and was elected the head of the Jain temple. He is famous for his composition of the "Dasavaikalika Sutra."
Acharya Vidyanand is a Brahmin of the Dhigambar Jain sect and compiled in the Sanskrit language, "Ashta Shahastri" with eight thousand verses.
Acharya Shushil Kumar, known better to Jains as "Guruji", was born a Vaidik in the Shakarpur village of the Haryana province. At the age of 15, he took Diksha (became a sanyassin) into the Sthanakvasi, a Swhetambara sub-sect.
There is also a story about a wealthy Brahmin named Dhangiri in the town of Tumbhivan, who, when heard the sermons of the Jain Acharya Sinhgiri, while he regularly listened to but later lost his interest in wealth and decided to take the Diksha.
Umasvati was a composer who was so loved by Jains that he is considered by the Dhigambar sect to be a Dhigambar member and the Svetambara sect to be a Svetambara member.
Akalanka of the 8th century is saod to the poineer in rthe field of Jain logic.
Sikhism
Many writers of the Guru Granth Sahib are of the Bhatt surname. The Sikh composed Mathura Bhatt's fourteen verses are seven each in praise of Guru Ram Das and Guru Arjan.
There are also several Mohyals (Brahmin warriors) in the Sikh community.
Miscellaneous sects
There are additional sampradayas as well which are not as widely followed as the rest.
The Mahima Dharma or "Satya Mahima Alekha Dharma" was founded by the Brahmin Mukunda Das of present-day Orissa, popularly know by followers as Mahima Swami according to the Bhima Bhoi text. He was born in the last part of 18th century in Baudh ex-state as a son of Ananta Mishra. He was Brahmin by caste as mentioned in Mahima Vinod of Bhima Bhoi in Vol.11. This sampradaya is similar to Vaishnavism. Although the members of this sect do not worship Lord Vishnu as their Ishta-Deva, they believe that the Srimad Bhagavatamis sacred. The founder of this sect was a Vaishnavite before founding the new order. This sampradaya was founded in the latter part of the 18th century.
There is also the Avadhoot Panth, wherein Lord Dattatreya and his forms such as Narasimha Saraswati and Sai Baba of Shirdi are worshiped. Lord Dattatreya is worshiped by many as the Hindu trinity - Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva in one divine entity. Many even worship Dattatreya as an Avatar of Vishnu or of Shiva.
Thus…. “BRAMHāN” / “ব্রাহ্মণ’’ is a concept of a RACE.
And Bāngāli / বাঙ্গালী is a community.
Let’s adjoin them to form “বাঙ্গালী ব্রাহ্মণ”/Bāngāli BRAMHāN.
The Bengali Brahmins are those Brahmins who traditionally reside in the Bengal region of the Indian subcontinent, currently comprising the Indian state of West Bengal, Tripura, Assamand Bangladesh. When the British left India in 1947, carving out separate nations, a number of families moved from Bangladesh to be within the borders of the newly defined Republic of India, and continued to migrate for several decades thereafter.
Bengali Brahmins are generally better educated than the average Hindu and have made a very significant contribution to the intellectual discourse of India at all times. A number of prominent figures of India belong to this community. They had leanings toward Shaktism and Tantra. They make a claim of being pure Aryans. Vārendra, for instance, meant rain-maker magicians. Historically, they have been the standard bearers of Madhyadeshiya (the historic-cultural region of the upper Ganga-Yamuna doab which was the seat of Panch-Gauda brahmins) Indo-Aryan culture in Bengal. Panch-Gauda and Panch-Dravida are two chief divisions of Brahmins, which is already described.
Bengali brahmins are categorised as Panch-Gauda Brahmins. The name Gauda was also used for Bengal in mediaeval age, however entire Northern India was also called Gauda country, which is the reason why five Northern Indian branches have received the common name Panch-Gauda.
In the 19th and 20th national convention of Kanyakubja Brahmins by Kanyakubja Mahati Sabha, in 1926 and 1927 respectively, it reiterated Bhumihar Brahmins to be Kanyakubja Brahmins and appealed for unity among Kanyakubja Brahmins whose different branches included Sanadhya, Pahadi, Jujhoutia, Saryupareen, Chattisgadhi, Bhumihar and different Bengali Brahmins.
History of Bengali Brahmins
The earliest historically verifiable presence of brahmins in Bengal can be ascertained from Dhanaidaha copper-plate inscription of Kumargupta 1 of the Gupta Year 113 (433 C.E.) which records the grant of land to a brahmin named Varahasvamin of the Samavedi school. A copper-plate grant from the Gupta period found in the vicinity of Somapura mentions a Brahmin donating land to a Jain vihara at Vatagohali. Literary sources like Ramayana, Mahabharata, Jain and Buddhist works, however record the presence of brahmins in various parts of Bengal during earlier periods. Historical evidence also attests significant presence of Brahmins in Bengal during the Maurya period. The Jain Acharya Bhadrabahu, regarded to be the preceptor of Chandragupta Maurya is said to have been born in Brahmin family of Pundravardhana ( or Puṇḍra, the region north of Ganges and west of Brahmaputra in Bengal, later known as Vārendra). Such evidences suggest Puṇḍra or Vārendra and regions west of Bhagirathi (called Radha in ancient age) to be seats of brahmins from ancient times; Rādhi and Varendra are still chief branches of Bengali brahmins settled in these regions. Medium to large scale migrations of Brahmins from various parts of India like Kanyakubja region, Kolancha, southern India and Pushkar in Rajasthan, among other places, occurred from time to time, especially during Pala and Sena periods.
Traditionally, Bengali brahmins are divided into the following categories
Rādhi from Radh (region south-west of Ganga)
Varendra, from Vārendra region (North-East) or Puṇḍra
Vaidika (migrants, originally experts of Vedic knowledge)
Paschatya Vaidika (Vedic brahmins from west of Bengal)
Dakshinatya Vaidika (Vedic brahmins from south of Bengal)
Madhya Sreni (brahmins of the midland country)
Shakdvipi/ Grahavipra (migrant brahmins of Shakdvipa in Central Asia)
Saptaśati
Traditional accounts
The different brahmin communities of Bengal have their own traditional accounts of origin, which are generally found in various genealogical texts known as kulagranthas or kulapanjikas. Other details may also be obtained from court chronicles of various kings of Bengal. Important writers are Harimishra (13th century C.E), Edu Mishra (13th century C.E), Devivara Ghatak (15th century C.E), Dhruvananda Mishra (post 15th century C.E), Vachaspati Mishra, Rajendralal Mitra among others.
Radhi and Varendra
The traditional origin of both Radhi and Varendra brahmins has been attributed to a king named Ādiśūra who is said to have invited five Brahmins from Kolancha (as per Edu Mishra and Hari Mishra) and/or from Kanyakubja, (as per Dhruvananda Mishra) so that he could conduct a yajña, because he could not find Vedic experts locally. Some traditional texts mention that Ādiśūra was ancestor of Ballāl Sena from maternal side and five brahmins had been invited in 1077 C.E. Other texts like Varendrakulapanjika, Vachaspati Mishra's account and Edu Mishra's account attribute a date of 732 C.E for the migration. Additionally, other sources like Sambandhanirnaya, Kulanrava and others attribute various dates like 942 C.E, 932 C.E and others.
Historians have located a ruler named Ādiśūra ruling in north Bihar, but not in Bengal. But Ballāl Sena and his predecessors ruled over both Bengal and Mithila (i.e., North Bihar). It is unlikely that the brahmins from Kānyakubja may have been invited to Mithila for performing a yajña, because Mithila was a strong base of brahmins since Vedic age. However some scholars have identified Ādiśūra with Jayanta, a vassal chief of the Gauda king around middle of 8th century C.E. and is also referred to as a contemporary of Jayapida (779 to 812 C.E) of Kashmir (grandson of Lalitaditya) in Kalhana's Rajatarangini.
Paschatya Vaidikas
Traditionally they are believed to have migrated from Kanyakubja (or Kanauj) to Bengal via Tirhoot, during the commencement of Muslim rule in India. Most of the vaidikas were invited by Hindu chiefs and rajas who used to rule in various parts of Bengal during the Muslim ascendancy. As per one account, a king called Shyamal Varma, invited five Brahmins from Kānyakubja who became the progenitors of the Paschatya Vaidika Brahmins.
Dakshinatya Vaidikas
Traditionally it is believed that during his reign, Vijaya Sena (1097 to 1160 C.E), brought brahmins from South India to Bengal, who integrated themselves with the varendra barhmins and came to be known as Dakshinatya vaidika barahmins. Other texts say that it was during the Chalukya invasion of Gauda under Vikramaditya VI (1076–1126 CE) that brahmins from south came and settled in Bengal.
Kulin Brahmins are those Brahmins in Bengal who can trace themselves to the five families of Kanauj (Kanyakubja), Uttar Pradesh who migrated to Bengal. The five families were of the five different gotras (Shandilya, Bharadwaj, Kashyap, Vatsya and Swavarna). They are widely believed to be at the apex of Bengal's caste hierarchy.
The kulin families are further divided into two sections:
Barendra : Belonging to those families who settled at the north or north east region of Ganges or Padma river.
Rādhi' : Belonging to those families who settled at the south or southwest region of Ganges or Padma river.
Divisions among Bengali Brahmins :
Varendra, from Varendra region (NE&E Bengal (Bangladesh))
Rādhi' from Radh (SE Bengal, approximately modern West Bengal SE of the Ganges.
Vaidika, migrant brahmins from other parts of India.
Other minor divisions are :
Saptaśati
Pirāli
Patita
It is believed that the Brahmins of Bengal adapted kulinism from a similar hierarchical system used by the Brahmins of Mithilā, although Kānyakubja and more especially Saryupāriya were also highly scrupulous. The five original Brahmins belonged to five gotras : Śāndilya, Kāśyapa, Vatsa, Bhārdvāja, Sāvarṇa Both Brahmins and Kayasthas in Bengal have followed a system that ranks the clans hierarchically. The Kulinas formed the higher ranking clans.
Rādhi Rādhi (also Rāṭhi in some old texts) is the major branch of Western Bengali brahmins . The descendants of these five Pancyājñika brahmins were hierarchically organised into three categories :
Śrotriya is the second rank among the descendants of these five brahmins because they were deft in Vedic knowledge but were considered to be somewhat inferior to the Kulina brahmins (possessing 8 out of 9 noble qualities).
Vamśaja is the third rank which was a result of kulinas marrying outside kulinas.
Major titles adopted by the high Rādhi brahmins :
Mukhopādhyāya and its adaptation Mukherjee a Kulin brahmin
Bandopādhyāya and its adaptation Banerjee a Kulin brahmin
Chattopādhyāya and its adaptation Chatterjee a Kulin brahmin
Gangopādhyāya and its adaptation Ganguli / Ganguly a Kulin brahmin
Bhattāchārya and its adaptation Bhattacharya/ Bhattacharjee a Kulin brahmin
Goswami and its adaptation Swami of ones own Gow / further Gow stands for 5 Sense of human body, so sanyasins are those who can master their own senses. a Kulinbrahmin
Jāti-Bhāṣkar mentions that those who were given grants along the Ganges by Ballāl Sena were called Gangopādhyāya (literally 'the Vedic teachers in the regions around the Ganges').
Mukhopādhyāya means chief Vedic teacher. Bandopādhyāya is a Sanskritized form of 'Banodha + upādhyāya', Banodha being the ancient name of Raebareli-Unnāva whence their ancestors had come from.
Bhattāchārya meant 'expert of Vedic rituals'. This was an honorary title awarded to a Rādhi or Vārendra brahmin who excelled in spiritual and vedic matters. The Bhattāchārya's are generally referred to as the Hindu Priests in Bengal.
Goswami is a typically a title bestowed on people who choose the path of Sannyasa. The sanyasins or disciples of Adi Shankaracharya are also called "Dash Nam" as the Title Goswami is further divided into ten groups viz. Giri, Puri, Bharti, Ban, Aranya, Sagar, Aashram, Saraswati, Tirth, Yogi and Parwat. These all dashnam Goswamis are associated with four Math in four corners of India, established by Adi Shankaracharya. Initially all the disciples were Sanyasins who embraced sanyas either after marriage or without getting married. Since, sanyasins are considered as Brahmin therefore during the course of time, those who embraced married life on the order of their guru and their decedents are considered Brahmins with the surname Goswami. Being a Goswami Sanyasin includes a vow of celibacy. Some religious traditions use the title Swami for those who had never married, and Goswami for those who had been married in that life and vow not to marry again. This is also the source of the surname Gosain. Goswami can also refer to an individual from the Brahmin caste of the Hindu religion.
Vārendra
These brahmins also claim descent from five original brahmins, although four out of five names are different, and they are also hierarchically organised into three groups :
(1) Śri Kulin comprising Bāgchi, Chākrāborty (Chākrāvārti), Lāhiri, Māitra, Bhāduri, Sānyal, etc.
(2) Śrotriya have Nanda, Bhato Shāstri, Karanja, Laduli, Navasi, etc.
(3) Kaṣṭa Kulin comprising 85 gains (villages given in grant by Sena kings).
Another intermediate order is called Kāpa(originally Kulin but negligent in duty) which is between first two.
Other famous titles of Bengali Kulin brahmins are Bhattāchārya, Majumdāra, Rāi, Choudhary, Roy Chowdhury, Jovādāra, Mishra,etc. There were many big landlords among Vārendra and Rādhi brahmins alike, bearing titles such as Roy and Roy Chowdhury. While Bhattāchārya literally meant 'experts of Vedic rituals', the Rāi/Roy, Choudhary and Roy Chowdhury were administrative titles, conferred not only on the Brahmin landlords, Rajas and/or zamindars, but also to landlords from other castes who owned and administered vast landed properties.
Vaidikas
These are of two types :
Dākṣiṇātyas, coming from Orissa & Andhra originally but now part and parcel of Bengali brahmins.
Pāschātyas, coming from western and northern India originally but now part of Bengali brahmins.
These were experts of Vaidika knowledge who were invited to Bengal in different ages, later than the original five brahmins from which Rādhi brahmins originated.
Saptaśati
Before the coming of Five Brahmins, there were 700 houses of brahmins in Bengal, but now they are few. They were less learned than the migrants and therefore were deprived of patronage. Some of them mixed with the immigrants, which explains their decline in relative population. Many Saptaśatis became priests of lower castes and were labelled as Agradāni and grahavipra. Main titles are Arath, Bālkhāvi, Jagāye, Pikhoori, Mulkajoori, Bhagāye, Gāi, etc.
Others
Pirāli : literally, boycotted brahmins. Some kulin brahmins mixed with Muslims in eating and other activities and were therefore boycotted by the orthodox sections. Prominent among these were Thākurs, anglicised as Tagores. Thākurs literally meant lords and were big landowners.
Patita : Some Bengali brahmins were publicly declared to be fallen brahmins.
Chakraborty (Chakravarti) is a title suitable for emperors granted to some Bengali brahmins.
Another peculiar title is Chir Kori or Chir Kodi.
Genetics of Bengali Brahmin :
ydna_migrationmap_(FTDNA2006)
Bengali Brahmins showed positive results for only three Y-Haplogroups R1a1, R2a and H1. Y-Haplogroups and their respective percentages are shown in the following table.
R1a1: 72.22%
R2a : 22.22%
H1 : 5.56%
Haplogroup R1a1, which has originated in South Asia is the most prevalent haplogroup amongst the Bengali Brahmins. The haplogroup is associated with the spread of the Indo-European culture in Indian sub-continent. A very high percentage of 72.22% among Bengali Brahmins hints at its presence as a founder lineage for this caste group.
Impact of foreign elements over Bengali Brahmin :
The kulinist system degenerated during the 18-19th century and is no longer popular.
Before that Islamic aggression maasively forced peacefull Bengali community in religious conversion. Thus huge number of hindu got conversion under muslim rule in Bengal. Remaining Hidus became more conservative. And kulinist system became more popular in Bengali Brahmin when they gone through struggling for there existence.
The British occupation of Bengal radically transformed the Bengali culture. Bengal has now gone through two century of Christian missionary efforts to convert Hindus forcibely in exchange of FOOD, MODERN WESTERN EDUCATION etc. Bengal was divided by the British colonial rulers in terms of religion. Eastern Bengal was a Muslim majority region which resulted in the first partition of Bengal in 1905, and then final partition in 1947. Although the interaction with the British resulting in what is termed the Bengal Renaissance (almost wholly Brahmin) it altered the hold of traditional mainstream Hinduism in the region.
Later on, more than a quarter century of a Marxist government in the state of West Bengal put a major impact to draw a neo-modern sense of atheism, which di-moralised the sense of BRAHMANATWA, rather HINDUSIM in West Bengal, mostly.
Naming conventions
Many Bengali Brahmin family names are written in two different ways. For example, Chattopadhyay (compound of village name "Chaṭṭa" and "upādhyāya" denoting "priest, teacher" originally granted with the village named Chaṭṭa) is the Sanskritized form of the local Prakrit word "chaturjye", anglicized to Chatterjee.
Similar analyses may be performed on Mukhurjye/Mukherjee/Mukhopādhyāya, Banurjye/Banerjee/Bandyopādhyāya and Ganguli/Ganguly/Ganggopādhyāya. Bhattāchārya which is made by two words Bhatta and Achārya which means teacher also called as Bhattāchārjee. Tagore is the anglicized form of Thakur, meaning "lord". Other Bengali Brahmin family names are anglicized in particular ways that have become the standard English spellings over time. Other Bengali Brahmin surnames are Goswami, Chakraborty, Sanyal, Ghoshal etc.
The most famous Bengali Brahmin family which originally belonged to Calcutta (Kolkata) are the Sabarna Roy Choudhury family (originally Ganggopādhyāyas,who later adopted the zamindari title Roy Choudhury and Sabarna, implying their gotra, which is also the gotra of Ganggopādhyāyas), which had transferred the tenancy rights of Sutanuti, Gobindapur and Kolikata to the East India Company at the behest of the Mughal Emperor.
List of Bengali Brahmin Gotras
The bulk of Bengali Brahmin gotras are:
Vashista
SHAKTRI/SHAKTI
Agastya
Bharadwaja
Bhargava
Gautama
Kashyapa
Matanga
Sabarna /Savarna
Shandilya
Vatsa
Besides the above mentioned, other gotras can also be found at low frequencies within the Bengali Brahmin community. The Katyana gotra is also not found.
Notable Bengali Brahmins
Pre-1757
Jimutavahana (c.12th century), a celebrated authority on smriti
Raghunatha Siromani (1477–1547), a noted Nyaya philosopher
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486–1534), ascetic, founder of Gaudiya Vaishnavism
Nityananda (c.1478-1532), companion and disciple of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu
Advaita Acharya (1434–1539), companion and disciple of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu
Lakshmikanta Roychoudhury (1570–1649), Founder of Sabarna Roy Choudhury clan and first family of Kolkata who leased it to East India Company.
Ratneshwar Roychoudhury (1670–1720), Founder of Uttarpara town and member of Sabarna Roy Choudhury clan of Kolkata.
1757-1947
Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1772–1833), Hindu reformer and founder of Brahmo Samaj
Dwarkanath Tagore (1794–1846) One of the earliest entrepreneurs from India. Founded the first Indo-British agency house from India, Carr, Tagore and Company.
Debendranath Tagore (1817–1905) A leading proponent of Brahmo Samaj
Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (1820–1891) Erudite,Polymath
Gadadhar Chattopadhyay (Ramakrishna Paramahansa) (1836–1886), Revered Hindu Religious leader, led Hindu revival
Bipin Behari Ganguli, noted freedom fighter hailing from Hoogly
Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (1838–1894), author and one of the founders of Indian nationalism
Kisari Mohan Ganguli, one and only translator of the Mahabharata to English.
Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay Author of famouls novels like Devdas, Parineeta etc. and one of the most popular Bengali novelist and story-teller
Surendra Nath Banerjee (1848–1925), founder of the Indian National Association, one of the first political leaders in India and one of the chief formulators of the idea of Swadeshi
Sukanta Bhattacharya Poet
Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), poet, philosopher and nationalist
Abanindranath Tagore Author, Painter.
Jatindra Nath Mukherjee (Bagha Jatin) (1879–1915), Freedom Fighter and Revolutionary Leader
Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee (1864–1924) Educationist, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Calcutta (1906–1924),and referred commonly as 'Bengal Tiger'.
Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay (1876–1938) popular and sometimes controversial Bengali novelist.
Pramankur Atarthy Writer and film director
Rakhaldas Bandyopadhyay (1885–1930) Archaeologist, credited with finding and excavating the Mohenjo‑Daro civilization (Indus Valley Civilization).
Womesh Chandra Bonerjee. founder of the Indian National Congress
Raibahadur Radhika Mohan Lahiri. First Indian Auditor General Post & Telegraphs - Bengal & Assam
Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay, novelist, author of Pather Panchali
Sarada Devi (1853–1920), "Holy Mother", Revered religious leader, wife of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa
Post-1947
Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, founder president, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh
Sarojini Naidu (née Chattopadhyaya), first Indian woman president of the Indian National Congress, first woman governor of Uttar Pradesh
Subroto Mukerjee First Air Chief Marshall of Independent India
Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay, novelist
Manik Bandopadhay, novelist
Banaphool (Balaichand Mukherjee), author
Kishore Kumar Ganguly, celebrated singer and actor
Ashok Kumar Ganguly, actor
Chuni Goswami, football player
Ravi Shankar, sitar player
Buddhadeb Bhattacharya Former Chief Minister of West Bengal 2000-2011
Pranab Mukherjee, India's current External Affairs Minister
Mamata Banerjee, current Chief Minister of West Bengal Since 2011
Somnath Chatterjee, speaker of the Lok Sabha (2004-9)
Samir Roychoudhury Poet, writer and Editor of Haowa 49 Periodical
Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay
Sunil Gangopadhyay
Suchitra Bhattacharya
Bharati Mukherjee
Subhash Mukhopadhyay, poet
Malay Roy Choudhury Founder of Hungryalist Movement in Bengali Literature
Harindranath Chattopadhyay, noted poet and actor
Keshto Mukherjee, noted comedian/actor
Joy Mukherjee, actor
Joy Goswami, poet
Jaya Bhaduri, actress
Soumitra Chatterjee, actor
Uttam Kumar (Arun Kumar Chatterjee), actor
Victor Banerjee, actor
Madhabi Mukherjee, actress
Kajol Devgan (née Mukherjee), actress
Rani Mukherjee, actress
Benode Behari Mukherjee, painter
Budhaditya Mukherjee, painter
Hemanta Mukhopadhyay, singer and music director
Amit Kumar Ganguly, singer
Shaan, popular singer
Shreya Ghoshal, singer
Madhushree, singer
Abhijeet Bhattacharya, singer
Kumar Sanu, singer
Bikas Ranjan Bhattacharjee Former mayor of Kolkata
Hrishikesh Mukherjee, film director
Basu Chatterjee, film director
Basu Bhattacharya, director
Mithun Chakraborty. actor
Nikhil Banerjee, sitar player
Prasun Mukherjee Police Commissioner
Jaideep Mukherjee, Tennis Player
Bappi Lahiri, music director
Pritam Chakraborty, music director
Sourav Ganguly, former captain of Indian cricket team
Jhulan Goswami, all round cricketer who plays for the India national women's cricket team
Jhumpa Lahiri, Pulitzer Prize Winning author of "Interpreter of Maladies" and acclaimed novel 'The Namesake'
Upamanyu Chatterjee, Indian Civil Servant and author of 'English, August'
Moushumi Chatterjee, actress
Bibhas Chakraborty, Theatre Practitioner and Cultural Icon
Kanika Bandopadhyay: noted Rabindrasangeet exponent
THE CONCEPT OF Bāngāli BRAMHāN IN NEO-MODERN SENSE :
We have crossed the chapter of Bengal Renaissance [1757-1947]. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_Renaissance]
We have gone through POSTMODERNITYtoo. This is the Phase of NEOMODERNISM.Neomodern is a term used to describe a "new simplicity" in art and in reaction to the complexity of postmodern architecture and eclecticism. Neomodern is used on occasion to denote the contemporary period. Neomodernism is a term that has at times been used to describe a philosophical position based on modernism but addressing the critique of modernism by postmodernism. It is rooted in the criticisms which has leveled at postmodern philosophy, namely thatuniversalism and critical thinking are the two essential elements of human rights and that human rights create a superiority of some cultures over others. That is, that equality and relativism are "mutually contradictory.
Let’s consider Bāngāli BRAMHāN in different way.
THERE is nothing in the concept of NEO-BREHMANATWA, which is the main pillar of Bāngāli BRAMHāN, corresponding at all to the aristocracies of the Old World. Whether it be owing to the stock from which we were derived, or to the practical working of our institutions, or to the abrogation of the technical “law of honor,” which draws a sharp line between the personally responsible class of “ gentlemen ” and the unnamed multitude of those who are not expected to risk their lives for an abstraction,-whatever be the cause, we have no such aristocracy here as that which grew up out of the military systems of the Middle Ages.
What we mean by “aristocracy, that live in the richer part of the community, that live in the tallest house s, drive real carriages, like gold plated chariots. There fort or palace was full of slaves. Or they used to give parties where the persons who call them by the above title are not invited, and have a provokingly easy way of dressing, walking talking, and nodding to people, as if they felt entirely at home, and would not be ‘embarrassed in the least, if the Queen of England, face to face. Some of these great folks are really well-bred, some of them are only purse proud and assuming, - but they from a class and are named as above in the common speech.
It is in the nature of large fortunes to diminish rapidly, when subdivided and distributed. A million is the unit of wealth. It splits into four handsome properties; each of these into four good inheritances; these, again, into scanty competences for four ancient maidens, - with whom it is best the family should die out, unless it can begin again as its great-grandfather did. Now a million is a kind of golden cheese, which represents in a compendious form the summer’s growth of a fat meadow of craft or commerce; and as this kind of meadow rarely bears more than one crop, it is pretty certain that sons and grandsons will not get another golden cheese out of it, whether they milk the same cows or turn in new ones. In other words, the millionocracy, considered in a large way, is not at all an affair of persons and families, but a perpetual fact of money with a variable human element, which a philosopher might leave out of consideration without falling into serious error. Of course, this trivial and fugitive fact of personal wealth does not create a permanent class unless some special means are taken to arrest the process of disintegration in the third generation. This is so rarely done, at least successfully, that one need not live a very long life to see most of the rich families he knew in childhood more or less reduce, and the millions shifted into the hands of the country- boys who were sweeping stores and carrying parcels when the now decayed gentry were driving their chariots, eating their venison over silver chafing-dishes, drinking Madeira chilled in embossed coolers, wearing their hair in powder, and casing their legs in top boots with silken tassels.
There is, however, in NEO MODERN SENSE, an aristocracy, if you choose to call it so, which has a far greater character of permanence. BRAHMANTWA has grown to be a caste,- not in any odious sense ,-but, by the repetition of the same influences, generation after generation, it has acquired a distances organization and physiognomy, which not to recognize is mere stupidity, and not to be willing to describe would show a distrust of the good-nature and intelligence of our readers, who like to have us see all we can and tell all we see.
If you will look carefully at any class of students in one of our colleges, you will have no difficulty in selecting specimens of two different aspects of youthful manhood. Of course I shall choose extreme cases to illustrate the contrast between them. In the first, the figure is perhaps robust, but often otherwise,--inelegant, partly from careless attitudes, partly from ill-dressing,--the face is uncouth in feature, or at least common,--the mouth coarse and unformed,--the eye unsympathetic, even if bright,--the movements of the face are clumsy, like those of the limbs,--the voice is unmusical,--and the enunciation as if the words were coarse castings, instead of fine carvings. The youth of the other aspect is commonly slender, his face is smooth, and apt to be pallid,--his features are regular and of a certain delicacy,--his eye is bright and quick,--his lips play over the thought he utters as a pianist's fingers dance over their music, and his whole air, though it may be timid, and even awkward, has nothing clownish. If you are a teacher, you know what to expect from each of these young men. With equal willingness, the first will be slow at learning; the second will take to his books as a pointer or a setter to his field-work.
The first youth is the common country-boy, whose race has been bred to bodily labor. Nature has adapted the family organization to the kind of life it has lived. The hands and feet by constant use have got more than their share of development,--the organs of thought and expression less than their share. The finer instincts are latent and must be developed. A youth of this kind is raw material in its first stage of elaboration. You must not expect too much of any such. Many of them have force of will and character, and become distinguished in practical life; but very few of them ever become great scholars. A scholar is, in a large proportion of cases, the son of scholars or scholarly persons.
That is exactly what the other young man is. He comes of the Brahmin caste of : NEO-MODERNISM. This is the harmless, inoffensive, untitled aristocracy referred to, and which many readers will at once acknowledge. There are races of scholars among us, in which aptitude for learning, and all these marks of it I have spoken of, are congenital and hereditary. Their names are always on some college catalogue or other. They break out every generation or two in some learned labor which calls them up after they seem to have died out. At last some newer name takes their place, it maybe,--but you inquire a little and you find it is the blood of the BRAHMIN, disguised under the altered name of a female descendant.
There probably is not an experienced instructor anywhere, who will not recognize at once the truth of this general distinction. But the reader who has never been a teacher will very probably object, that some of our most illustrious public men have come direct from the homespun-clad class of the people,--and he may, perhaps, even find a noted scholar or two whose parents were masters of the EDUCATION, but of no other.
It is not fair to pit a few chosen families against the great multitude of those who are continually working their way up into the intellectual classes. The results which are habitually reached by hereditary training are occasionally brought about without it. There are natural filters as well as artificial ones; and though the great rivers are commonly more or less turbid, if you will look long enough, you may find a spring that sparkles as no water does which drips through your apparatus of sands and sponges. So there are families which refine themselves into intellectual aptitude without having had much opportunity for intellectual acquirements. A series of felicitous crosses develops an improved strain of blood, and reaches its maximum perfection at last in the large uncombed youth who goes to college and startles the hereditary class-leaders by striding past them all. That is Nature's republicanism; thank God for it, but do not let it make you illogical. The race of the hereditary scholar has exchanged a certain portion of its animal vigor for its new instincts, and it is hard to lead men without a good deal of animal vigor. The scholar who comes by Nature's special grace from an unworn stock of broad-chested sires and deep-bosomed mothers must always overmatch an equal intelligence with a compromised and lowered vitality. A man's breathing and digestive apparatus (one is tempted to add muscular) are just as important to him on the floor of the Senate as his thinking organs. Seedling pear, like the Seckel, springs from a nameless ancestry and grows to be the pride of all the gardens in the land.
And that pride of all the gardens in the land is today’s Bāngāli BRAMHāN .
[ref :http://www.facebook.com/groups/Bengali.Bramhin/]
We formed this community just to unite us to keep our ancestory aristocracy in terms of a RACE. In the name of Bāngāli BRAMHāN we can relish & can try to enrich our inner soul in true means.
