Page:On The Original Inhabitants Of Bhartavarsha Or India.pdf/14

 The Bharatas divided at an early date into two great sections, which were known in antiquity, as Kuru-Pancalas and Kauravas and Pandavas, and afterwards as Gandians and Dravidians, and as Kuruvas or Kurumbas and Mallas or Malayas, etc. All these names, too, are derived from words which denote mountains. However nearly related these tribes were to each other, they never lived together in close friendship, and although they were not always perhaps at open war, yet feelings of distrust and aversion seem always to have prevailed.

Though

was was incumbent on me to verify my statements by the best means available. In order to do so, I had to betake myself to the fields of very

positive evidence in favour of mj^ assertions

difficult to obtain, still,

language and religion, which

it

in matters of this

kind are

the most reliable and precious sources of information.

For

language and religion manifest in a peculiar manner the mental condition of men, and thouoii both

aim and both

is

result, yet the

mind which

differ

directs

the same, so that though they

in their

and animates

work

in different

grooves, the process of thinking is in both identical. Besides the mental character,

we must not

complement which

supplied by ethnology, and in this

is

neglect the physical

case the physical evidence of ethnology supports thoroughly

the conclusions at which I had arrived from consulting the

language and religion of the inhabitants of India. In the

first

two bi'anohes linguistic

and

two parts of

the

I

have treated separately of the

Bharatas,

relying

historical material at

my

mainly on the

disposal concerning

the ethnological position of the Dravidians and Gaudians.

The

principal Gauda-Dravidian tribes

over the length and breadth of tinent

are,

in

who

live scattered

the vast

Indian con-

order to establish their mutual

separately introduced into this discussion.

kinship,

This method