From: ksrao@power.ee.ndsu.nodak.edu
Subject: Foreign Elements in Indian Population
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 04:48:44 GMT
Reply-To: ksrao@power.ee.ndsu.nodak.edu
Organization: North Dakota Higher Education Computing Network

  This section is from the Chapter: "Foreign Elements in Indian Population"

  by Mrs. Debala Mitra in Vol II of 'Cultural Heritage of India', published by
The Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture in 1962.

		Prehistoric Mixture of Races


From the earliest times India has received people of diverse languages,
cultures and racial affiliations. Of the two main paleolithic industries of
India - pebble tools with its primary focus in the northwest, and that of the
bifacial tools predominant in the South - the first is associated to the
comarable industries in South East Asia, and the second to its counterparts in
Europe and Africa. What forces of diffusion were at work to produce similar
tool-types over such widely dispersed lands is difficult to guess, but the
possibility of actual migration of paleolithic folks from different directions,
though not yet substantiated by the find of a conteperory skeletal remains, is
not ruled out. In the neolithic age we find the neolithic types of East India
again similar to those of South-East Asia and Southern China - indicating a
cultural wave reaching India from that direction. In this case as well, it is
not unlikely that the wave had its genesis in a folk migration. There are
strong grounds for believing that the Dravidians came to India from the East
mediterranean region long before the Aryans. An extra-Indian origin of the
Indus Valley civilization of the third millinnium b. C. is not proved, though
its contacts with contemporary civilizations of West Asia are abundantly clear.
There is little doubt, however, that in the next millinnium the Vedic Aryans
poured into India from the north-west bringing with them an altogether new
culture. By the fourth century before Christ the creation of the 'Indian Man'
and the main fabric of the Indian civilization is almost accomplished. Behind
this creation lies the fusion of of the four principal language-cultur groups
(loosely called races) in blood, speech, and culture. They are the Austric or
Austro-Asiatic (Nishadas), the Mongoloids or Sino-Tibetans (Kiratas), the
Dravidian (dravidas) and the Aryan (Aryas). Of these, the Austric people 
entered India from the West and spread all over India and are now represented
by such primitive tribes as the Kolas and the Mundas living in the hills and
forests of central and eastern India. The Mongoloid peoples, however, emigrated
from the east and settled mostly in the Himalayan sub-tracts and eastern India.
The impact of Dravidians was much stronger than that of any of these races and
they practically Dravidianized the whole of peninsular India. The Vedic Aryans,
however, Aryanized the whole of India by their language. When transformed into
classical language by large borrowing from the Austrics and Dravidians, it
became the lingua franca of the Indian culture and the sacred language of
Hinduism. The food habits, dress, furniture, and the architecture of Aryans
came to be greately influenced by the new surroundings, while their ritual
beliefs and practices underwent far-reaching changes due to the impact of the
pre-Aryan settlers. The very name Arya lost its ethnic significance and came to
mean 'nobilty and aristocracy of character and temperament'



(In later articles, I will write how Aryan thought, religion and customs got
completely changed in a way that most of the Indian practices, beliefs,
philosophical ideas became those that existed before Aryans immigrated to
India)
K. Sankara Rao                          e-mail ksrao@power.eee.ndsu.nodak.edu

Department of Electrical Engineering
North Dakota State University
Fargo, ND 58105  USA

Phone:  (701)237-7217  (o)
        (701)235-9912  (h)