CHAPTER IX
POPULATION
THERE is probably no subject connected with India regarding General
which it is less easy to make statements of general application character-
istics of
than that of its people. The area is great; the physical features Indian as
and climate are highly diversified; and the population is derived compared
with
from many different sources. The Dravidians of the south are Western
the earliest inhabitants of whom we have any knowledge. From peoples.
the north-west countless hordes of many different stocks, includ-
ing in historic times Greeks, Scythians, Huns, Afghans, Mughals,
and Persians, have, from time immemorial, found their way into
India, driven thither by the pressure of other hordes behind
them, or attracted by the prospect of plunder. Along the
northern border the Himalayas oppose an impassable obstacle
to the passage of large bodies of men, and the number of
immigrants from this direction was never very large; but on the
north-east the difficulties of transit to a great extent disappear,
and there has been an extensive influx of various Mongoloid
races. The inhabitants of Assam and Burma belong in the
main to this stock, and the same element enters very largely
into the physical type of the Bengalis. To these racial
differences must be added variations due to environment, which
have been developed in the people during the course of the
many centuries that have elapsed since their first settlement in
India'. In the north-west the dry climate, and the incessant
struggles with man and nature in which only the fittest could
survive, have combined to produce a brave and hardy race of
good physique; while the easy life in the steamy and fertile
rice plains of the Gangetic delta, though encouraging a rapid
increase in the number of its inhabitants, has sapped their
energies and stunted their growth. The small, weak, and timid
Hindu peasant of Bengal differs from the tall, sturdy, and brave
Sikh, or the turbulent and active Pathan, to a greater degree
The Ahoms are known to have greatly degenerated, both physically
and morally, in the course of the seven centuries during which they have
been settled in Assam, and this period is a very short one compared with
that for which the bulk of the people of India have been domiciled there.
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