ABSTRACT
The Indian population is a blend of many original stocks supplemented by waves of newcomers. There were several minor aboriginal stocks. A Negroid people, originally from Africa and food-gatherers rather than food-producers with a culture not of a high order, first established themselves and their language on the soil oflndia. Negroid tribes may still be found in parts of the Tamil country in the south-east and in the Andaman Islands. The Sino-Tibetans, who belong to the Mongoloid type with medium height, yellow skin, high cheek-bones, oblique eyes, and comparative absence of hair, penetrated deep into the heart of the Sub-continent. Only two of the Sino-Tibetan languages are found in India. The Austrics, a very old offshoot of the Mediterranean people, spread east over the whole of the country. When the Dravidians and after them the Aryans came, they mingled with the earliest dwellers, and a new people was formed. The city civilization of Punjab and Sindh appears to be the work of the Dravidians, believed to have migrated from Asia Minor and the Eastern Mediterranean. The people of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, who fell before the first waves of the Aryan invaders, lived in cities, built of brick with a well-thought out system of plumbing, baths and similar civic amenities. Whether or not the people of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa came from Sumer in Mesopotamia or some of them spread westwards from the Indus basin, they had attained a high degree of maturity around 3,000 B.C. The pacifist temper ofthe Indian people is traced to them, who are believed to have developed the same attitude. The more important Dravidian languages, fully established as the tongues of well-organized communities, had no relations outside the Sub-continent.
