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
