border of Europe eastward across continent and ocean, widening as it goes, till it spreads along the whole western Atlantic shore, cannot easily be made to appear.
There are especially two groups of Asiatic languages, which have been confidently claimed, and with some show of reason, to belong to the Scythian family. Of these, the first is that occupying the southern portion of the peninsula of India, and commonly called the Tamulian or Dravidian group or family. We have already seen (in the fifth and sixth lectures) that the Sanskrit speaking tribes, of Indo-European race, forced their way into India through the passes on its north-western frontier, almost within the historic period; and that they there took exclusive possession only of the northern portion of the country, including especially the vast plains and valleys of Hindustan proper, with a tract of the sea-coast stretching southward on either hand; dispossessing so far, by reduction to servitude or by expulsion, the more aboriginal inhabitants, but leaving to their former owners the hilly and elevated southern region, the Dekhan, as well as the yet less accessible heights and slopes of the Himalaya chain in the north. Throughout nearly the whole Dekhan, these older races still form the predominant population, and speak and write their own languages. Chief among the latter are the Tamil, occupying the south-eastern extremity of the peninsula, along with most of the island of Ceylon; the Telinga or Telugu, spoken over a yet more extensive region lying north of this; the Canarese, extending from the interior border of the Tamil and Telugu westward almost to the coast; the Malayâlam or Malabar, covering a narrow strip of the south-western coast, from Cape Comorin northwards; and the Tulu, filling a still more restricted area to the north of the Malayâlam. All these are cultivated tongues, and possess written literatures, of greater or less extent and antiquity; that of the Tamil is the most important and the oldest, parts of it appearing to date back as far as to the eighth or ninth century of our era; nothing in Telugu is earlier than the twelfth. The Dravidian races, however, have derived their religion, their polity, and their culture, from the superior race to the north
