of archæology, philology and anthropology. It is necessary to examine his statements more fully.
He says the Villavâs and the Minavās were the aborigines of Southern India, citing the Bhils and the Minas of Central India in support of his assertion. Villavan is a bowman and Minavan is a fisher-man and these are some of the titles applied honorifically to the Chera and Pandya kings. There is no caste or tribe bearing either name in the Tamil districts. Further, the Bhils and the Minas do not speak a Dravidian language. How they were ethnically related to the Tamils and to what race they had belonged he quietly passes over.
Again, he says that the Nagas were a highly civilised aboriginal race from whom the Aryans learnt their Sanskrit alphabet. Before entering upon any criticism of these statements we shall enquire who these Nagas were. There were Nagas in Northern India as well as in Southern India. About the former Capt. Forbes writes as follows in his Languages of Further India :-'It is now acknowledged that prior to the irruption of the Arvans into India from the west across the Indus, the valley of the Ganges was occupied by various races of Turanian crigin. The Aryans came in contact with two races : one of fierce black degraded savage tribes whom they called Asuras, Rakshasas, &c.; the other a people who lived in cities and possessed wealth, and whose women were fair, whom they termed the Nagas or serpent worshippers, and who
