Races in India

 In the pre-historic past the entire North India – that is, the entire area north of the Vindhya Hills up to Tibet – was under the sea. The area south of the Vindhyas, the present Arabian Sea, South Africa, Australia and Southeast Asia formed the Gondwana archipelago. The Austrics inhabited the southern portion of Gondwanaland, the Negroes inhabited the southwestern portion and the Austrico-Negroids, the Dravidians of today, inhabited the central portion. The bio-racial structure of different ethnic groups indicates the race to which they belong. As a rule, a strong culture exerts a great influence on a weaker culture. When people with different cultural backgrounds live side by side, the language spoken by the people of the stronger culture automatically influences other groups. For example, though there were marked differences between the Aryan and non- Aryan cultures, the Aryan language was so powerful that all the languages of eastern and northern India had to depend mainly on Saḿskrta. The influence of Saḿskrta was so widespread that even in southern India it exerted a tremendous influence on the Dravidian languages. The following statistics demonstrate the extent to which the eastern and northern Indian languages were influenced by Vedic Saḿskrta. In Bengali there are 92% Saḿskrta words, in Oriya 90%, Maethilii 85%, Tamil 3% and Malayalam 75%. Some people from North India travelled to the western part of Madras by sea and settled there, hence Malayalam is full of Saḿskrta words, although the verbs are from Tamil. The influence of Aryan culture was prominent on the upper classes of the society, although it had a general influence on the other classes. There are some Austric communities such as the Saha, Dhangrsh, etc. who speak an Austric dialect at home but Bhojpurii outside their family circle. Similarly, the Singhmundas and Sarkars of Ranchi district and the Tinneras of Tripura speak their own dialect at home and Bengali outside. The people of Gaŕhwal and the Kumayun have started speaking Indo-Aryan languages instead of Tibetan and Chinese. The Dravidian languages include Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada and Tulu. The alphabets of the Tibetan, Chinese and Indo-Chinese languages are the same, although the Chinese and Japanese scripts are pictorial. The inhabitants of Ceylon speak Sinhalese (which contains 87% Saḿskrta words) and Tamil (13% Saḿskrta words). Members of the Gunatilak and Bandar Nayak communities of Bengal migrated to Ceylon and became the Sinhalese community. The people of Burma speak several languages – Burmese, Chin, Kachin, Shun and other important and unimportant languages. Like the Sinhalese, their alphabets are based on the Indo-Aryan alphabet. -- 

PR Sarkar