Abstract
Races and Languages in India. Sir Edward Gait's communication under this title to Section E (Geography) of the British Association at Leicester appears in full in the Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, 81, No. 4224, Oct. 20, 1933. Sir Edward states that the number of languages spoken in India is 223. [The figures of languages given in the actual census is 225 not 223.] The Indo-European languages (27) are spoken by 257 million persons, the Dravidian (14) by 72 million, Tibeto-Chinese (156) by 15 million and the Austro-Asiatic (19) by 5 million. There are a few unclassed languages of little numerical importance. The main Dravidian-speaking area lies south of a line Goa-Berar-Puri (Bay of Bengal). Tibeto -Chinese languages are current in Burma, the hill district of Assam and the sub-Himalayan tract from Assam to the borders of Kashmir. Throughout the rest of India, Aryan languages predominate. The Austro-Asiatic languages are scattered over a wide area and the numbers speaking them are small. They are a survival; but Dravidian Telugu, the Aryan languages of the Gangetic plain and the Tibeto-Burman languages of the Himalayan area all show signs of Austric influence. Their place in northern India was taken by Dravidian languages which in turn were displaced by Aryan languages. The physical type of the races who brought in the Aryan languages predominates in north-west India as far as Patiala. In the Himalayan area, and where the Tibeto-Chinese languages are spoken, the inhabitants are of the Mongoloid type. To the south of Rajputana and the Ganges valley, the people are commonly known as Dravidians, among whom two types are now generally recognised, the more primitive being proto-Australoid. Dr. Hutton in the recent Census of India suggests two waves of Dravidian migration, the later having an Armenoid admixture, and an incursion of Alpine peoples speaking an Aryan tongue. There is, however, little evidence of Mesopotamian or Caucasic affinities in Dravidian, and none that the Alpine invaders had adopted an Aryan form of speech before they came to India.
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Research Items. Nature 132, 861–862 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/132861a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/132861a0