nt
flying to the refuge of the hills a large contingent of Hindus of
mingled Dravidian and Aryan stocks, but stamped with the culture of the
Ganges basin. These occupied the richer valleys and the more accessible
plateaus of the highlands, driving the primitive Gonds and Bhils back
into the remoter recesses of the mountains.[1394] Dravidians and
aboriginal Kolarians survive in their purity in the wilder and more
inaccessible regions, but in the lower valleys their upper classes show
signs of mixtures with the Rajput invaders, while the lower classes
betray little Aryan blood.[1395]

[Sidenote: Diversity of peoples and dialects.]

Afghanistan, of disordered relief, set as a transit region between the
plains of Mesopotamia, the Oxus and the Indus, has a confused ethnology
in keeping with the tangle of dissected plateaus and mountain systems
which constitute its surface. Here we find three distinct branches of
the Indo-European race, divided up into various peoples of diverse
tongues and subdivided further into countless tribes; and two branches
of Mongol-Tartars scattered, as if out of a pepper box, from the Helmund
to the Oxus, tossed in among diverse peoples of Iranic and Galcha origin
in hopeless confusion. The various Afghan tribes, separated from each
other by natural barriers and intervening alien stocks, though similar
in physical type, speech, religion and culture, have no sense of unity,
no common political aims, while the appalling list of tribes
constituting the population of the country[1396] offers little hope of
Afghanistan ever developing national cohesion. Kafiristan alone, which
lies in the Hindu Kush range for the most part at an altitude of 12,000
feet or more, harbors in its recesses many remnants of primitive
peoples, speaking various languages and dialects, strangers alike to any
native affinity or political union. It is a mere agglomeration of ethnic
fragments, in which the people of one village are often unable to
converse with those of the next.[1397] Relief has fashioned the ethnology
of the Caucasus in the same way. No other equally small area in the
world contains such a variety of peoples and tongues, differing from one
another in race, language, and customs so fundamentally as the Caucasus.
From the heterogeneous survivals of extremely old ethnic stocks, lodged
in the high valleys, to the intrusive Russians of the lower piedmont,
the Caucasus might be called an ethnographical sample card.[13