s those spoken in the Indo-Pacific
islands and the Malay Peninsula. "The Mundas, the Mon-Khmer,
the wild tribes of the Malay Peninsula and the Nicobarese all use
forms of speech which can be traced back to a common source though
they mutually differ widely from each other." [73] It would appear,
therefore, that the Mundas, the oldest known inhabitants of India,
perhaps came originally from the south-east, the islands of the Indian
Archipelago and the Malay Peninsula, unless India was their original
home and these countries were colonised from it.

Sir Edward Gait states: "Geologists tell us that the Indian Peninsula
was formerly cut off from the north of Asia by sea, while a land
connection existed on the one side with Madagascar and on the other
with the Malay Archipelago; and though there is nothing to show that
India was then inhabited, we know that it was so in palaeolithic times,
when communication was probably still easier with the countries to the
north-east and south-west than with those beyond the Himalayas." [74]
In the south of India, however, no traces of Munda languages remain at
present, and it seems therefore necessary to conclude that the Mundas
of the Central Provinces and Chota Nagpur have been separated from the
tribes of Malaysia who speak cognate languages for an indefinitely
long period; or else that they did not come through southern India
to these countries but by way of Assam and Bengal or by sea through
Orissa. There is good reason to believe from the names of places and
from local tradition that the Munda tribes were once spread over Bihar
and parts of the Ganges Valley; and if the Kolis are an offshoot of the
Kols, as is supposed, they also penetrated across Central India to the
sea in Gujarat and the hills of the western Ghats. The presumption is
that the advance of the Aryans or Hindus drove the Mundas from the
open country to the seclusion of the hills and forests. The Munda
and Dravidian languages are shown by Sir G. Grierson to be distinct
groups without any real connection.

Though the physical characteristics of the two sets of tribes display
no marked points of difference, the opinion has been generally held
by ethnologists who know them that they represent two distinct waves
of immigration, and the absence of connection between their languages
bears out this view. It has always been supposed that the Mundas were
in the country of Chota Nagpur and the Central Provinces first, and
th