In a paper printed in the Journal of this Society in July, 1888, I adduced reasons for believing that there existed adequate evidence to prove the truth of the following statements with regard to the early history of Northern India, (1) That Northern India was peopled by Kolarian and Dravidian tribes long before the Aryans came into the country. (2) Of the two races who preceded the Aryans, the Kolarians were the first immigrants. (3) The Dravidians, when they assumed the government of countries originally peopled by Kolarian tribes, retained the village communities established by their predecessors, but reformed the village system. They made each separate village, and each province formed by a union of villages, more dependent on the central authority than they were under the Kolarian form of government. (4) Under the Dravidian rule, all public offices, beginning with the headships of villages, were filled by nominees appointed by the State instead of being elective as among the Kolarians. (5) The Dravidians set apart lands appropriated to the public service in every village, required the tenants to cultivate these public lands, and store their produce in the royal and provincial granaries; this being the form in which the earliest taxes were paid. (6) They also in the Dravidian villages made every man and woman bear his or her share in contributing to the efficiency of the government, but this process was not followed out in the same completeness in Kolarian villages, where the people were not so ready as the Dravidian races to submit to the same strict discipline, to which the Dravidians had been accustomed long before they entered India.
Art. III.—Notes on the Early History of Northern India. Part II