, apart from Brahmanic and
sectarian worships, and apart from Tamil (southern) imitations of
these, there are at present in the country believers of the Jewish
religion to the number of seventeen thousand; of Zoroastrianism,
eighty-seven thousand; of Christianity, two and a quarter millions; of
Mohammedanism, more than fifty-seven millions. But none of these
faiths, however popular, comes into an historical account of India's
religions in a greater extent than we have brought them into it
already, that is, as factors of minor influence in the development of
native faiths till, within the last few centuries, Mohammedanism,
which has been the most important of them all in transfiguring the
native theistic sects, draws a broad line across the progress of
India's religious thought.

All these religions, however, whether aboriginal or imported, must
again be separated from the more general phenomena of superstition
which are preserved in the beliefs of the native wild tribes. One
descends here to that lowest of rank undergrowth which represents a
type of religious life so base that its undifferentiated form can be
mated with like growths from all over the world. These secondary
religions are, therefore, important from two points of view, that of
their universal aspect, and, again, that of their historical
connection with the upper Indic growth above them;[1] for it is almost
certain that some
of their features have conditioned the development of the latter.

The native wild tribes of India (excluding the extreme Northern
Tibeto-Burman group) fall into two great classes, that of the
Kolarians and that of the Dravidians, sometimes distinguished as the
Yellow and the Black races respectively. The former, again, are called
Indo-Chinese by some writers, and the geographical location of this
class seems, indeed, to show that they have generally displaced the
earlier blacks, and represent historically a yellow wave of
immigration from the Northeast (through Tibet) prior to the Aryan
white wave (from the Northwest), which latter eventually treated them
just as they had treated the aboriginal black Dravidians.[2] Of the
Kolarians the foremost representatives are the Koles, the Koches, the
Sunth[=a]ls, and the Sav[=a]ras (Sauras), who are all regarded by
Johnston as the yellow Dasyus, barbarians, of the earliest period;
while he sees in the V[=a]icyas, or third caste of the Hindu political
divisions, the result of a union of the No