engal. The
Bh[=a]rs, and Koles, and Ch[=i]rus may once have formed one body, and,
at any rate, like the last, the Bh[=a]rs are Kolarian and not
Dravidian. This is not the place to argue a thesis which might well be
supported at length, but in view of the sudden admixture of foreign
elements with the Brahmanism that begins to expand at the end of the
Vedic period it is almost imperative to raise the question whether the
Bh[=a]rs, of all the northern wild tribes the most cultivated, whose
habitat
extended from Oude (Gorakhpur) on both sides of the Ganges over all
the district between Benares and Allah[=a]b[=a]d, and whose name is
found in the form Bh[=a]rats as well as Bh[=a]rs, is not one with that
great tribe the history of whose war has been handed down to us in a
distorted form under the name of Bh[=a]rata (Mah[=a]bh[=a]rata). The
Bh[=a]ratas, indeed, claim to be Aryans. But is it likely that a race
would have come from the Northeast and another from the Northwest, and
both have the same name? Carnegy believed, so striking was the
coincidence, that the Bh[=a]rats were a R[=a]jput (Hindu) tribe that
had become barbaric. But against this speaks the type, which is not
Aryan but Kolarian.[24] Some influence one may suppose to have come
from the more intelligent tribes, and to have worked on Hindu belief.
We believe traces of it may still be found in the classics. For
instance, the famous Frog-maiden, whose tale is told in the
Mah[=a]bh[=a]rata, reminds one rather forcibly of the fact that in
Oude and Nep[=a]l frog-worship (not as totem) was an established cult.
The time for this worship to Begin is October; it is different to
thunder-worship (July, the _n[=a]ga_-feast), and the frog is
subordinate to the snake. And, again, the snake-worship that grows so
rapidly into the Hindu cult can scarcely have been uninfluenced by the
fact that there are no less than thirty snake-tribes.[2]

But despite some interesting points of view besides those

touched upon here, details are of little added value, since it is
manifest that, whether Kolarian or Dravidian, or, for the matter of
that, American or African, the same rites will obtain with the same
superstition, for they belong to every land, to the Aryan ancestor of
the Hindu as well as to the Hindu himself. Even totemism as a survival
may be suspected in the 'fish' and 'dog' people of the Rig Veda, as
has recently been suggested by Oldenberg. In the Northeast of India
many tri