Chapter XXII: Appendix: I

THE NATIVE RACES OF INDIA.

The early European travellers and sojourners in India designated the inhabitants generally by the name of Indians or Indosthans. Of these they recognised two main divisions, Moors and Gentues. The word _Gentues_, which has survived in certain parts of India to our own day in the form Gentoos, is, as Fryer tells us in his ‘New Account of East India and Persia,’ “the _Portugal_ idiom for _Gentiles_,” and signifies the whole Hindu and aboriginal (or non-Aryan) population--that is to say, all the peoples of India with the exception of the Mussulmans, Parsees, and Jews. Of the Gentues, the race which came most frequently in contact with the English factories in Western India was that of the Mahrattas, Marathas, or Marhatas, under their great chief Sivaji and his successors. The Christians of St Thomas, incidentally alluded to in the text, belong to the non-Aryan races of Southern India. The other great division, the Moors, comprises all the Mahommedan invaders and their descendants, from the time of the earliest raids in the seventh century, together with the converts gained from among the Hindu and aboriginal races. This name, also, survives to the present day in the “Moormen” of Bengal and Ceylon. Until shortly before the date of our story, the results of these earlier invasions of India were apparent in the existence of the Mahommedan kingdoms of Bijapur, Golconda, Gujerat, and others, which were gradually swept away by the growing Mogul power. The name _Moguls_ was used to distinguish from the general mass of Moors the later Persian and Afghan invaders, often of high rank in their own country, who entered India in the earlier ages as leaders of predatory bands, and at a later date with peaceful intentions, to gain power and honour in the service of the emperors of their own race at Delhi. The Parsees (spelt Parseys or Parsies), and the Black Jews of Malabar, are frequently mentioned by old writers, as also an African colony of Abyssinians not far from Surat.