OCR Rendition - approximate

Relations between Civilized and Savage Life. 317 stonemasons throughout Central India, Rajputana, and the Deccan. They are great proficients in their own crafts, but retain their own dialect, apparently of Dravidian origin, and a very curious communistic organisation, settling all matter of private as well as public import, from the movements of the tribe down to the marriages of the young men and maidens, and the division of wages, in full assembly of all adult males, where all except the parties directly interested may speak and vote, and from whose decisions no appeal is allowed to any other authority or tribunal. They rarely and unwillingly accept wages as day labourers, and prefer taking task work or contracts to dig out a tank of a given acre and depth, to hew and carry stones of a given size and number, to build given lengths of wall of stone or earth, and they never fail to execute fairly a bargain so made. The proceeds are then divided, in full assembly, the weak and sick, the widows and orphans, all receiving their fair share of the gross earnings, the share being apportioned according to the opinion entertained by the general assembly of the deserts of the recipients or of their former bread-winners as contributors in times past to the general earnings of the community. Such are a few of the effects on the aboriginal races of contact with Aryan civilization in the open country, where the aborigines have been effectually subdued and incorporated with their conquerors. In the hills and forests and elsewhere, wherever the aborigines have maintained a separate national existence, the effects of Aryan contact are less visible. Sometimes, as inAssam, the Hinduizing process has gone on gradually among the aboriginal tribes for generations past, and up to our own time ; but in many cases there has been little visible change or improvement in civilization for centuries past, till the European Aryan with his roads and railroads, his uniform codes, and his centralised administration broke into the aboriginal reserve of Warlis and Bhils, of Sonthals, or Gonds, or Koles-and in half a generation effected more change than Hindu Rajas or Moslem Nawabs had effected for centuries before him. But space does not admit of more than a passing notice of such results. It is clear from the written records, and still clearer from the sculptures and paintings of ancient Assyria and Egypt, that the highly civilized people of those countries were from the earliest ages in contact, and generally in conflict, with their uncivilized neighbours. That extermination of the uncivilized race, or at least of the whole adult male population, and the absorption of the women and children by the conquering race, so as practically to extinguish the conquered tribe, was a common result, is