NEGRO RACES. The existence of a Negro race in the Indian Archipelago seems to have been known to Ptolemy the geographer, who flourished soon after the commencement of the Christian era. Iii the last map of his volume, that which contains the Aurea Chersonesus and the Jabados Insular, supposed to have meant respectively the .Malayan Peninsula and Sumatra and Java Islands, he places a country far to the eastward of the Aurea Chersonesus, under the equinoctial line, which he states to be occupied by iLthiopes lethyopliagi. The country alluded to was apparently New Guinea, and -/Ethiopes was the appellation by the Romans for the black, woolly-haired Africans, to distinguish them from Mauritani and other races on the coast.
Ethnologists are of opiniou that Africa has had an important influence in the colonization of Southern Asia, of India, and of the Eastern Islands, in times prior to authentic history or traditions. The marked African features of some of the people in the extreme south of the Penin sula of India, the Negro and Negrito races of the Andatnans and Great Nicobar, the Semang, Bila, and Jakuu of the Malay Peninsula, an the Negrito and Negro, Papuan and Malagasi races of the islands of the Indian Archipelago, Australia, and Polynesia, indicate the extent which charac terizes their colonization.
A Negro race occupies the hills in the Dandilli district of N. Canara. Their origin has not been traced ; but since the Muhammmadaus of Arab, Afghan, Moghul, and Turk origin have been invadinn. India, almost all the dynasties have retained large bodies of Africans, either of the large-lipped, curly-haired Negro type, or of the softer-featured Abyssinian, and one ruling family of Abyssinians was the Ilabshi or Sidi of Janjirah near Bombay. The Negro sailors of the Sidi con tinued up to the 18th century the most ruthless pirates on the west coast of India. The Adal Shahi and Nizam Shah Bhairi dynasties, who ruled in Bijapnr and Ahmadnaagur in the 15th and 16th centuries, had considerable bodies of Negro soldiers as their household troops. The Talpur Amirs of Sind had, till the latest hour of their rule, bodies of African Negroes around them ; the nawabs of the Carnatic had a small body of the Negro race as their household slaves. The Negro race are numerous in Las and Mekran, and they still form part both of the regular and irregular troops of the nizam of the Dekhan.
Mr. Logan thinks that Southern Asia has always been occupied as at present with several races, tribes, and languages, and that S.1V. Asia and Asianesia have been contemporaneously occupied by-1. Archaic Indo-Anstraliau ; 2. Papuan ; 3. 'l'ibeto-Chinese or Ultra-Indian ; 4. Dravidian ; 5. Scythic ; 6. Iranian ; 7. Semitic races; and the spiral-haired Negro race seems to have preceded the brown race. But, according to
Mr. Logan, the oldest races of India, Ultra-India, and Asianesia were of a variable African type, the two principal forms being Australo-Tamilian or quasi-Semitic and Negrito, followed in Asia nesia by the Malagasi. lie is of opinion that the present prevalent Ultra-Indian races entered the region from the north-east, and at a very remote period spread, on the one side, over Ultra-India and the basins of the Bmhmaputra and Ganges, and partly into Southern India; and, on the other, were diffused by a long succession of movements all over Asianesia. Throughout these regions they came in contact with more ancient races, and have in some places variously blended with them, and in some dislodged or exterminated them, while in others the old tribes have been able to maintain a certain degree of independence and purity. In Southern India, the ancient element was preserved in some degree, owing apparently to a civilisation early received from partially allied Semitico - African and Semitic nations. In the Andamans, the interior of the Great Nicobar, the jungles of the Malay Penin sula, in Australia, and in the various Papuan and partially Papuan islands, the African element has been maintained from the comparative isolation of the tribes. In the Gangetic province, as in the greater portion of Ultra-India, including the Malay Peninsula, the intrusive race appears to have been recruited by the entrance of new tribes from the north-east, and to have ultimately assimilated the native race, although the influence of the latter is still slightly perceptible. He remarks that when we consider the position of India, between the two great Negro provinces, that on the west being still mainly Negro, even in most of its improved races, and that on the east preserving the ancient Negro basis in points so near India as the Andamans and Kedah, it becomes highly probable that the African element in the population of the Peninsula has been. transmitted from an archaic period before the Semitic, Tura nian, and Iranian races entered India, and when the Indian Ocean had Negro tribes along its northern as well as its eastern and western shores. The basis of the present population of the Dekhan, he says, was of an African character, which was partially improved by Turanians or Irano-Tura-* nians and Semitico-Turanians from the N.W., and afterwards by more advanced ancient N.E. African and Semitic settlers. Perhaps all the original population of Southern Arabia, and even of the Semitic lands generally, was once African ; and the Semitic race had descended on them from a tribe located in the mountains at the head of the Euphrates.