In a paper printed in the Journal of this Society in July, 1888, I adduced reasons for believing that there existed adequate evidence to prove the truth of the following statements with regard to the early history of Northern India, (1) That Northern India was peopled by Kolarian and Dravidian tribes long before the Aryans came into the country. (2) Of the two races who preceded the Aryans, the Kolarians were the first immigrants. (3) The Dravidians, when they assumed the government of countries originally peopled by Kolarian tribes, retained the village communities established by their predecessors, but reformed the village system. They made each separate village, and each province formed by a union of villages, more dependent on the central authority than they were under the Kolarian form of government. (4) Under the Dravidian rule, all public offices, beginning with the headships of villages, were filled by nominees appointed by the State instead of being elective as among the Kolarians. (5) The Dravidians set apart lands appropriated to the public service in every village, required the tenants to cultivate these public lands, and store their produce in the royal and provincial granaries; this being the form in which the earliest taxes were paid. (6) They also in the Dravidian villages made every man and woman bear his or her share in contributing to the efficiency of the government, but this process was not followed out in the same completeness in Kolarian villages, where the people were not so ready as the Dravidian races to submit to the same strict discipline, to which the Dravidians had been accustomed long before they entered India.

Before reporting the history of the Kirais in detail, so far as we can recover it, I will shortly dissect the story of Prester John. That a Christian king ruled over an Eastern people, remote from the centre of Christian life and isolated from the world, was a story that was very widely spread in early times; and inasmuch as more than one community answered to this description in distant parts of the world, it was natural that this king should be identified with the rulers of very different races. He was generally known as Presbyter Johannes or Prester John, and most travellers who went far afield in early times claimed to have discovered him.

§ 1. Introductory. 2. It appears under several forms. 3. Testimony of the old Chinese documents. 4. They give an f approximate rendering of onesingle form. 5. Three of the j transcriptions indicate a medial r.6. The Persian, Uigur, i Mongol, and Marco Polo confirm the same fact. 7. The! original name was Djurtchen or Djurtchi. 8. In Chinese I Niutehen becomes Niutchi, because of a tabooed charaster. 9. Niutehen is an imitation of a K'itan peculiarity of pronunciation. 10. Similar phonetic change in the K'itan language and several ancient Chinese dialects. 11. Phonetic change L=N is most frequent. 12. The forms Niutchen or Niutehi are corrupted, and must be discarded. 13. Remarks on the successive Chinese processes of rendering R in foreign names. 14. Causes of the differences of finals -en and -i. 15. Djurtehen is the sole genuine and best form.