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Besides the phases of pure Aryan and modified Aryan religions which have already been examined, there are represented in India several other aspects of civilized religion; for, apart from Brahmanic and sectarian worships, and apart from Tamil (southern) imitations of these, there are at present in the country believers of the Jewish religion to the number of seventeen thousand; of Zoroastrianism, eighty-seven thousand; of Christianity, two and a quarter millions; of Mohammedanism, more than fifty-seven millions. But none of these faiths, however popular, comes into an historical account of India's religions in a greater extent than we have brought them into it already, that is, as factors of minor influence in the development of native faiths till, within the last few centuries, Mohammedanism, which has been the most important of them all in transfiguring the native theistic sects, draws a broad line across the progress of India's religious thought.
All these religions, however, whether aboriginal or imported, must again be separated from the more general phenomena of superstition which are preserved in the beliefs of the native wild tribes. One descends here to that lowest of rank undergrowth which represents a type of religious life so base that its undifferentiated form can be mated with like growths from all over the world. These secondary religions are, therefore, important from two points of view, that of their universal aspect, and, again, that of their historical connection with the upper Indic growth above them;[1] for it is almost certain that some of their features have conditioned the development of the latter.
The native wild tribes of India (excluding the extreme Northern Tibeto-Burman group) fall into two great classes, that of the Kolarians and that of the Dravidians, sometimes distinguished as the Yellow and the Black races respectively. The former, again, are called Indo-Chinese by some writers, and the geographical location of this class seems, indeed, to show that they have generally displaced the earlier blacks, and represent historically a yellow wave of immigration from the Northeast (through Tibet) prior to the Aryan white wave (from the Northwest), which latter eventually treated them just as they had treated the aboriginal black Dravidians. [2] Of the Kolarians the foremost representatives are the Koles, the Koches, the Sunth[=a]ls, and the Sav[=a)ras
