According to B. S. Guha, the population of India is derived from 6 main ethnic groups:-
(i) Negroids:
Negroids, the brachycephalic (broad headed) from Africa were the older people to have come to India. These people are now found only in patches among the hill tribes of south India (Irulas, Kodars, Paniyans and Kurumbas) on the mainland. BT they survive in the Andaman Islands, where they have retained their language.
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(ii) Proto-Austaloids or Aastrics:
Proto-Australoids are Austrics were a race of people with wavy hair plentifully distributed over their brown bodies, long heads with foreheads and prominent eye ridges, noses with low and broad roots, thick jaws, large palates and teeth and small chins.
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The Austrics of India represent a race of medium height, dark (and in some case black) complexion with long heads and rather flat noses but, otherwise of regular features.
Miscegenation with the earlier Negroids may be the reason for the dark of black pigmentation of the skin and flat noses. Austric tribes spread Burma, Malaya and the islands of South East Asia. “The Austrics form the bedrock of the people.”
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The Austrics laid the foundation of Indian civilization. They cultivated rice and vegetables and made sugar from sugarcane. Their language has survived in the Kol or Munda-speech-Mundari current in Eastern and Central India.
(iii) Mongoloids:
Mongoloids of various types are confined to the north-eastern fringes of India, in Assam, Nagaland, Mizo, Garo and Jainti Hills. Generally, they are people of yellow complexion, oblique eyes, high cheekbones, sparse hair and medium height.
(iv) Dravidians:
Dravidians comprise all the three sub-types Paleo-Mediterranean, the true Mediterranean and Oriental Mediterranean. They appear to be people of the same stock as the peoples of Asia Minor and Crete and the pre-Hellenic Aegean’s of Greece.
They are reputed to have built up the city civilisation of the Indus Valley, whose remains have been found at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa and other Indus cities. The Dravidian must have spread to the whole of India, supplanting Austrics and Negritos alike.
(v) Western Brachycephals:
Western Brachycephals are the broad-headed people living mainly on the western side the country such as the Ganga valley and the dalta, parts of Kashmir, Kathiawar, Gujrat, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. They are known by Alpinoids, Dinarics and Armenoids.
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Their representatives are found among the Coorgis and the Parsis.
(vi) Nordic Aryans:
Nordic Aryans who migrated to India were a branch of Indo-Iraniam who had originally left their homes in Central Asia, some 5000 year ago, and had settled in Mesopotamia for some centuries.
The Aryans must have come into India between 2000 and 1500 B. C. Their first home in India was western and northern Punjab from where they spread to the Valley of the Ganga and beyond.
The Aryans, comities into India, encountered the highly civilized Indus Valley people who had big towns with fortifications and brick structure and many of the amenities of a quite high cite civilization. The Indus people were essentially a city people while; the Aryans were a pastoral race.