Cultural Diversity

Mountain areas are generally considered as refuges or havens for minority peoples (Plate 21). Yet it was from the highlands of Central Asia that nomadic hordes spilled over to the south and west to create vast empires, culminating in the Mongol conquests that reached their zenith in China during the time of Kublai Khan (1215-94) and in India during the time of Akbar (1542-1605). That mountains do not constitute a barrier to human movement is evident from the ethnic pattern in the Himalayas where the Caucasoid-Mongoloid interface is at a tangent to the crest line. In the west, Caucasoid people predominate, including in the trans-Himalaya, while, to the east, Mongoloids descend down to the Brahmaputra Plain. Indeed, some mountain ranges provide passages for migration, as for example the highlands of Yunnan, which constitute another epicentre of Mongoloid dispersal. Although 27 out of China's 55 so-called national minorities still reside there, the area has been the source of migratory waves of people that diverged west along the Himalayan Range and to the South-East impinging on the farthest islands.

The ethnic distribution of Asia's mountain people has a general pattern of mainly Mongoloid in the east and Caucasoid in the west. Both have southern regional variants; Malay in the former and Semitic in the latter. In West Asia, the dominant groups are Iranian, Turki, and Semitic (Table 5). South Asia is predominantly Caucasoid with Mongoloids in the east and Dravid-Negrito in the Peninsula. Central Asia is mostly Tartar with some Mongol, while North-East and South-East Asia are decidedly Mongoloid. The Austro-Dravid, Melanesian, and Polynesian people of Australasia have only a hoary connection with some mainland groups.

Asian cultural diversity is most pronounced in terms of languages and dialects. Their complexity is illustrated by two legends, one from Daghestan and another from Sikkim. According to the former, an angel sent to distribute a bag full of languages over the earth flew too close to a Caucasus crag that ripped the bag. A hundred languages dropped out before the hole could be closed (Townsend 1972, p9). The latter legend is an East Himalayan version of the story of the Tower of Babel. When the Lepcha tribe of Maong were building a tower to seize the heaven, those above asked the helpers for grappling irons. Workers below misheard the message and, assuming that heaven had been reached, pulled away the main support, and the tower collapsed. Those who survived the disaster suddenly noticed that each spoke a different language (Leifer 1962, p7). Languages do tend to diverge into various dialects due to their mountain isolation. Island interiors show a similar propensity for linguistic differentiation _ Indonesian Malay has over 30 regional variants. The major language groups of mountainous Asia are Indo-Aryan in the west, Tungusic and Samoyed in the north, Chinese in the east, Tibeto-Burman in the South-East mainland, and Malay in the archipelago (Table 5). Peninsular India and Australia are distant outposts of the Dravidian and Austric languages respectively.

© Greta Rana

21. Women of Hunza, Pakistan

Compared to the ethnic and linguistic complexity, religious realms have a much broader sweep (Table 5). The plateau of Tibet and adjoining Mongolia is Buddhist (Lamaism). Parts of mainland South-East Asia are also Buddhist (Theravad). East Asia is mostly a mixture of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism in China and Korea and Buddhism and Shinto in Japan. West Asia and part of Central Asia are Islamic with Iran as a Shia island amidst the sea of Sunnis. South Asia is predominantly Hindu and the archipelagoes of South-East Asia mostly Islamic, leaving The Philippines as a Christian outpost. But whatever the regional pattern of higher religions, mountain areas demonstrate a persistence of primitive beliefs. Living close to raw nature, the spiritual mould of the people continues to be dominated by the older substratum of anonymous gods and demons, as indicated by their animistic proclivity. Indigenous cultures are, however, being eroded by the dominant cultures intruding from the neighbouring lowlands. These civilisational influences include the Arabic in the west, Indic in the south, Russo and Sinic in the north, Sinic in the east, and Anglo-Saxon in Australasia.