The desire to prove that Dravidian or pre-Dravidian peoples affected deeply Vedic thought and life is natural, and is supported by the generally accepted view that the population of India is predominantly Dravidian or at least of non-Indo-European origin. It is true, however, that in the absence of any real certainty of the physical characteristics of the Indo-Europeans this belief cannot be made the subject of strict proof. Assuming, however, the validity of the doctrine, there remains the question whether the invaders were essentially responsible for the Vedic religion and philosophy, imposing a superior culture on inferior races, or whether the process as regards culture was reversed; instances of analogical cases can be easily adduced. Here again, however, we must remember that we have no satisfactory evidence of the relative numbers of the invaders and the earlier settlers; we are left in this matter wholly to conjecture.
4
The best case that can be made out for the Indo-European character of Vedic religion or philosophy depends on comparison with the achievements of other Indo-European peoples, and, of course, in this case we are met with the problem to what extent these religions and philosophies were Indo-European in character, or on the contrary represent elements borrowed by the invaders from the countries they occupied. Thus, for instance, we have Sir A. Evans’ suggestion that the Homeric epic embodies largely traditions of the pre- Hellenic Minoans, though the language is Indo-European, and, even if we dismiss the suggestion as not very plausible, we are not in a position to disprove it definitely by the evidence available. More important is the close similarity of many Indian and Iranian ideas, as developed by Julius von Negelein in his Weltanschauung des indogermanischen Asiens, but it may be noted even here that, as that work shows, many of the important ideas of Aryan belief can be paralleled among other races.
On the other hand, we must admit that when we come to definite attempts to prove Dravidian influence on Vedic religion or philosophy we are in the region of conjecture. The absence of any really early Dravidian evidence as to
This is not to be high nor too large, according to the ritual texts (cf. Megasthenes in Strabo, xv. 54), negativing any idea of a great chamber (cf. Bloch and Hillebrandt’s view of RV. x. 18. 18); see Caland, Versl. en Meded. der Kon. Akad. v. Wet. te Amsterdam, 4e R., dl. xi. 878 ff.; Archiv f. Religionswissenschaft, xviii. 482.
- Minns, op. cit., pp. 188 ff.; Peake, op. cit.,
pp. 64 f.; CAH, i. 80 ff.
See, e.g., Leaf, Homer and History, pp. 44 ff., following E. Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. ii. 52.
JHS. xxxii. 281 ff., 298; on Minoan religion, in correction of Evans’ views, see R. Dussaud, Les civilisations pré- helléniques (Paris, 1914), pp. 827-413.
630
Appendix G
culture deprives us of any assured knowledge of pre-Indo-European conditions such as would enable us effectively to gauge Dravidian influences in Vedic religion or philosophy. This leads to the necessity of relying on conjectures, of which many may be easily shown to have no sound foundation, or at most to be mere possibilities. We may, of course, accept such possibilities if we like, but in doing so we cease to be judicial and arrive merely at subjective judgements which have no lasting value.
3
It must be noted that the Dravidians are not allowed the credit of originality by such writers as Elliot Smith,1 and Fleure, who insist instead on oversea and overland influences from Mesopotamia and Egypt as settling the course of Dravidian culture, though the evidence for this influence in the third millennium B. c. and much later is entirely speculative, depending on the existence of megaliths alleged to be connected with metallic deposits, and on the certainly unproved theory of the dissemination of this mode of building by a particular race, moved by peculiar religious views, who sought life-giving substances. The structures raised on this basis by Elliot Smith and Perry seems to me entirely unfounded and in every respect implausible, nor is there much probability of their receiving general endorsement by competent critics. It is, however, needless here to discuss their views, and Slater, quite justly, lays more stress than his authorities on the independent power of the Dravidians to develop their culture. Moreover he rejects, very plausibly, the doctrine that the Dravidians represent the admixture of Mediterranean bearers of heliolithic culture with pre-Dravidians to form the Dravidian race, and his position treats the Dravidians as immigrants from the north-west who passed through Babylonia before the Sumerians were practising agriculture there. Slater contends that there is evidence to prove the superiority of the Dravidians in culture, ascribing to them the possession of castles, cities, wealth, luxury, the use of magic, superior architectural skill, and ability to restore the dead to life. He holds that they possessed a priest-magician clan or caste such as did not exist among the Aryans. Unfortunately he adduces no evidence for these assertions beyond the unscientific opinions of Mr. C. F. Oldham, and a couple of even less plausible conjectures, and it is sufficient to observe that there is nothing whatever to induce us to believe in the superiority of the culture of the Dravidians or the Munda-speaking tribes, and that on the contrary the evidence points rather in the opposite direction.
5
It is further held that caste is Dravidian, the Brahmans being the product of the mingling of the bringers of the heliolithic culture from Egypt with the Dravidians. They achieved domination over the Dravidians, and, when the Aryans entered India, showing superior prowess, as users of horses, the Brahmans saw the wisdom of adopting the allegedly easier language which the masters spoke, and became the guardians and exponents of the Vedas, until finally they succeeded in imposing themselves as leaders of the Aryans who were Dravidized in culture. It is important to note that on this theory the Rigveda is left to the Aryans during the period when they were in the full flush of their conquests. It is difficult to reconcile this with the assertion that Viṣṇu is certainly not an Aryan god, since he most unmistakably
1 Migrations of Early Culture; cf. Perry, Children of the Sun; Fleure in Slater, The Dravidian Element in Indian Culture, pp. 35 ff.; Peake, The Bronze Age and the Celtic World, chap. iv. But see CAH. i. 94 ff. On alleged Dravidian remains (Mohen-jo-Daro, Harappa), sec
IHQ. i. 176 ff. Op. cit., pp. 8, 22 ff. Op. cit., p. 158.
Op. cit., chap. ii.
The Sun and the Serpent.
• Slater, pp. 48 ff., 157 ff. But see Macdonell
and Keith, Vedic Index, ii. 247 ff.The Dravidian Element in Indian Thought
63.1
exists in the Rigveda, which also knows Rudra, who is in part the prototype of Śiva, also asserted to be not Aryan.
The doctrine of the Egypto-Dravidian origin of caste is supported by the following arguments. (1) It is admitted that the Brahmans of the south claim Aryan descent and that they are differentiated from the bulk of the Dravidian population in facial appearance, complexion, and intellectual habit; but the justice of the claim to Aryan connexion is discounted on the score that it may be explained on the Egyptian hypothesis. This contention proves nothing, and leaves the traditional view unaffected. (2) It is alleged that the bearers of the heliolithic culture claimed divinity and established in Indonesia and elsewhere ruling classes claiming divine descent, while the traditional Brahman theory is that every Brahman is a god. The alleged facts are wholly problematical; the divinity of rulers when it exists can be traced to various ethnic causes, and the claims of the Brahmans are easily explicable without going beyond the Aryans.1 (8) The carriers of the heliolithic culture are asserted to have been worshippers of the sun and the serpent; the Nambudiris, who are specially conservative, worship the cobras in Nayar households, and Brahman was a solar deity. The Brahmans of the Rigveda, however, do not worship cobras, and do not know a god Brahman. (4) The sacred cord of the Brahman is of cotton 2 which indicates an original association of the caste with cotton spinning, which certainly was no art of the Vedic Aryans. This, it is held, is a clear indication of the descent of Brahmans from foreigners who earned the gratitude and homage of the people of India by teaching them to spin and weave. The argument is clearly without value, and Slater himself admits that India itself was the home of the art of spinning and weaving cotton-primarily tree cotton, so that it is wholly needless to look to Egyptians of problematic reality. Moreover, it will be seen that the account of the origin of caste accepted by Slater is in effect merely a transfer to an Egyptian element of the tendency to stress racial distinctions, which together with occupation he believes to explain caste. A final complication introduced by Slater is his view that when they achieved supremacy the Brahmans became largely Aryanized in blood, because they aimed at securing the fairest wives.
Finally may be noted the argument which ascribes special potency in magic to the Dravidians, including the power of raising the dead, on the strength of the Vedas’. No such statement, of course, has any Vedic authority.4
C
3
Nothing more substantial is adduced by Mr. G. W. Brown in his examination of the sources of Indian philosophy.5 He claims that animism is Dravidian, and that in it Jainism and Buddhism show closer adherence to Dravidian ideas, rejecting the new Aryan gods. The Aryans must have learned in India to worship new trees like the peepal and banyan, the peafowl, the serpent, the monkey, various species of grass, and sacred places innumerable, from their predecessors, to whom also is due the doctrine of transmigration with its corollary of release. But here again we have nothing of substantial importance; we have no right to hold that animistic or animatistic ideas were un-Aryan; Roman religion for instance is permeated by them, and Greek has relics of
1 Cf. Frazer, The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings; Warde Fowler, Roman Ideas of Deity, chap. iv; von Negelein, Weltanschauung des indogermanischen Asiens, pp. 127 ff.
Cotton is unknown from early texts; cf.
on the thread, BDS. i. 5. 5; GDS.
i. 36; VDS. xii. 14; ApDS. ii. 4. 22 ; Manu, ii. 44.
Slater, p. 117.
• A passage like TS. ii, 1. 1. 8 neither refers to revival as real nor to Dravidians, Studies in honor of Bloomfield, pp. 75 ff.
632
Appendix G
2
them. Transmigration again is recorded as a Druid belief, and was adopted in Greece, apparently from Thrace, and independently of India. The more concrete suggestion that the terms Samkhya and Yoga, and even Upanisad are really derived from Dravidian names is clearly illegitimate in the absence of any difficulty of explaining satisfactorily the terms as Aryan contributions. For asceticism and caste as Dravidian no proof is even attempted.3
6
5
7
An effort to render probable pre-Dravidian influence on Vedic civilization and religion has recently been made by Professor S. Lévi, who revives the hint of Barth that the Atharvan tabuva may really be derived from the taboo of the Australians and Polynesians, and refers also to Mr. J. Hornell’s conclusions, from the facts regarding Indian boats, of Polynesian influence, and even of a Polynesian invasion, the latter in Dravidian times, which introduced the coco-nut palm into India. Lévi’s evidence is based on the existence of pairs or triads of ethnic names, applied to neighbouring peoples, which are differentiated by an initial preformant, a usage neither Indo-European nor Dravidian. Thus the Atharvaveda PariŚista knows of Tosala as well as Kosala, a union found later in the Puranas and textbooks of rhetoric, while AŚoka records Tosali, the name of which Lévi would even identify with Dhauli. Añga is found in the Atharvaveda, while with Vañga it appears from the epic onwards, usually in close association with Kalinga. For the latter again we have a parallel in the quite late name of the Telegu country Tilinga, Trilinga, Tailinga, &c., whose antiquity, however, may be supported by Trilingon or Triglypton in Ptolemy’s geography.8 Lévi compares also the Bhulingas, known to Pliny and Ptolemy and the Ganapatha, who appear to have been a part of the Salvas, though the epic ignores them. Both epics, however, have the combination Utkala with Mekala (with the variant Melaka). We have also UḍradeŚa, Orissa, which goes back to an Uda to be recognized in Manu,10 for which Unda is a variant; comparable are the Pundras, and even the Mundas. The Pulindas are known from the Aitareya Brahmana onwards; the BṛhatkathaŚlokasamgraha 11 represents them in terms which suggest that they were small and black, like the pre- Dravidians, 12 and practised totemism. The epic mentions with them the Kulindas who may more properly have been Kalindas, as the name, Kalindi, of the Yamuna suggests, and another variant is Kunindas.13 The Muṇḍā languages permit the use of consonants as prefixes and the infixation of a nasal in certain cases between the prefix and the root, facts which would explain these variants, and which suggest that in the ultimate issue Utkala is Udra, differentiated by the infixation of a k, and Mekala Munda. There
See, e.g., Farnell, Cults of the Greek States,
iii. 2 ff.; iv. 302 f.; v. 361 ff.
- See also Dieterich, Mutter Erde, pp. 33, 50;
von Negelein, op. cit., pp. 54 f.
• On Sanskrit and Dravidian cf. J. Bloch, Bull. Soc. Ling. xxv. 1 ff.; J. Przyluski (ibid. pp. 66 f.; xxiv. 118 f., 255 f.) finds Austro-Asiatic words borrowed (including the term karpāsa, cotton), and strengthens the argument for borrowing of the phallic cult by the Aryans from the aborigines by the fact that this worship is prominent in Indo-China. It may be noted that here the paucity of phallic worship in the case of other Indo-European peoples strengthens the argument for borrow-
ing. None of the instances alluded to by Farnell, op. cit. v. 8, is clearly or probably Indo-European.
JA. cciii. 1-56.
Œuvres, ii, 254.
• Memoirs of the Asiatic Society of Bengal,
vn. iii (1920).
‘Mārkandeya Purāṇa, Iviii. 28, &c.
vii. 2. 23.
• KāŚika Vṛtti, iv. 1. 173. 10 x. 44.
11 viii. 31 ff.; cf. for colour, NatyaŚãstra,
xxi. 89.
13 Thurston, The Madras Presidency, p. 124;
above, p. 11.
13 Varahamihira, Bṛhatsamhita, iv. 24;
xiv. 80, 83.
The Dravidian Element in Indian Thought
2
633
may be noted also the parallelism of Takkola as a place-name and the plantname Kakkola, and of kṣumā (kṣauma) and umā (aumīna, umya) as the name of linen. The element -linga in some of these names suggests comparison with Lanka as denoting’ island’, applied in both the Mahanadi and Godavari regions,1 though P. Schmidt has suggested for Kalinga comparison with the Nicobar word kalan, sea-eagle, which would suggest that the ethnic names were of totemic origin. In the Indian archipelago names such as Karmarañga, Kamarañga, Tamralinga, suggest that in Kamarupa and Tamralipti in its varied forms we have variants of a pre-Dravidian word. Kam again reappears probably in Kamboja, which is in its turn equated with KapiŚa, both imperfect representations of an old form. Without a prefix we have Bhoja, the aspirate of which is due to contamination with the root bhuj of Sanskrit. The pairs of names suggest certain conclusions as to the social and political importance of a people who must have created political unitics of considerable extent, so firmly connected with the real life of the country that they have persisted through thousands of years to the present day.
3
This evidence, unfortunately, hardly carries us any farther towards ascertaining the amount of pre-Dravidian influence on Vedic civilization, and it must be added that much of it seems of very dubious value. The evidence that Tilinga was an early form is negligible; Ptolemy has already Trilinga before him and he localizes the place in Arakan. Utkala may be Udra, but obviously, if we can operate with such names, we can establish anything we like; similarly with Kamarupa and Tamralipti. The attempt to deduce from Yaska that he classed the Bhojas, of whom the Kambojas were a branch, as different from the Aryas appears hardly justifiable, bhoja in the passage cited having probably the sense enjoying’, and not an ethnic significance, and the one thing certain about that people is that they were reckoned by Yaska as using a language closely akin to that of the Aryas. Clearly a very necessary proof of the thesis is still lacking, plausible etymologies from Austric languages, and these are clearly by no means easy to find, for Lévi rejects the one suggested, prima facie with plausibility, for Kalinga. If it were true that tabuva was taboo, it would seem natural to expect that even the modern languages which are our chief means of investigating Austric language construction should show in other words similar conservatism of form. But in point of form nothing very satisfactory can be made out of the comparisons already, very ingeniously, made by Przyluski. The conditions under which the investigation has to be conducted perhaps fatally preclude the adduction of really convincing cases, at any rate where Vedic words are concerned. We may readily believe in pre-Dravidian language and religion or even political organization as affecting the same phenomena among the Vedic peoples, but we still lack strict proof.
An effort to determine the characteristics of the pre-Dravidians has been made by Professor Giuffrida Ruggeri,5 who holds that India was successively
Tibetan glin; Pliny, N.II. vi. 18, has
Modogalinga in the Ganges. Cf. the Lanka of the Ramayana, which is not Ceylon (Jacobi, pp. 90 ff.).
- BEFÉO. vii. 261.
• Nirukta, ii. 2. Cf. E. Kuhn, Avesta, Pahlavi, and Ancient Persian Studies (1904), pp. 218 ff.; Nariman, JRAS. 1912, pp. 255 ff.; L. Sarup (trs., p. 22, n. 5) misunderstands Roth’s view on this point; Yaska himself uses cu as go’ (iii. 18; iv. 13), which contradicts
his assertion that the Kambojas used Śavati, the Aryans Śavas only. Roth does not deny the Aryan use of Śavas, which Yāska doubtless connected (as bala) with gatikarman. Yāska is either inconsistent or there is an old interpolation (known to Patanjali, Mahā- bhāṣya, i. 1. 1).
MSL. xxii. 205 ff.; BSL. xxiv. 118 ff.
• Outlines of a Systematic Anthropology of
Asia (1921), pp. 43 ff.
634
Appendix G
occupied by Negritos apparently platyrrhine; pre-Dravidians (Australo- Veddaic); Dravidians (akin to Homo Indo-Africanus Aethiopicus); tall dolichocephalic (Mesopotamaic ?) elements seen in the Todas; dolichocephalic Aryans; and brachycephalic Leukoderms-presumably of the Alpine type. The pre-Dravidians, on his view, were numerically preponderant, as held by Chanda, but the Dravidians imposed their language on large bodies of them, though the Munda languages persisted. The Dravidians were mesorrhine as opposed to the pre-Dravidian platyrrhines, the Niṣādas of Vedic texts, the noseless’ enemies of the Rigveda. Similarly he assumes that the pre-Dravidians imposed their language on the Negritos, thus accounting for the fact that the speeches kindred to the Munda are spoken by tribes of Negrito as well as of pre-Dravidian type. It must be admitted, however, that despite the ingenuity of this reconstruction evidence for it of any decisive character is wholly lacking, as it is based on recent anthropometrical data, whence conjectures are made for events of some four thousand years ago.*