Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c3.3.2

c3.3.2

D'Alwis assures us) known of the legend in Ceylon. Again, the localization of the events of the Mahābhārata is endless; every few miles in S. India one can find the place where some battle or other event occurred, and so it is also in Java. Such legends, therefore, are absolutely worthless, for they prove no more than that the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa are or were favourite stories over a large part of the East. But the traditional practice in respect of study in relation to India, but there is much besides to be studied. The history of Indian civilization does not cease (as some appear to think) with the early period of Buddhism. About the early centuries of the Christian era, we find the Buddhist-Brahmanical civilization extending from its home in the North over alien races inhabiting the peninsula of India, and in the course of some few centuries it had already extended over Burmah, the Malay Islands, and even to the forests and swamps of Cambodia. But this immense progress was not a mere reception of stereotyped forms and opinions by uncivilized peoples; it was on the contrary (and herein lies the interest of the subject) a gradual adaptation¹ to circumstances, including the creation of national literatures in many languages, which were then first reduced to writing and system. In South-India, at all events, new sects rapidly arose, which have reacted powerfully on Northern India.