Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c9.49

c9.49

In this outline of the megalithic problem I have said nothing about its linguistic aspects. I am not a linguist, nor, in any case, is the evidence adequate to support anything more than speculation. Von Fürer-Haimendorf has boldly recognized the megalith-builders as primary speakers of Dravidian languages;¹⁰⁷ and it is certain that, within measurable range of the earliest Dravidian records, there is no rival and commensurate cultural phenomenon. It may indeed be averred categorically that the megalith-builders were also Dravidian speakers. But this affirmation does not carry us far in a search for the 'origins' of the Dravidian tongue, unless in one respect. The map of the Dravidian languages, with their north-western outlier (Brahui), bears an alluring likeness to that of the megalithic cists with their little-known but sufficiently definite north-western groups. Did both in fact come in from the north-west? There is at present no new answer to this question.