The Dynastic History of Northern India (Early Mediaeval Period) v1.c10.1

v1.c10.1

Nowhere is the comparison of history with a stream that rises in the dark and mysterious heights of the past and flows into eternity more apt than in the case of Indian history. Very few countries in the world "can boast of an ancient civilization, so continuous and unbroken as in India." But while this is true, it is also unfortunately a fact that its source and earlier courses are shrouded in a mystery which is darker than in the case of most countries. We do not even know who were the most ancient peoples in India. The theory that the Dravidians were the autochthons of India is gradually being given up in favour of the Pre-Dravidians. The Mundas of North-Eastern India are supposed to be typical representatives of this physical type, which is preserved on small isolated areas in India and Burma. Their language, which is closely allied to the Austric group of speech, is found scattered over a wide area, extending from the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean to the Punjab. So far there is no inherent improbability in the supposition that a branch of this great race of the human family inhabited India at least before the Dravidians. As to these latter nobody can definitely say whence they originally came or what their features originally were. The difficulty of an attempt to generalise a physical type from the appearance of the modern speakers of the Dravidian languages, is exemplified in the case of the Brahuis in Baluchistan, who are totally different in appearance from their supposed cousins in the south of India. If the Brahui type was altered by the admixture of Iranian blood, what guarantee is there that the Dravidian tribes who filtered into the Indian peninsula were not also fundamentally altered by contact with the Pre-Dravidians? The presence of Dravidian speech in Baluchistan, near one of the gates of India, in the north-west, and "the undoubted similarity of the Sumerian and Dravidian ethnic types," have given rise to rival theories. While Rapson contends that they came into India through Baluchistan, Hall thought that they went to Western Asia from India. The recent excavations at Harappa (Montgomery district, Punjab) and Mohen-jo Daro (Larkana district, Sind) may have important bearings on the question. Scholars have found a similarity between this Indian civilization and the Sumerian culture of the 4th millennium B.C. In the present state of our knowledge, it would be perhaps risky to base any conclusions on the data revealed by the explorers' spade; but it is significant that so far no arms or weapons of any kind have been discovered at Harappa and Mohen-jo Daro. To all appearance therefore they were colonies of a people devoted mainly to the arts of peace. If this is conceded, it rather goes against their identification with the *Dāsas* against whose citadels and weapons the Āryans so often invoked the aid of Indra. The identification of the *Dāsas* with the Dravidians, again, though frequently assumed, is difficult to prove. Beyond the fact that they had flat noses (*anās* = noseless?) and are described as 'of hostile speech' (*mṛdhra-vāc*), of black skin (*tvacam kṛṣṇām*; *kṛṣṇā*) and possibly as phallus-worshippers (*śiśna-devāḥ*), we know very little about the physical appearance of these enemies of the Āryans. It may be pointed out that some of the epithets mentioned above may still be applied without distinction to many of the tribes who now speak Dravidian or the Austric languages. It is not unlikely therefore that the word *Dāsa* was a term which was used in general to denote the non-Āryan tribes who opposed the Vedic Indians. In that case, the term may not have had in the Vedic period any definite ethnic sense to designate a compact racial group.