Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s12.26

c12.s12.26

In the Deccan and South India, except possibly in the Western Deccan right down to the early course of Godāvari where Aryan settlements were taking place, the non-Aryan languages were reigning supreme. Vidarbha or Varad(h)ā-taṭa (present day Varhāḍ or Berar), and Aśmaka on the Godā-vari, were Aryan states in the Deccan prior to 400 B.C. The *Aitareya Brāhmaṇa*, anterior to Buddha, mentions the Andhras, the Śavaras, the Pulindas and the Mutibas as *dasyu* or non-Aryan (probably Dravidian) tribes in the Deccan (of these the Śavaras, probably also the Pulindas were Kol tribes), and North Indian Aryans before the Buddha do not seem to have known much about the Southern Dravidian states. Sindh, from the evidence of the *Baudhāyana Dharma-sūtra*, was, like Bengal, still outside the Aryan pale during the closing centuries before the Christian era; Sindh was probably still Dravidian, a language allied to Brahui being current in it : and the Greeks say that a tribe named Arabitai lived in south Sindh. But there cannot be any doubt that throughout the whole of southern and eastern Deccan and South India, the ancestors of the Telugus, the Kannaḍas and the Tamil-Malayalis were flourishing as independent states with their distinctive South Indian or Dravidian culture which is best represented in the ancient Tamil literature ascribed to the centuries immediately after Christ. But unfortunately no authentic specimen of a Dravidian language is available before the early centuries of the Christian era.