Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s12.28

c12.s12.28

Although both Dravidian and Kol influenced the evolution of the Aryan language in the North—this influencing was at its height during the second half of the first millennium B.C. during the Nanda-Maurya period—and although culturally and politically highly advanced Dravidian states were flourishing in South India, states which had relations with Aśoka Maurya, it is curious and almost inexplicable why any of the Dravidian speeches did not manifest a literary life during the period under review. The finished character of the old Tamil *poruḷ* or *artha* i.e. matter of poetry, and of old Tamil literary ideas and ideals (dividing, for instance, poetic subjects into two categories of *aham* and *puram*, roughly corresponding to love and war, subjective and objective), took some centuries to develop, and it can be reasonably expected that during the Nanda and Maurya periods, the cultivated South Indian languages, particularly old Tamil and old Kannaḍa were essaying their first footsteps in the direction of sophisticated or advanced poetic composition, as opposed to purely popular poetry about love and war which we find orally among all peoples in the earlier stages of their history.