A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c6.21

c6.21

But this cannot yet be done, and it is doubtful if it will ever be possible to undertake such a revolutionary, though undoubtedly logical, treatment of the subject. This is due to no reluctance on the part of historians to recognize the influence of pre-Aryan elements on the formation and growth of Indian culture, but to a very real difficulty which was recognized by Professor Sundaram Pillai himself. For after affirming that India south of the Vindhyas was India proper, where the bulk of the people still continue distinctly to retain their pre-Aryan features, their pre-Aryan languages and their pre-Aryan social institutions, he took care to add: 'Even here, the process of aryanization has gone indeed too far to leave it easy for the historian to distinguish the native warp from the foreign woof. But if there is anywhere any chance of such successful disentanglement, it is in the South; and the farther south we go the larger does the chance grow.' The difficulty of distinguishing the Aryan from pre-Aryan elements in Indian culture has continued to baffle the skill of modern scholarship to this day, and forced attempts to discover 'Dravidian' elements has sometimes led to curious results like the attempt to derive the name Hanumān from āṇ maṇḍi—an impossible contradiction in terms unknown to Tamil—or to connect the Sanskrit word pūjā (worship) with the Tamil words pū (flower) and śey (do), on the one hand, or pūśu (smear, with unguents or the blood of sacrificed animals), on the other. The Indus valley excavations have raised more problems than they have solved, and until the writing on the numerous seals has been satisfactorily deciphered, it will not be easy to decide the relation of this culture to that of the Indo-Aryans or of the 'Dravidians' so called. Some attempt will be made in the third chapter to give a brief tentative account of the earliest inhabitants of the land and of their culture, as far as the evidence of prehistoric archæology and of probable survivals in later times at present enables us to do so; but it must be recognized clearly that the systematic study of the prehistory of South India has just begun, and that our main approach to the historical growth of South Indian culture must for the present still continue to be made from the North.