A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c6.43

c6.43

The later Vedic literature and the epics, though composed in the North and mainly preoccupied with that country, contain unmistakable hints of the progressive penetration of North Indian influences in the southern lands, and these constitute almost the only source of our knowledge about this important movement of culture. The earliest extant stratum of Tamil literature, that of the Śangam Age, exhibits clearly the results of this movement. It reveals to us a fairly well-developed civilization evolved out of the harmonious blending of much that was borrowed from the incoming northern culture with that already in existence. The details of this most interesting chapter of human history are here as elsewhere hidden from our view. But none can miss the significance of the facts that early Tamil literature, the earliest to which we have access, is already fully charged with words, conceptions and institutions of Sanskritic and northern origin, while it is characterized by a direct and forceful expression and an unrivalled vividness and realism all its own. The independence of the framework of the language and a good part of its vocabulary, and of many of the social institutions and conventions reflected in this literature, is also very clearly seen. Legends bearing on this blend of cultures are preserved both in the northern and southern literatures; though legend is not history, the historian can never afford altogether to neglect the memory of races which often takes these fascinating if enigmatic shapes.