A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c6.5

c6.5

In general histories of India, the part of the country with which we are concerned figures only in a small way. Vincent Smith rightly observed: ‘Hitherto most historians of ancient India have written as if the South did not exist’, and explained this neglect of the South in two ways. ‘The historian of India,’ he said, ‘is bound by the nature of things to direct his attention primarily to the North, and is able to give only a secondary place to the story of the Deccan plateau and the far South.’ Again, ‘the northern record is far less imperfect than that of the peninsula. Very little is known definitely concerning the southern kingdoms before A.D. 600, whereas the history of Hindustan may be carried back twelve centuries earlier. The extreme deficiency of really ancient records concerning the peninsula leaves an immense gap in the history of India which cannot be filled.’ Scanty as our information is on the earliest phase of the history of the South, the situation is not so hopeless as Smith depicts it, and this will become clear as we proceed.