A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c8.37

c8.37

Dravidian language and culture hark back to the highlands of Anatolia, Armenia and Iran, the area of characterization of the Armenoid type. The script of the Indus valley seals has not yet been satisfactorily deciphered, and this casts a shadow of doubt over all the problems of pre-Aryan Indian culture. Yet there are not wanting many indications that point to some connexion between the great culture-complex that spread from the Mediterranean to the Indus valley in the third and second millennia B.C. and the prehistoric culture of South India. The name Trimmlai by which the Lycians of Asia Minor called themselves in their inscriptions is a very close approach to Dramila (Tamil). Caldwell indicated a connexion between Susian and Dravidian as regards structure. A large number of ancient place-names in Afghanistan, the highlands of Iran, the plains of the Euphrates and the Tigris, and Mesopotamia generally, have been shown to conform to Dravidian forms, and the non-Semitic, non-Aryan prehistoric peoples of this region have been held to have been Dravidian-speaking. The Hurrian and Kassite languages possess a clearly demonstrable affinity with Dravidian. One writer has connected Elamite and Brahui. The conclusion seems unavoidable that there is some genetic connexion between all these languages. Western Asia being the home of Elamite, it seems not unlikely that the Dravidian or rather proto-Dravidian language and its speakers also reached India from this part of the world.