A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c8.39

c8.39

It must be admitted that much of this evidence on which the old approach to the Dravidian problem was based is vague and circumstantial, and furnishes no reliable chronological framework. Not so the recent and very plausible attempt of Fuerer-Haimendorf to equate the Dravidian-speakers with the iron-using Megalithic folk who came to South India from the west by sea, perhaps leaving colonies along the coast in the course of their migration—which may account for the Megaliths near Karachi and Brahui in Baluchistan. He thinks that an immigration of Dravidian speakers about 500 B.C. would allow sufficient time for the development of the early Tamil Literature of the Śangam; but this may well be doubted and the mention of four well-ordered Tamil Kingdoms in the Aśoka inscriptions may also indicate the need for postulating an earlier date. This view suggests that the Dravidian civilization of South India is much younger than has been supposed, and that the Aryan occupation of the North and the Dravidian occupation of the South were more or less contemporary. Haimendorf writes: ‘It is in Mahārāshtra that the megalithic iron-age civilization must have clashed with the southward movements of the first Aryan people to invade the Deccan’; this suggestion gains some support from the Agastya legends centering round Vātāpi (Bādāmi) as will be seen in the next chapter. But the whole question needs further study and it is too early yet to decide if the postulate of Haimendorf should be accepted as it is or should be modified suitably to take into account the other racial and cultural data briefly reviewed above.