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A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c9: Chapter IV. The Dawn of History: Aryanization

A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c9

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English

Chapter IV. The Dawn of History: Aryanization

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Evidence—Āryāvarta—Vindhya and Pāriyātra—Vidarbha—Growing knowledge of the South in North Indian literature—Pāṇini—Kātyāyana—Kautilya—Greek accounts—Baudhāyana—Aśokan edicts.

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Agastya legends and their significance—Paraśurāma and the west coast—nature of aryanization—evidence of language—later reactions and theories—routes from north to south—contact with lands in the west—and in the east.

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HISTORY begins in the South of India as in the North with the advent of the Aryans. The progress of the aryanization of the South is reflected in literature and legend. Until about 600 B.C., works composed in the North exhibit little knowledge of India south of the Vindhyas, but acquaintance increased with the progress of the centuries. Legends centering round the name of Agastya found in the epics and the Purāṇas appear in their own quaint way to preserve the memory of this vast and important cultural movement. Another clearly later cycle of legends has Paraśurāma for hero and seeks particularly to account for the peculiarities of the Kerala country and its institutions.

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The Vindhya range was the recognized southern limit of the Aryan land. Manu states distinctly that the country between the Himalayas and the Vindhyas and between the eastern and western oceans comprised Āryāvarta, the abode of the Aryas. ‘The name Pāriyātra’, says Bhandarkar, ‘was given to the more northern and western portion of the (Vindhya) range from which the rivers Chambal and Betva take their rise, probably because it was situated on the boundary of their yātrā or range of communication.’ A comparatively late hymn of the Rig-Veda mentions that one expelled from the Aryan fold betook himself to the South and turned his feet in that direction (dakshiṇāpada). The Aitareya Brāhmaṇa mentions the kingdom of Vidarbha (Berar) and its king Bhima. The same Brāhmaṇa and the Śānkhāyana Śrautasūtra state that the sage Viśvāmitra condemned his fifty sons who were jealous of Sunahśepha Devarāta to live on the borders of Āryāvarta, and that their descendants were the Dasyus, like the Andhras, Pundras, Śabaras, Pulindas and Mūtibas. Clearly, in the period of these books, while the aryanization of Northern India had become complete, little progress had been made beyond the Vindhyas; only one settled Aryan kingdom was known, Vidarbha, and the rest of the South was dominated by pre-Aryan inhabitants. Possibly some of the more enterprising Aryans ventured into their midst, married their women and raised families of mixed descent who were looked down upon by the ‘purer’ Aryans of the north, as may be inferred from the story of the sons of Viśvāmitra. It is difficult to fix any definite date for this stage of affairs, but round about 1000 B.C. may well be suggested.

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The next stage is marked by the mention of Cherapādāh, the Cheras, in the Aitareya Āranyaka, as one of the three peoples who transgressed certain ancient injunctions; but the text is obscure and its meaning is by no means clearly settled. However, if we accepted it as a reference to the Cheras, it would be proof that the customs and habits of Malabar began very early to diverge from those of the rest of the South. But of this we have no other early evidence.

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The grammarian Pānini, who may be taken to have lived more or less about 600 B.C., mentions only Kalinga in the east and knows nothing south of the Narmada on the west except the country of Aśmaka, near the headwaters of the Godāvari. The Sutta Nipāta of the Buddhist canon records that a teacher Bāvari left Kosala and settled in a village on the Godāvari in the Assaka country in Dakshināpatha. His pupils are said to have gone north to meet the Buddha and their route lay through Patitthāna (Paithan) in the Mulaka country, Māhishmati (Māndhāta) on the Narmada, and Ujjain. Bāvari is said to have been learned in the Vedas and performed Vedic sacrifices. Probably we have in him the type of many a teacher who took part in the task of colonizing and aryanizing the southern lands by a process of slow and peaceful permeation. The descriptions of āśramas, abodes of ascetics situated in the Dandaka forest, which are found in the Rāmāyana of Vālmiki confirm the impression derived from the story of the teacher Bāvari.

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Kātyāyana, the grammarian of the fourth century B.C., who was probably a southerner and who supplemented the aphorisms of Pānini to bring his grammatical system up to date, makes mention of the countries of the extreme South, Pāndya, Chola and Kerala. These countries were well known to Kautilya and the Aśokan edicts, which last mention Ceylon also under the name Tambapanni. Kautilya speaks of the pearls and muslins of the Pāndyan country. The name of the Pāndyan capital Madhurā recalls Mathurā of the North, and Greek accounts, as we have seen, narrate the story of Herakles (in the context, Krishna) setting his daughter Pandaia to rule over the kingdom bordering on the southern sea. Other Mathurās are known in Ceylon and near Java, and they suggest the continuity of the movement from North India to the South, and farther across the seas. Baudhāyana, one of the earliest lawgivers, notices in his Dharmasūtra five customs as peculiar to the people of the Deccan, viz. dining with one who is not initiated (anupeta), dining with women, eating food kept overnight, marrying the daughter of one's maternal uncle, and marrying the daughter of one's paternal aunt. We know that the last two customs mentioned here, cross-cousin marriages, are practised conspicuously to this day in South India among all classes of the people. And Baudhāyana's notice must really belong to a very early period; for he also states that travel by sea to other lands was permissible only to North Indians—a statement which ceased to be true at least at the dawn of the Christian era if not earlier.

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Thus it is evident that starting somewhere about 1000 B.C. the movement of the Aryans into the South proceeded more or less steadily and peacefully, and had reached its completion some time before the establishment of the Mauryan empire which included in its fold all India except the extreme South. The fact that the edicts of Aśoka were engraved in places as far south as Mysore and Kurnool shows that there must have been present in these places people to whom the Brāhmi script and the Prākrit idiom were nothing strange; also that Aśoka had political and diplomatic relations with the southern countries that lay outside his empire.

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Even the slightest consideration shows that it is this large movement of the aryanization and civilization of the South that provides the historical basis for the Agastya legends which figure prominently in the epics and the Purānas as well as in Tamil literature. In the Rig Veda there occurs a brief reference to his miraculous birth from a pitcher (kumbha), but otherwise he is a real historical person who composes hymns, has a wife and sister and perhaps also a son; and he is applauded for combining domesticity with a life of austerity. In the *Mahābhārata* the story is more fully developed, and Agastya's connexion with the South comes into prominence. His marriage with Lopāmudrā, a princess of Vidarbha, is mentioned together with her demand that, before claiming the exercise of his marital rights, he should provide her with costly jewellery and all the luxuries she was used to in her father's house, without in any manner impairing his asceticism. The only way in which Agastya could meet his wife's wish was by seeking a large gift of wealth. He approached three Aryan kings one after another, but in vain, so they all went to Ilvala, the *daitya* king of Manimati. Ilvala, however, was no friend of the Brahmins, because one of them had refused to grant him a son equal to Indra. His vengeance took a queer form. He used to transform his younger brother Vātāpi ‘into a ram and offer his flesh to Brahmins as food, and then to recall him to life (whomsoever Ilvala summoned with his voice would come back even from the abode of Yama), and Vātāpi, ripping the flanks of the Brahmins, would come out laughing’. The two brothers thus killed many Brahmins and, on the occasion of the visit of Agastya and the three kings, Ilvala wanted to play the same game. ‘He prepared the flesh of Vātāpi in order to entertain them, at which the kings became sad, but Agastya ate it all, and when Ilvala summoned Vātāpi there came only air out of Agastya's stomach, Vātāpi having already been digested. Then Ilvala, becoming sad, promised to give him wealth, if Agastya could tell him what he intended to give.’ Agastya was able to give the right answer and he and the kings returned with the wealth they needed. Vātāpi, as is well known, is the name of the fortified city in the western Deccan which was the capital of the early Chālukyas; it is now called Bādāmi. And if, as seems probable, the abode of the two *daitya* kings is to be sought in this region, this story may be taken to mark the beginning of Agastya's connexion with the South.

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The *Mahābhārata* also records the story of Agastya drinking up the waters of the ocean to enable the Devas to dispose of their enemies who had taken refuge under the sea, and of his journey to the South on some unspecified business—when he prevailed upon the Vindhyas to stop growing until he returned, which, however, he never did. In later Tamil tradition, Agastya's southerly march is accounted for by the interesting legend that on the occasion of Śiva's marriage with Pārvatī, Agastya had to be sent to the South to redress the balance of the earth which had been rudely disturbed by the assemblage of all the gods and sages in the North.

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The pact with the Vindhya mountains and the drinking of the waters of the ocean have been generally accepted as allegorical representations of the spread of Aryan culture first to India south of the Vindhyas, and then across the seas to the islands of the archipelago and to Indo-China—an interpretation not only intrinsically quite plausible, but supported by other facts relating to Agastya and his abode.

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In the *Rāmāyaṇa*, as they are on their way to Agastya's *āśrama*, Rāma tells his brother Lakshmana how Agastya, intent upon the good of the world, overpowered a deadly demon and thereby rendered the earth habitable. He goes on to narrate the story of the death of Vātāpi in a form which differs from that of the *Mahābhārata* in some ways, though the deviations are of no significance. What deserves particular notice is the idea that the Dandakāranya was first made fit for human (Aryan) occupation by the success of Agastya against the *asuras*. Agastya's conflict with the *asuras* and *rākshasas* is also hinted at elsewhere in the *Rāmāyaṇa*. The sage Viśvāmitra, for instance, explains to Rāma the reason for Tātakā's depredations against Aryan settlers. Agastya had destroyed Tātakā's husband Sunda, and was consequently attacked by Tātakā and her son Mārica. Agastya cursed them both, turning Mārica into a *rākshasa* and his mother into an ugly ogress. From that time to the moment when Rāma did away with her, she maintained a war of revenge.

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'It is very clear,' observes a modern student of the Agastya legends, 'that the stories of Agastya were based on historical memories. Agastya is typical of the early fighters among the Aryans in the South of India. In the Deccan, he is even now one of the most famous of holy men and is considered the oldest teacher of ancient times. A later age has transformed this first apostle of Aryan culture into a *tapasvin* and a holy man. But he must have been a brave and doughty man, a hard fighter and a keen hunter, who triumphed in the midst of barbarous enemies. And the same Agastya, the famous hunter and archer, whom, like Hercules, none could approach in eating and drinking and whose inner essence is yet traceable behind the distortions of old sagas, was a holy man somewhat of the brand of Friar Tuck in *Ivanhoe*.

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The site of Agastya's *āśrama* has been located in many places from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, as well as outside India—that in the Malaya mountains, the southernmost section of the Western Ghats, being perhaps the most famous. This multiplicity of Agastya *āśramas* and *bhavanas* has been taken to imply either that he is a purely mythical figure or that a whole clan of Agastyas spread to all the places mentioned, though it is admitted that there is nothing to show when or how the clan arose. It seems better to suppose that round the one historical Agastya, the author of the Vedic hymns and husband of Lopāmudrā, who played an important role in his time in furthering the aryanization of the South, there naturally gathered in course of time a number of stories representing the further stages of the movement he started.

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One of the latest accretions to the cycle is the following story which, in some versions of the *Rāmāyaṇa*, Agastya himself narrates to Rāma. The great forest of Dandaka had become unfit for human habitation because Bhārgava had cursed it. From the foot of the Vindhyas to the far South, the land remained a howling wilderness for a thousand *yojanas*. Agastya, however, happening to go there from the white peaks of the Himalayas, caused rain to fall, restoring fertility to the soil, and making it a fit dwelling-place for several groups of Aryan sages (*rishis*).

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This narrative is not found in any early manuscript of the *Rāmāyaṇa* and is not annotated by any of the commentators. It is obviously a late and clumsy invention. Its account of Agastya's reclamation of desert land and its reference to Bhārgava's curse nevertheless seem to bring it into some relation with the following legend of Paraśurāma's creation of the Kerala country, which is also of relatively recent origin and finds no place in the genuine Purāṇas.

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Paraśurāma slew his mother Reṇukā at the command of his father Jamadagni, and had to expiate this sin by undertaking to exterminate the Kshatriyas, enemies of the Brahmins. This he did in twenty-one expeditions, and then, at the instance of Viśvāmitra, gave the whole earth to the Brahmins. As he was thus left with nowhere to call his own where he could live, he sought Subrahmanya’s assistance and, by penance, obtained from Varuna, the god of the seas, some land to dwell on. Its extent was to be determined by a throw of his paraśu (axe). He threw it from Kanyākumārī to Gokarnam, which became the chief place in the land won from the sea, the land of Paraśurāma. To people this land, he imported Brahmins from abroad, settling them in sixty-four grāmas, and making laws and institutions for them and for other settlers who came at the same time. It may be noted that Kannada inscriptions of the early twelfth century A.D. outline the Paraśurāma story in relation to the creation of Konkan, the coastal strip to the north of Kerala.

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A rough idea of the process and results of the aryanization of the South may be formed by a study of the linguistic map of India as it is today, always remembering that difference in language is by no means indicative of difference in race, but only in culture. The languages of Northern India and Mahārāshtra in the Deccan are clearly dialects of Sanskrit, or some idiom closely akin to it, formed in the process of its being spoken by different classes of people whose original language it was not. Sounds and words unknown to Sanskrit are found in considerable numbers in these popular dialects, and they are doubtless derived from the original languages of the pre-Aryan inhabitants which, in general, were killed by the speech of the more masterful incoming culture. But while this was the course of events in Northern India and the western Deccan, it was quite different on the eastern coast and farther south. Here too the Aryans penetrated in sufficient numbers to communicate their own civilization to the local inhabitants; but they ‘were not able to incorporate them thoroughly into their own society and to root out their languages and their peculiar civilization’. The bulk of the population in these parts retained their own speech and customs, and both were enriched and refined by contact with the northern culture. On the other hand, the incoming Aryans had to learn the language of the people of the South in addition to cultivating their own Sanskrit idiom, to accept local customs and incorporate them as part of the new composite social order they evolved, and to find more or less suitable places in their elastic pantheon for the many godlings and goddesses cherished by the pre-Aryan peoples. We shall never know the exact details of the process; but a study of early Tamil literature, the oldest evidence from the southern side to which we have access, produces the definite impression that the new influences were everywhere welcomed and embraced with alacrity, and that the changes were effected peacefully and in an orderly manner. This impression may be due to Tamil literature being relatively late in its development, and by no means contemporary with the first Aryan impact on the South—the product, perhaps, of an age of peace and harmony that followed a period of initial struggles. But the little we know of the history of Indo-Aryan civilization in the eastern colonies renders such a supposition alike unnecessary and improbable. Nevertheless, the *Rāmāyaṇa* lays stress on the hostility of the *rākṣasas* to the sacrificial religion of the Aryan sages, on their repeated incursions into halls of sacrifice where they created much confusion and disorder, and on the great need that existed for Rāma to curb the excesses of these inimical folk in order to secure the safety and peace of the *āśramas*. If this part of the story has any historical basis (it is indeed very doubtful if it has), it would provide some evidence of initial opposition to the incoming culture on the part of the older inhabitants of the land.

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Tradition makes Agastya the father of Tamil, the author of the first grammar of that language, and the royal chaplain (*kulaguru*) of the divine line of Pāṇḍyan rulers, the descendants of Śiva and Pārvatī who condescended to become the first king and queen of this celebrated line.

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There is no clear and specific reference to Agastya, the sage, much less to his exploits, in any of the early Tamil works now known—the anthologies of the *Saṅgam* Age; once indeed the phrase ‘Sage of Podiyil’ (Podiyil being the southernmost section of the Western Ghats, the Bettigo of Ptolemy) is applied to the star Canopus—an indication that the legends relating to Agastya were not unknown in the Tamil land at the time. His miraculous birth and his relation to Vasiṣṭha were known to the author of the poem *Maṇimekalai*. The same work also says that Agastya was a friend of the Chola king Kānta at whose request he released the Kāveri from his water pot, that Agastya's abode was in the Malaya mountains, and that he advised another legendary Chola monarch—he who overthrew the hanging castle (tūngeyil)—to institute at Puhār an annual festival in honour of Indra. Another story narrated by Naccinārkkiniyar (c. A.D. 1400), a commentator of the Middle Ages, on the authority of a more ancient writer, is that Rāvana who tyrannized over the extreme South was persuaded by Agastya when the latter came to Podiya hill to leave that land alone and betake himself to Lankā.

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References to Agastya's work on Tamil grammar make their appearance rather late. The first occurs in the amazing legend of the three Śangams narrated in the Iraiyanār Agapporuḷ Urai, a work of the eighth or ninth century A.D. Here Agastya is counted as a member of the first and second Śangams which lasted for 4,440 years and 3,700 years respectively. His work Agattiyam is said to have been the grammar (nūl) for the first Śangam, while that work together with the Tolkāppiyam and three other works formed the nūl for the second Śangam.

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Whether Agastya wrote a treatise on Tamil grammar, and if so in what relation that work stood to the Tolkāppiyam, the oldest extant work on the subject, has been discussed by all the great annotators of the Tamil country. Pērāśiriyar (c. A.D. 1300) says that in his day some scholars held that Tolkāppiyan, the author of the grammar named after him, composed his work on principles other than those of the Agattiyam, following in this other grammars no longer extant. He refutes this theory by an appeal to tradition and authority, the Iraiyanār Agapporuḷ Urai being the chief. He maintains, with support from more ancient writings, that Agastya was the founder of the Tamil language and grammar, that Tolkāppiyan was the most celebrated of the twelve pupils of the great sage, that the Agattiyam was the original grammar, that Tolkāppiyan must be held to have followed its teachings in his new work, and that Agastya's work must have been composed before the Tamil country was confined, by an inundation of the sea, to the limits indicated by Panambāranār in his preface to the Tolkāppiyam—i.e. from Vengadam hill to Cape Comorin. The opposite party that denied Tolkāppiyan's indebtedness to Agastya did not give up its position. The general belief that Tolkāppiyan was a disciple of Agastya was too strong for them to deny, so they postulated hostility between teacher and pupil arising out of Agastya's jealousy and hot temper. Naccinārkkiniyar records the story that after his migration to the South, Agastya sent his pupil Triṇadhūmāgni (Tolkāppiyan) to fetch his wife Lopāmudrā from the North. Agastya prescribed that a certain distance should be maintained between the pupil and the lady during their journey, but when the rising of the Vaigai threatened to drown Lopāmudrā, Tolkāppiyan approached too close in holding out to her a bamboo pole with the aid of which she reached the shore in safety. Agastya cursed them for violating his instructions saying that they would never enter heaven; to which Tolkāppiyan replied with a similar curse on his master. This silly legend represents the last phase of a controversy, longstanding, significant, and by no means near its end even in our own time.

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The affirmation and denial of Agastya's fathership of Tamil and of his work being the source of the Tolkāppiyam are both symbolic of an attitude to the incoming northern Sanskritic influences. As a matter of fact there is no mention of Agastya either in the Tolkāppiyam or in the preface to it by Panambāraṇār. The earliest reference to the Agattiyam occurs only in the eighth or ninth century A.D., as we have seen, and that is also the time when the Pāndyan charters begin to proclaim the preceptorship of Agastya to the Pāndyas, the patrons of Tamil literature and the Śangam, and the first genuine Tamil power to achieve political expansion and establish an empire in the full light of history. Almost all the stories meant to support Agastya's connexion with Tamil and Tolkāppiyan must have been elaborated in subsequent ages; but the attempt to give Agastya the dominant position in the evolution of Tamil culture evoked a challenge. Things went on smoothly so long as Aryan influence, the influence of the ‘Northern’ speech and culture, was content to penetrate the Tamil land quietly and by imperceptible stages, and effect a silent transformation of the native elements. This process began very early and was accepted by the Tamils to an extent that has rendered it all but impossible to differentiate the elements that have gone to make up the composite culture. But when a theory was put forward, that is when a legend was invented to show that Tamil as a spoken language and with it the entire culture of the Tamil country was derived from a Vedic seer, this was met, naturally, by a counter-assertion and the elaboration of legends in the opposite sense. And then, as with some even now, legends were arguments.

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The aryanization of the South was doubtless a slow process spread over several centuries. Beginning probably about 1000 B.C., it had reached its completion before the time of Kātyāyana, the grammarian of the fourth century B.C., who mentions the names of the Tamil countries of the extreme South. What were the routes followed by the colonists who moved into the South? Arguing *a priori*, some scholars have held that the hills and forests of the Vindhya and the Satpura ranges and the Narmada river formed an effective barrier to movement towards the South, and that consequently the chief line of communication must have lain along the eastern coast. But the Aryan expansion started from the north-west and proceeded towards the east and south. The eastern parts of North India came under Aryan influences at a relatively late period, and even then were not as completely aryanized as the western half. Though Kalinga is indeed mentioned by Pāṇini, it still appears extremely unlikely that the main route of Aryan advance to the South lay along the east coast. The evidence of the Brāhmaṇas, of the *Rāmāyaṇa* and of the Buddhist canon indicates clearly that the barrier of the Vindhyas was negotiated at convenient points and that the chief routes lay right across them, the Narmada and the Satpuras. Vidarbha is one of the earliest kingdoms to be mentioned and no one has sought to locate any place connected with Rāma's exile anywhere to the east of Nagpur, while many would locate them all in the western Deccan, Nasik and its neighbourhood having the best claims. The route taken by the pupils of Bāvari from Aśmaka to Magadha must have been the reverse of the usual Aryan route to the South, which must have passed through the Avanti country to Māndhāta on the Narmada, whence it crossed the river and mountains into the South. The Mulaka country with Paithan as its principal city must have been among the earliest colonies after Vidarbha, and then Aśmaka might have followed. The route farther South cannot be traced with any certainty. It has been suggested that the name of one section of South Indian Brahmins, Brihaccarana, 'the great migration', preserves the memory of a great movement towards the South; and if this view is correct, the fact that a section of this group, the Maḷanādu, is further subdivided into the Kandra-Mānikkam, Māngudi and Satya-mangalam—all names of villages along the Western Ghats—may be taken to indicate that the immigrants hugged the line of the adjacent highlands and peopled the skirts of Mysore and the Coimbatore and Madura districts before they spread elsewhere. But all this is too speculative, and there is no direct evidence worth the name. Other routes than across the Vindhyas might have been followed; there is, for example, the sea-route from the mouths of the Indus to Gujarat and the north Bombay coast; or, at a relatively later date, the eastern route by Kalinga. Ceylon, perhaps, was aryanized by immigrants who followed the sea-route from North India, as evidenced by their language, Sinhalese, which is Indo-Aryan.

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During the long period of seven or eight centuries when South India was being progressively aryanized and a new culture was being evolved, the ancient maritime contacts of the country with the lands to the west and east were still maintained, the tangible evidence of which, literary and archaeological, deserves the following brief notice.

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The queen of Sheba visited Solomon at Jerusalem ‘with a very great train, with camels that bare spices, and very much gold, and precious stones’. Again, the navy of Hiram ‘that brought gold from Ophir, brought in from Ophir great plenty of almug trees, and precious stones’. King Solomon made ‘a great throne of ivory, and overlaid it with the best gold’. Lastly, ‘the king had at sea a navy of Tharshish with the navy of Hiram: once in three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks’. Hiram was the Phoenician king of Tyre and Solomon’s alliance with him was an essential element in the prosperity of Jerusalem in his time. Hiram used Solomon’s kingdom as a high road to the Red Sea where he built shipping which greatly promoted trade and led to an accumulation of great wealth in Jerusalem. Ophir may well be the Ābhira country, and its twin Tharshish may also be sought there. The peacocks and sandalwood (almug) Solomon obtained are both South Indian in name as well as in origin. Though silver was not an Indian product some of the ivory might have been, especially as the Hebrew, Egyptian and Greek names for the elephant are derived ultimately from the Sanskrit ibha. Ebony was another Indian article conveyed to Palestine in this period by the merchants of Dedan on the south shore of the Persian Gulf. The Assyrian and Babylonian empires traded with India by sea from their ports on the Persian Gulf and continued to receive gold, spices and fragrant woods from India. It has been pointed out rightly that ‘rice, peacocks, sandalwood, every unknown article which we find imported by sea into Babylon before the fifth century B.C., brought with it a Dravidian, not a Sanskrit, designation’. In the seventh century B.C. traders from the west introduced into southern China a system of inscribed coinage based on a Babylonian standard, and a sea-trade between Babylon and China necessarily includes India. A beam of Indian cedar found in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar (604—562 B.C.), the teak logs found in the temple of the Moon-god at Ur at levels belonging to about the same age or a little later, and the Bāveru Jātaka which relates the adventures of certain Indian merchants who took the first peacock by sea to Babylon, all confirm the existence of active maritime intercourse between South India and its western neighbours. In the seventh and sixth centuries B.C., Babylon was at the height of its splendour, the greatest commercial mart of the world; men of many nations, frequented its bazaars, and we may well assume that among them were merchants from South India. When Babylon fell, the trade passed into the hands of the Arab merchants of Mouza, Aden and Kane. The author of the Periplus says that the voyage to India was made along the shore and in small ships until Hippalus discovered the monsoon; but the normal trade route from the Persian Gulf to India can never have lain along the inhospitable shores of Gedrosia, and ‘the exploring expeditions despatched by Darius in 512 B.C. from the mouth of the Indus, and nearly two centuries later by Alexander the Great, show the difficulties and dangers of the route, the time it occupied, and the ignorance of the pilots’. The knowledge of the monsoons must have been very common among the sailors of India, Arabia and Persia from early times, and the mariners who reached China in the seventh century B.C. could not have feared sailing on the open seas. Hippalus' discovery (c. A.D. 45), if it was a fact, must have been of value to the Roman and Greek traders of his time.

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In Chinese historical sources occur references to maritime traders bringing typical Indian products to China as far back as the seventh century B.C. Generally regarded with incredulity, these accounts receive striking confirmation by the discovery in the Philippines of a number of Iron-Age finds bearing close resemblance to objects found in South India of about the same age—the first millennium B.C. These comprise iron implements and weapons such as knives, axes, daggers and spear-points; glass beads and bangles, both green and blue; and finally beads of semi-precious stones such as agate, cornelian, amethyst, and rock-crystal. In the earlier Iron-Age strata only green glass, whose colour is due to iron, occurs; in the later, a blue glass, whose colour is due to copper, also occurs. Both the iron and glass objects are similar to and in some cases identical with the prehistoric glass and iron finds in the South of India. These occur in the dolmen tombs and in burials which are found by the hundreds of thousands, and which almost certainly antedate the historic Chera, Chola and Pāndyan kingdom, whose history goes back to the beginning of the Christian era or before. As finds of similar glass beads and bangles have recently been made in the Malay Peninsula, in dolmen tombs in Java, and in North Borneo, the inference is inescapable that we have clear evidence of a trade contact between the northern Philippines and Southern India running well back into the first millennium B.C. The extensive trade and colonization and later conquests of the South Indian kingdoms, in Sumatra and Java as well as in Indo-China in the early centuries of the Christian era, are of course well known. The new material, however, seems to make it clear that this was far from being the beginning of such contacts, but rather the last stages in an associaion reaching as far as the northern Philippines, which had begun many centuries before.

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D. R. BHANDARKAR: *Lectures on the Ancient History of India from 650 to 325 B.C.* (Calcutta, 1919) R. G. BHANDARKAR: *Early History of the Dekkan* (Bombay, 1895) R. B. DIXON: 'Recent Archaeological Discoveries in the Philippines' (*Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society*, Vol. 69, 1930) P. T. SRINIVASA IYENGAR: *History of the Tamils*, (Madras, 1929) J. KENNEDY: 'The Early Commerce of Babylon with India' (*JRAS*, 1898) W. LOGAN: *Malabar*, Vol. I (Madras, 1887) W. H. SCHOFF (ed.): *The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea* (New York, 1912)

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