A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c9.19

c9.19

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.