A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c9.25

c9.25

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.