The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c7.29

c7.29

Although it is still as true as it was when the first edition of this book was published, that an exact chronological narrative of the purely political history of the Tamil kingdoms of Southern India previous to A. D. 800 cannot be written at present, and it is possible that such a history cannot be written at any time, I must not be understood to mean that the early history of the South is either wholly inaccessible or devoid of interest. On the contrary, I believe that, if we can be content to dispense with precise chronology, materials exist for the reconstruction in no small measure of the history of Dravidian institutions, and that a history of that kind, when worked out by scholars adequately skilled in the languages, literatures, and customs of the Dravidian peoples, will be of essential service to the historian of India as a whole, and will enable the student of the development of Indian civilization to see his subject in true perspective.