The State in Ancient India: A Study in the Structure and Practical Working of Political Institutions in North India in Ancient Times c5.28

c5.28

Such were the principal determining factors in the development and working of political institutions in ancient India. They were common to the North, the Deccan and the South and to all, except, perhaps, the most ancient, periods of the early history of India, though their actual force would necessarily vary from time to time and place to place. The history of India as a whole has generally been viewed from the North. But several years ago, a noted Southern scholar, the late Sundaram Pillai, laid down that "the attempt to find the basic element of Hindu civilisation by a study of Sanskrit and the history of Sanskrit in Upper India is to begin the problem at its worst and most complicated point. India, south of the Vindhyas—the Peninsular India—still continues to be India proper. Here the bulk of the people continue distinctly to retain their pre-Aryan features, their pre-Aryan languages, their pre-Aryan social institutions. Even here, the process of Aryanisation has gone indeed too far to leave it easy to the historian to distinguish the native warp from the foreign woof. But, if there is anywhere any chance of such successful disentanglement, it is in the south: and the farther south we go, the larger does the chance grow.