The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c11.s4.16

v1.c11.s4.16

The difficulty of decision as pre-Aryan or to foreign influences in any concrete case are admirably illustrated by the controversy as to the development of the Upaniṣad philosophy which has variously been claimed as the finest expression of the true Aryan spirit, and as fundamentally non-Aryan and in essence Dravidian.³ The controversy cannot be decided by any form of argument, for the simple reason that we have no external evidence of the true Aryan spirit, on the one hand, nor of the Dravidian prior to the date of the early Upaniṣads. Similarly we do not and cannot know definitely whether the use of idols was gradually introduced into Indian religion by borrowing from the Dravidians, or whether the ideas of asceticism, of caste, of transmigration came from them, or in what degree, for instance, Rudra was a Dravidian god. On these subjects speculation is possible, but it is necessary to recognize that beyond speculation in the great majority of cases we cannot possibly proceed, and the same remark applies to most of the efforts to trace Babylonian influences on Indian religion.