The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c8.57

v1.c8.57

It has been assumed that the Dravidians may be reckoned as the aboriginal population encountered by the Aryan invaders, and, though this cannot strictly be proved, it is rendered extremely probable by the existence of a people of Dravidian speech, the Brāhūis, in Baluchistan, whether we regard them in origin—now they are greatly mixed and un-Dravidian in type—as an advanced guard of a Dravidian movement from India, or as the remnant of an older population, left behind on the Dravidian advance from Western or Central Asia into India.¹ It is, however, possible that the aborigines met by the Aryans included members of the pre-Dravidians who are still found as jungle tribes, and who are by some authorities² brought into relation with the Veddahs of Ceylon and the Sakai and Semang of the Malay Peninsula; the term 'noseless' applied to their opponents by some Aryan invaders at least is held to accord better with the appearance of pre-Dravidian than with that of Dravidian tribes. The argument is not decisive, but there is no reason to doubt that both pre-Dravidians and Dravidians may have been encountered by the Aryans. Whether Muṇḍā-speaking tribes were among their enemies it is idle to enquire, for we know even less of Muṇḍā movements than of Dravidian; their physical appearance is now very much that of Dravidians, though their language proves to have affinity with the Mon-Khmer languages of Assam and Burma as well as with other forms of Austric speech scattered over the Pacific.