The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s1.53

v2.c40.s1.53

Inevitably the question arises, how far in this period thought was affected by the growing intermixture of the people with the aborigines or earlier inhabitants, Dravidians or others. It has frequently been suggested that the philosophy of the Upaniṣads is essentially Dravidian rather than Aryan, and plausible grounds can be adduced in this sense.¹ Thus, we may be fairly certain that, as time went on, Dravidian blood came more and more to prevail over Aryan, though in candour we should admit that the evidence on this head is purely speculative in the absence of any real knowledge of the Aryan physical type which entered India. In the second place the changes in language may be due to Dravidian influence;² here again the evidence is scanty enough, in the absence of independent evidence of the Dravidian languages for the period of the Brāhmaṇas and Upaniṣads, and the difficulty of tracing to them any definite influence on the language; the use of cerebral or domal letters, and forms like the second future (*kartāsmi*) or perfect participle used verbally (*kṛtavān*), or the development of constructions with the indeclinable gerund, may have been encouraged by tendencies among the Dravidians; but this cannot be definitely established. That Rudra-Çiva is mainly aboriginal is rather a guess based on the belief that the name denotes ‘red’ than an ascertained fact, and we have no assurance on the strength of which we could claim that the use of trance and asceticism or caste were Dravidian elements appropriated by the Aryans. The pantheism of the Upaniṣads may be deemed to be a philosophical development from the animistic views which Jainism and in a sense Buddhism presents, and which may be contrasted with the anthropomorphic nature gods of the Aryans, and a contrast may be drawn between Iranian religion and Indian,³ suggesting that the former presents us a picture of the practical Aryan mind as opposed to the more mystic Indian intelligence. These contentions, we may admit, do not lead to any assured results in the sense of establishing the Dravidian⁴ claim. What they indicate is the unquestionable fact that the Upaniṣads, as in some degree all earlier thought in India, represent the outcome of the reflections of a people whose blood was mixed. We may, if we desire, call the Upaniṣads the product of Aryo-Dravidian thought; but, if we do so, we must remember that the effect of the intermixture must be regarded in the light of chemical fusion, in which both elements are transformed.