The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c41.s7.21

v2.c41.s7.21

Nothing more substantial is adduced by Mr. G. W. Brown in his examination of the sources of Indian philosophy.⁵ He claims that animism is Dravidian, and that in it Jainism and Buddhism show closer adherence to Dravidian ideas, rejecting the new Aryan gods. The Aryans must have learned in India to worship new trees like the peepal and banyan, the peafowl, the serpent, the monkey, various species of grass, and sacred places innumerable, from their predecessors, to whom also is due the doctrine of transmigration with its corollary of release. But here again we have nothing of substantial importance; we have no right to hold that animistic or animatistic ideas were un-Aryan; Roman religion for instance is permeated by them, and Greek has relics of them.¹ Transmigration again is recorded as a Druid belief,² and was adopted in Greece, apparently from Thrace, and independently of India. The more concrete suggestion that the terms Sāṁkhya and Yoga, and even Upaniṣad are really derived from Dravidian names is clearly illegitimate in the absence of any difficulty of explaining satisfactorily the terms as Aryan contributions. For asceticism and caste as Dravidian no proof is even attempted.³