The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c41.s7.39

v2.c41.s7.39

This evidence, unfortunately, hardly carries us any farther towards ascertaining the amount of pre-Dravidian influence on Vedic civilization, and it must be added that much of it seems of very dubious value. The evidence that Tiliṅga was an early form is negligible; Ptolemy has already Triliṅga before him and he localizes the place in Arakan. Utkala may be Uḍra, but obviously, if we can operate with such names, we can establish anything we like; similarly with Kāmarūpa and Tāmralipti. The attempt to deduce from Yāska³ that he classed the Bhojas, of whom the Kambojas were a branch, as different from the Āryas appears hardly justifiable, *bhoja* in the passage cited having probably the sense ‘enjoying’, and not an ethnic significance, and the one thing certain about that people is that they were reckoned by Yāska as using a language closely akin to that of the Āryas. Clearly a very necessary proof of the thesis is still lacking, plausible etymologies from Austric languages, and these are clearly by no means easy to find, for Lévi rejects the one suggested, *prima facie* with plausibility, for Kaliṅga. If it were true that *tābuva* was taboo, it would seem natural to expect that even the modern languages which are our chief means of investigating Austric language construction should show in other words similar conservatism of form. But in point of form nothing very satisfactory can be made out of the comparisons already, very ingeniously, made by Przyluski.⁴ The conditions under which the investigation has to be conducted perhaps fatally preclude the adduction of really convincing cases, at any rate where Vedic words are concerned. We may readily believe in pre-Dravidian language and religion or even political organization as affecting the same phenomena among the Vedic peoples, but we still lack strict proof.