DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9541#0033
INTRODUCTION.
11
mixed a population as probably were ever gathered together into one
country—a people whose feelings and superstitions it only too truly
represents.
DRAVIDIANS.
Although, therefore, as was hinted above, there might be no great
difficulty in recovering all the main incidents and leading features of
the history of the Aryans, from their first entry into India till they
were entirely absorbed into the mass of the population some time
before the Christian Era, there could be no greater mistake than to
suppose that their history would fully represent the ancient history
of the country. The Dravidians are a people who, in historical times,
seem to have been probably as numerous as the pure Aryans, and at
the present day fonn one-fifth of the whole population of India. As
Turanians, which they seem certainly to be, they belong, it is true,
to a lower intellectual status than the Aryans, but they have preserved
their nationality pure and unmixed, and, such as they were at the
dawn of history, so they seem to be now.
Their settlement in India extends to such remote pre-historic
times, that we cannot feel even sure that we should regard them as
immigrants, or, at least, as either conquerors or colonists on a large
scale, but rather as aboriginal in the sense in which that term is
usually understood. Generally it is assumed that they entered India
across the Lower Indus, leaving the cognate Brahui in Belocbistan as
a mark of the road by which they came, and, as the affinities of their
language seem to be with the Ugrians and northern Turanian tongues,
this view seems probable.1 But they have certainly left no trace of
their migrations anywhere between the Indus and the Nerbudda, and
all the facts of their history, so far as they are known, would seem to
lead to an opposite conclusion. The hypothesis that would represent
what we know of their history most correctly would place their original
seat in the extreme south, somewhere probably not far from Madura or
Tanjore, and thence spreading fan-like towards the north, till they
met the Aryans on the Vindhya Mountains. The question, again, is
not of much importance for our present purposes, as they do not
seem to have reached that degree of civilisation at any period anterior
to the Christian Era which would enable them to practise any of the
arts of civilised life with success, so as to bring them within the scope
of a work devoted to the history of art.
It may be that at some future period, when we know more of the
ancient arts of these Dravidians than we now do, and have become
familiar with the remains of the Accadians or early Turanian in-
1 Dr. Caldwell, the author of the ' Dravidian Grammar,' is the greatest and
most trustworthy advocate of this view.
11
mixed a population as probably were ever gathered together into one
country—a people whose feelings and superstitions it only too truly
represents.
DRAVIDIANS.
Although, therefore, as was hinted above, there might be no great
difficulty in recovering all the main incidents and leading features of
the history of the Aryans, from their first entry into India till they
were entirely absorbed into the mass of the population some time
before the Christian Era, there could be no greater mistake than to
suppose that their history would fully represent the ancient history
of the country. The Dravidians are a people who, in historical times,
seem to have been probably as numerous as the pure Aryans, and at
the present day fonn one-fifth of the whole population of India. As
Turanians, which they seem certainly to be, they belong, it is true,
to a lower intellectual status than the Aryans, but they have preserved
their nationality pure and unmixed, and, such as they were at the
dawn of history, so they seem to be now.
Their settlement in India extends to such remote pre-historic
times, that we cannot feel even sure that we should regard them as
immigrants, or, at least, as either conquerors or colonists on a large
scale, but rather as aboriginal in the sense in which that term is
usually understood. Generally it is assumed that they entered India
across the Lower Indus, leaving the cognate Brahui in Belocbistan as
a mark of the road by which they came, and, as the affinities of their
language seem to be with the Ugrians and northern Turanian tongues,
this view seems probable.1 But they have certainly left no trace of
their migrations anywhere between the Indus and the Nerbudda, and
all the facts of their history, so far as they are known, would seem to
lead to an opposite conclusion. The hypothesis that would represent
what we know of their history most correctly would place their original
seat in the extreme south, somewhere probably not far from Madura or
Tanjore, and thence spreading fan-like towards the north, till they
met the Aryans on the Vindhya Mountains. The question, again, is
not of much importance for our present purposes, as they do not
seem to have reached that degree of civilisation at any period anterior
to the Christian Era which would enable them to practise any of the
arts of civilised life with success, so as to bring them within the scope
of a work devoted to the history of art.
It may be that at some future period, when we know more of the
ancient arts of these Dravidians than we now do, and have become
familiar with the remains of the Accadians or early Turanian in-
1 Dr. Caldwell, the author of the ' Dravidian Grammar,' is the greatest and
most trustworthy advocate of this view.