DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27191#0044
HISTORY OF INDIAN ARCHITECTURE.
12
kings in the 4th century A.D., when their religion began to
assume that strange shape which it now still retains in India.
In its new form it is as unlike the religion of the Vedas as it is
possible to conceive one religion being to another; unlike that,
also, of the older portions of the Mahabharata; but a confused
mess of local superstitions and imported myths, covering up and
hiding the Vedantic and Buddhist doctrines, which may some-
times be detected as underlying it. Whatever it be, however, it
was invented by and for as 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 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 popula-
tion 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 form one-fifth of the
whole population of India. 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 Baluchistan 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 migra-
tions anywhere between the Indus and the Narbada, 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
1 Dr. Caldwell, the author of the I and most trustworthy advocate of this
‘ Dravidian Grammar,’ is the greatest • view.
12
kings in the 4th century A.D., when their religion began to
assume that strange shape which it now still retains in India.
In its new form it is as unlike the religion of the Vedas as it is
possible to conceive one religion being to another; unlike that,
also, of the older portions of the Mahabharata; but a confused
mess of local superstitions and imported myths, covering up and
hiding the Vedantic and Buddhist doctrines, which may some-
times be detected as underlying it. Whatever it be, however, it
was invented by and for as 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 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 popula-
tion 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 form one-fifth of the
whole population of India. 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 Baluchistan 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 migra-
tions anywhere between the Indus and the Narbada, 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
1 Dr. Caldwell, the author of the I and most trustworthy advocate of this
‘ Dravidian Grammar,’ is the greatest • view.