The authorities of the International School of Dravidian Linguistics, Trivandrum were kind enough to offer me a Senior Fellowship for the Year 1980-81 during which period the problem. Genesis and Growth of Dravidian was worked out-This is, infact, an introductory volume of the project "Genesis and Growth of the Kannada Language". Since I was thinking over this problem for the last three decades, I had to delve deep into it I was fully convinced that linguistic problems could best be viewed against the back-ground of history, archaeology and culture. Much research has been done in each of these disciplines in respect of the Dravidian during the past fifty years. The interdisciplinary approach, therefore, has been adopted in conducting research over this problem. The results have been embedded in the present volume.
Dravidian origin of the west is more clear now. The Ural-Altaic mountainous region is inferred to be the original home of the Dravidian where also the Aryan and Mongolian races originated and stayed for sometime to the West and the East of the Dravidians respectively. The deep seated connections between the Dravidian and Indo-Aryan (Sanskrit) go back to this period. The concept of the Scythian Family of Caldwell has been viewed with new evidences and thus rivived. Cultural Contacts of the Greater Mediterranean in general and Mesopotamia in particular are shown with ample evidences and proved that the Dravidians are racially Mediterranean. Originating in the Ural-Altaic region they learnt the art of agriculture in the zagro's region in Iran and helped building the Obadian and the Sumerian civilizations.
Further they moved Eastward through Iran and the Persian Gulf to the Punjab to build the Great Indus civilization. Dravidians who were the authors of the Indus civilization, moved from the North to the South and the East. They entered India by about 2500 B. C. and the Indus civilization had a duration of about 1000 years. The Aryans entered India by about 1500 B. C The intervention of the Aryans segregated the Dravidians in Iran, Baluchistan etc from those in the Punjab as builders of the Induscivilization. Brahui thus, remained outside India as a remnant proof of the Dravidian path towards India. The struggle between the Aryans and the Driavidians lasted for several centuries. The Dravidians had built a great civilization when the Aryans enterd India as nomads. Assimilation and synthesis were the characteristic features of the Aryans. In the "Aryawarta" the Aryans and the Dravidians co-existed for over five hundred years during which period the Aryan language, religion and culture underwent a considerable change. The Aryan way of life, their beliefs., customs etc were shaped on the basis of those of the Dravidians. The Aryans could not escape the impact of the Dravidian culture. The role of the Dravidians in building the Aryan civilization in Aryavarta cannot be underestimated. The very substratum for the great Hindu culture was provided by the Dravidians. The Aryan culture had the stamp of some powerful minds which could reflect on the continuity of the language and domination after assimilation of what is best from the rest of the races. It was not so much by defeating and subjugating that the Aryans got rid of the Dravidians and occupied India but by co-existence and assimilation. They managed to have supremacy by evolving a new socio-religious order and admitting various races into their fold. Since the Dravidian thought, way of life, Gods, beliefs, customs etc found major share in the new religion, most of them were included in their fold. Such of the Dravidians who wanted to maintain their individuality of culture fled to thick forests and hills. They are found even to-day as Dravidian tribes in Bihar, Orissa, Maharastra, Madhyapradesh, Uttar Pradesh etc.
It was a fact that during the first phase of the Aryan invasion, the Dravidians who built the Indus Civilization, were on the decline. For over a thousand years they seem to have had no occasion to fight with others. They had thus lost their martial spirit, but their spirit of adventure was supreme as exhibited in their seafaring activities, international trade, commerce and agriculture. The Aryans did destroy the city civilization of the Dravidians in the Punjab, as it was quite strange for them. Theirs was a "grama" (nomadic) civilization. The Grama was a moving clan. When two moving clans clashed, there used to be Sangrama, or a fight. In such fights Indra, the leader of the Aryans has destroyed the citadels or 'puras' which were the characteristic features of the Indus city civilization. He has been called in the Rigveda as "Purandara," the destroyer of the great citadels of the Dravidians. They accepted the Dravidian culture putting their own stamp on it. The new culture arose in Aryavarta as a result of the co-mingling of the two races-the Aryans and the Dravidians. Of course, there were other races also in India when this great struggle was going on. There were the Negritoes, Australoids and Tibetto Burmese besides the Dravidians. But the first three had not built any culture worth the name, though the Chinese had built a great culture in China.
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