Outline For Research

Aum An Outline for Research in Pre-History of India S.N.Mahalingam Superintending Engineer TN PWD(Retd) Preamble: The Aryan and Dravidian enigma is still remains unresolved as we go through the recent papers in the various seminars. The point is still we rely on the spade work done by the European masters on this subject which was based on the Sanskrit scriptures and archaeological data. He various results obtained is due to the different interpretations of the scriptures and archaeological data. The author of this article got interested in this subject from his school days and read many works and from the knowledge thus obtained and his mulling over this subject for decades (Is it intuitive contemplation?),and the recent study of some historical, religious and philosophical works urged him to put everything on paper. As he has not taken any notes from his studies in the earlier days he could not furnish them. However some references have been given. Prevedic period: The Aryans, a nomadic tribe, hunters and shepherds appears to have started their journey in search of greener pastures for their cattle. They stayed for brief periods in places and due to population pressure a portion of them moved to newer places. As they were nomadic tribes they did not build any structures for living and contented to live in the habitat provided by the nature for which they were habituated. Perhaps due to this they despised any buildings and destroyed them as the aryans will not live in them. Likewise they killed all humans who will not be useful to them, as they have to share the resources with them. This went on for hundreds of years and the invasions happened in wave like patterns. So the historians stated that 'the waves of Aryan hordes' invaded the India or successive floods of invasions etc. They appear to have passed through Mesopotamia, Persia and Afghanistan and reached India. In those earlier periods Afghanistan, Gandhara, was also considered as a part of India and perhaps due to this now it is included in the SAARC. The invasion by waves of Aryans caused destruction to a very large scale such that nothing that can be called as heritage of that conquered country remained and only the Aryan culture prevailed. During their invasion of Mesopotamia, they have to encounter ordinary folks as well as artisans and men of learning and men well versed in arts. Here they developed some respect for learning and perhaps learnt how to read the stars and also learnt about fabulous India advanced in arts and culture. They picked up some of their culture and probably taken with them the men of learning with their manuscripts along with them. Probably the Aryans and the learned men accompanying them when they were in Persia composed the initial portions of Rig-Veda eulogizing the Vedic gods which are similar to the gods of Persia during that period. The authors might be both Aryans and the Mesopotamians traveling with them and Persians.

Vedic Period and later: The same scenario was enacted in Afghanistan and Punjab during their invasion. On entering Punjab they were amazed at the buildings of various types and the luxurious living conditions of the locals. As usual they chose to kill every person men, women and children whoever is not useful to them and destroyed all the buildings due to their aversion, but spared learned men and their manuscripts. They destroyed temples also as they despised saivisim of the natives and the phallic symbol of Siva. If the Somnath temple has existed during that period they would have destroyed it. Probably in Kasi or Varanasi the natives would have guarded their saivaite temples if they had existed during their period of invasion. During the periods of peace the some of the Aryans spent time to discuss with the descendants of learned men picked up in Mesopotamia Persia Afghanistan and India about the contents of the manuscripts and as they were in different languages decided to translate them into their language. As their language Vedic was ill-equipped for that, all the learned men of these cultured made a language suitable for translating the colleted manuscripts into the new language samskrit,the perfect language. So the ancient Sanskrit literature, including the later verses of Rig-Veda as well as the Vedas down could be the adaptations of the works of Mesopotamia, Persia and Indian. They adapted the literature to suit their culture, perhaps a hybrid culture, at this period. Perhaps they may be original Vedic literature composed during that period by both the Aryan and non-Aryan scholars. The name of the rishis ending with Maharshi may be taken as belonging non-aryans. The scholars were puzzled why the ancient written manuscripts are not available to corroborate the archaeological findings or the establishment of facts about the people who inhabited these regions? The answer that this author can give is in the form of another question. What we will do after reading a news paper? We collect the news paper till the end of the month and sell to the street hawker who purchases the old newspaper. They did the same thing with the manuscripts in other languages after translating into Sanskrit. They burnt them a day prior to winter solstice. This indicates the involvement of non-aryans, say, Dravidians also in the composition of Vedic literature and also destruction of the source literature in different languages. That is why neither the built up structures nor manuscripts of those distant periods were not found. In this I connection I recall that V.Ganapathi Stapathi who constructed Thiruvalluvar statue at KumariMunai has stated in a Vãstu seminar a decade back that Sanskrit is a South Indian Language. Probably that is why still Sanskrit is spoken in a village by name Mathur near Shimoga of Karnataka. He has also stated that a person came to him professing that he has memorized an ancient text the language of it is unknown to him. So the Stapathi arranged to record that with the support of the then Tamilnadu government. It needs further research. Still some manuscripts may be available in the old Jain and Saiva mutts and guarded as sacred relics and were denied access to them even for inspection or copying of them. Some may be available with ancient families living under remote places, The impetus for writing is a passage in the French book by Madeleine

Biardeau : L'Hindouisme : Anthropologie d'une Civilisation, Flammarion.1995.,which roughly translated as "in 1986 on Tamil(scholar) wrote a letter stating that 'what the people without knowing, now say as Aryan culture and civilization is Dravidian or Tamil, culture and civilization. The Dravidians had presented to the Aryans a culture and Civilization ready made for their adoption. This needs the presence of Dravidians or Tamils in the northern sub-continent of India. Another French source stated that the area on the right side of Himalayas when looking east is called Dakshina Desha (Thennadu). The people born in that land are hindus. Jean Varenne : L'Hindouisme Des Textes Sacrés :Encyclopédie des Mystiques - vol iii: Ed.Marie-madeleine Davy ; Petite Bibliothéque Payot. Dakshina Desha is nothing but Then-Nadu. Manickavasagar in one of his hymns has stated 'thennadudaiya sivaney ennattirkum Iraiva Pottri' Here according to this author what he meant by Thennadu is the area located on the south of Himalayas as saivism is stated to have been the religion followed by the people in India during prehistoric times. Again, the verse 'vadavenkatam then kumari aayidai tamil kurum nallulagam' was read by the author somewhere. An interpretation suggested is that the poet meant by Vadavenkatam, Himalayas and not Tiruppathy Hills. And by the kumari he meant only Kumari Nadu and not cape-camorin. For it would have been suffice to state, "Venkatam KumariAayidai Tamilkurum Nallulagam' if he meant only Tamil Nadu. One more additional interpretation of the statement which the author read perhaps in Iraiyanaar Agapporulurai, 'Muthal Sangam at Mathurai and the second Sangam at Kapaadapuram were taken over by Kadal'. This can be interpreted as taken over by the wavelike Aryan invaders, will place the first Sangam at Mathura( i ) and the second Sangam at Pada(li)pu(tra)m. May be padaliputra is a corrupted version of Kapadapuram. May be it is near Cuddalore as revealed recently the existence of a locality called as Padaliputra. The author is of the opinion the first two sangams existed and only mis-reported in the Tamil passages. The place of fist sangam probably at Mathura and the second sangam either at Pataliputra or Patna or the new Pataliputra at Cuddalore. It is to be noted that the fist sangam was presided by siva who has burnt tripuram which may be located in present Tripura a northeast Indian state. The archaeologists have to look for Tripuram to corroborate the theory that Siva was the president of the first sangam. If the assumption that the presence of Dravidians or Tamils in northern India holds water then a large portion of Sanskrit literature including Vedas, Upanishads etc. are the adapted versions of Tamil or Dravidian scriptures. For example Aintiram of Tamil is available as Aintira Vyakarna. Mayan is said to be the author of these two works. He is also said to be the author of several Sanskrit works. He is said to be a non-aryan. Further during the invasion of Aryans and later Muslims a large number of telugu and kannada speaking families of artisans like weavers, goldsmiths, silversmiths, coppersmiths, carpenters, silphis and etc., also fled north India. They are found everywhere scattered throughout India.

Some families are found in Tamilnadu also. There is one artisan weaver caste devangars who speak Telugu as well as Kannada. Several Telugu speaking families with family name santhri, who are weavers by profession, live in Salem district. But it is found one town by name santhri exists even now in Haryana. May be they would have fled the country either during the Aryan or Muslim invasion of India. The author has read somewhere that devangam a fabric woven by these people finds a mention in the Sangam literature which proves their presence in Tamilnadu during that period. Many families even family speaks Telugu a Dravidian language and by appearance are also Dravidians. They continue to speak Telugu even they are among the Tamil speaking population for more than two thousand years. Further till about fifty years ago they were using handlooms made of wood without nail in their manufacture which dates them to Bronze Age. The author used the internet to find the distribution of persons having the family name as santhri and its variants santri, santrie, shantri, shantrie, chantrie, chantri and the search has shown thousands of entries showing the names of persons having santhri or its variant as family name. There are hundreds of family names pertaining to the different telugu and kannada speaking groups. Browsing through the internet and analyzing the entries may throw more light on the prehistory of India or the world. The presence of Brahui, (a dialect of Tamil) speaking people, in Baluchistan is an additional information to show the presence of Dravidians in north India. It is interesting to note that in spite of residing in Tamilnadu, the Telugu speaking weaver community did not switch over to Tamil. In addition the present Brahui speaking people are said to be certainly not Dravidians. Then one has to imagine far how long they would have lived among Tamil speaking people to adopt tamil as their mother tongue and they continue to speak till now. Again there is an interesting anecdote. The author during one of his professional visits in Algeria, met an engineer who belonged to a tribal family called Kabili. They speak the language Kabili and they live in isolated pockets of Algeria among the Arabic speaking Arabs. They still maintain their culture and language which is said to be different from the Arab culture. The engineer said that a minister of Algeria who belonged to his tribe has stated in a meeting that during the minister's visit to India he went to a village where the inhabitants spoke a language similar to Kabili. It is for the scholars of relevant disciplines to investigate this. Strangely enough the family name of that engineer is Kadi one of family names of telugu speaking weavers in Tamilnadu. During the author's stay of the Algeria he has found an Arab family having its family name as Benagala. Is it not interesting to note that there is a prominent family having a family name as Benegal. Investigating the family names of different countries and India may result in very interesting similarities. Again, a place rich in oil resources in the heart of Sahara is named after Varkala of Kerala. The name Mithala appears as Metlili in another place in Sahara. This is also another area for research.

The author appeals for further research in this regard based on the above lines or innovative thinking to further the knowledge about our heritage and its contribution to the world culture. To seek the truth one should constrain himself with any pre-notions and be prepared to examine all the data or information that he encounters. The cooperation of the authorities of the different siva and jain mutts to be solicited for permitting access to the manuscripts hoarded by them. The author is indebted to Alliance Française of Madras, ICHR Regional Centre at Bangalore, Mythic Society ,Bangalore for permitting him to utilize their facilities. Some References : Alain Danielou ;Histoire de L'Inde, Editions du Fayard. Arjunan Pillai.M : Ancient Indian History, Ashish Publishing House, New Delhi Chandrika G.: The Impact iridology on Early History of Tamilnadu, Tamilnadu History Congress, Mayiladuthurai, 2005 Gandhimadi K.: Pataliputra of Asncient Tamillagam, Tamilnadu History Congress, Mayiladuthurai, 2005 Jean Varenne : L'Hindouisme Des Textes Sacrés :Encyclopédie des Mystiques - vol iii : Ed.Marie-madeleine Davy ; Petite Bibliothéque Payot. Ganapathi Stapati.V :Vastu Vedic ResearchFoundation, Thiruvalluvar Nagar, Thiruvanmiyur, Chennai - 600041. Kosambi. DD: The Culture and Civilisation of Ancient India. Majumdar. R.C.: Ancient India, Motilal Banarsidas, Varanasi. Ramanathan P.: Sangam Literature in its Historic Setting - Certain Aspects from a Contemporary Perspective. Tamilnadu History Congress, Mayiladuthurai, 2005 Ram Sahara Sharma, Advent of Aryans in India Sharma R.S :Looking for the Aryans, Orient Longmans