Brief notes on the origin of Dravidian

That the question of the origin of the Dravidians is vexed, complicated and resistant of solution is a view held by most responsible scholars. But no one today thinks that there is no answer to this question or that the answer is not indicated by fairly clear evidence.

Much of the complication introduced into a discussion of this problem is caused by the induction of non-academic considerations and social sentiments of various kinds which unfortunately occasionally tend to become political also.

One view is that the Dravidian speakers have been natives of India and that they never migrated into this area from outside. This is the same as the other and equally familiar historical proposition that the Indo- Aryans were natives of North India and that a search for a homeland for them outside India would be futile. These two propositions have now assumed more or less the same magnitude of importance and irritation. Since these questions are argued with a certain amount of passion it is necessary to tread carefully on this ground.

It is well known that chronology of world events and evolution of language which can be studied scientifically have clearly pointed to the inevitable conclusion of an external homeland to the Aryans; it is similarly clear that the Dravidian speaking people came into South India either overseas or overland keeping close to the western coastline or both ways from the Middle East especially the area comprising modern Turkey, Caucasia, Western Iran, Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia and brought not only the Dravidian language with them but a large number of socio-cultural traits which are very similar in both places.

In regard to the language itself the plains of Mesopotamia and the highlands of Iran were the main original sources of Dravidian speech. It is well known that Brahui is Dravidian and some linguists have connected Elamite with Dravidian. The Kassite language bears unmistakable affinity with Dravidian.

In this context one must agree with Nilakanta Sastri who says: ‘the conclusion seems unavoidable that there is some genetic connexion between all these languages. Western Asia being the home of Elamite, it seems not unlikely that the Dravidian or rather proto- Dravidian language and its speakers also reached India from this part of the world’.

Apart from the anthropological and linguistic factors which connect the Dravidian- speaking South Indians with a West Asian homeland, there are other and equally compelling reasons which necessitate the acceptance of an eastern meditarranean origin for the Dravidian speakers of South India.

It has been suggested that the Lycians of West Asia were known in their ancient inscriptions as the Trimmlai; this word is suggestively similar to Tamil and more so to its other form Dramila. The Susian and Dravidian linguistic structures have been treated as similar by Caldwell. One of the characteristics of Elamite social life has matrilineal inheritance of property.

Though it is reasonable to suppose that in Kerala matrilineal succession to property had its beginning in early middle ages, a certain matrilineal tendency of sorts has always been detected in Satavahana and other traditions. It cannot be claimed that the tradition was equally strong in South India as a whole but it is possible that this cultural trait was enfeebled in the course of its passage to South India.

The Nagas who at one time were a dominant group of people with the serpent as their totem worshipped that reptile and bore its name; it is known that some tribes around Persepolis were snake worshippers. Even now and even among the non-Nagas, not excluding the Aryan emigrants worship of the snake is respectable religion. In regard to religion the connation becomes closer.

In the city of Ur (it has yielded remarkable antiquities to the archaeologists and which is the same as the Tamil word Ur meaning a place of habitation) there was mother-Goddess worship and surprisingly she was called the Lady of the Mountain straightaway reminding us of Parvathi (Daughter of the Lord of the Mountains). Further, the worship of the Moon-God was another feature of religion in Ur. There of course the Goddess of the Mountain was married to the Moon-God. Here the Lady of the Mountain was married to Lord Siva who wore the crescent on his head.

The crescent itself was supreme God in South India. The progenitor of the Pandyan dynasty which was probably the oldest among South Indian dynasties was the Moon-God Himself. The Sumerians made all their calculations on the basis of the lunar cycle. Hence it is that units and multiples of thirty became important in mathematics and six becomes a sacred number.

The affinity between Murugan, the favourite God of the Tamils and the Moon-God of Ur becomes amazingly close. The sacredness of number six for Murugan and the fact that He is deemed the offspring on the one hand of the Lady of the Mountain and of the God who wore that crescent, and on the other of the Pleiades a constellation of stars of which six alone are visible. The Indian equivalent of that constellation namely the Krithika group bore Murugan.

The availability of certain articles in the Adichchanallur finds bearing close affinity to the mythological paraphernalia of Murugan confirms this relationship between South Indian Dravidians and Middle Eastern proto-historic religion.

Apart from these, it may be noted that the Ziggurat of the Sumerians was a prototype of the temple tower in South India which though in its completed form is a medieval manifestation has its unmistakable beginnings earlier and the fact that Murugan is almost always enshrined at an altitude. Nilakanta Sastri connects the institution of slavery in ancient Sumerian temples with the Devadasi system in the Tamilian temple.

The following quotation from Leonard Wooley is quite suggestive: ‘Where the God was also the king, where Church and State were so nearly synonymous, material efficiency was only too likely to get the better of faith’. It may be noted that in Tamil the word Koil stands for both temple and palace, for Kop means God as well as king. It is well-known that temple worship was no part of the Vedic religion.