Notes on the Relation Between Dravidians And Indus Valley

It has been suggested that the proto-Dravidians were associated with the inhabitants of the Indus Valley in chalcolithic times.

This suggestion is put forward because in the Indus Valley the excavations have yielded relics which include a number of seals bearing writings in an as yet undeciphered script imagined to yield a proto-Tamil affinity. Scholars have tried to read the script.

The attempt was supported by certain pictures also found on the seals. The result has been dubious. Some have said, particularly archaeologists and linguists from the USSR and Finland that the writings reveal a language clearly proto-Dravidian in character. This was done with the help of computers which determined the frequencies in which different symbols occurred.

Other scholars have questioned this conclusion and procedure on the ground that the results yielded by computers will be characterised by the bias controlling the matter fed into them. This is no doubt true. Other scholars have gone to another extreme to declare that the Indus Valley language was connected with the Indo- Aryan. Fr. Heras who was a pioneer in the formulation of the Dravidian theory also adopted the system of arbitrary assignment of meanings to symbols; and there was no other way left.

Assuming for a moment that proto-Dravidian was the language of the ancient residents of Mohenjo-Daro one naturally proceeds to see if the archaeological relics there suggest proto-Dravidian culture in any manner. The occurrence of Pasupathi equated by Marshall with proto-Siva is a strong pointer to a link between the two cultures for it is correctly assumed that Siva and the worship of that deity in the phallic form had pre-Aryan beginnings.

The bath which is generally supposed to have a religious significance reminds one of the temple tanks so common in South India. The symbol of the fish and the representation of the bull also are suggestive of Pandyan origins and Saivite religion. But all these are not clearly borne out by the evidence.

A certain temptation to associate the Mohenjo-Daro culture with the ancient incoming Dravidians is whetted by the occurrence of Brahui in the western neigbourhood of the Indus Valley. This could mean that the theory of Dravidian migration to South India by land along the West Coast gets somewhat strengthened. In the present state of our knowledge it would be safe merely to say that this theory is plausible.

We might in conclusion state that the view put forward by Haimendorf that the Dravidian speakers came to South India by land as well as by sea from West Asia accounts for practically all the known data on the subject. But there should be one reservation; i.e., Haimendorf’s view that the migration occurred about 500 BC does not allow sufficient time for the development of early Tamil literature and polity.

We come across a well ordered socio-political system important enough to find mention in the edicts of Asoka; the earliest stratum of the Tamil Sangam literature which it would be proper to assign to the second or first century BC is so well formed and refined that the period of preparation for such perfection should have been many more centuries than Haimendorf’s theory would permit.

The above discussion has sought to establish, on the basis of archaeology, anthropology, linguistics and cultural comparisons, the conclusion that the Dravidian- speaking people of South India migrated in pre-Aryan times from cis-Caucasian regions to South India.