origin : as in Greece, the conquered civilized the conquerors. The Aryan Indian owed his civilization and his degeneration to the Dravidians, as the Aryan Greek did to the Mycenaeans."¹⁴ Dr. Heimann also acknowledges that once the period of invasion was over "the Aryas consolidated their own imported culture with that of the Dravidians who had preceded them, and together with whom they had to live within the comparatively isolated Indian continent. It may have been the Dravidians who, as already closely adapted to the force majeure of India's climatic conditions, assumed the lead in this composite Aryan-Dravidian culture."¹⁵ Similarly Profs. Seiber and Mueller remark: "Much of the original culture content of the earlier inhabitants prevail to this day, because no strong Aryan state ever encompassed the whole territory of the Indian peninsula."¹⁶ That is the reason why Mr Donald A. Mackenzie says: "As the 'miracle of Greece' no longer obtains in consequence of the revelations of the archaeologists in Greece and elsewhere in the Near East, so there is in India no longer an 'Aryan miracle'.¹⁷ The fact that the Aryan tribes which invaded India were not very numerous may have contributed to this strange phenomenon. "When the Indo-Aryans had conquered and colonized the basin of the Indus and its tributaries and that of the Ganges as far as Banaras, the Asuras surrounded them on all sides. They were certainly in possession of Magadha or South Bihar and modern Rājputānā at the time of the tribal war between the Pāṇḍavas and the Kurus. These Asuras were great builders, and their building operations were regarded with awe and reverence by the Aryans. In Vedic literature mention is made of the castles of the Dāsas built of stone. Cities belonging to the Asuras are called Pātala, Sanbha, Prāgjyotiṣṣa, Hiraṇyapura and Takṣasila. In the eastern countries Girivraja, the capital of the Asura chief Jarāsandha, and its defences excited the admiration of the Pāṇḍava chief Bhīma. When Yudhiṣṭhira, the eldest of the Pāṇḍavas, performed the Rājasuya ceremony, the Asura architect Maya was called to design and build the buildings required for the sacrifice" ¹⁸

The Brāhmaṇas seem to give the reason of this superiority of the Dravidians over the Aryas in point of civilization, which of course is a product of the intellectual activity of a nation. In the Brāhmaṇas it is said that dark-skinned Brāhmaṇs are cleverer than white-skinned ones.¹⁹ These dark-skinned Brāhmans cannot be Brāhmaṇs by

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¹⁴Hall, The Ancient History of the Near East, p. 174, note 3.

¹⁵ Heimann, op. cit., pp. 21-22.

¹⁶Sieber-Mueller, The Social Life of Primitive Man, p. 406.

¹⁷In the Foreword to Banerji, Prehistoric, Ancient and Hindu India, p. VII.

¹⁸Banerji, op. cit., p. 20.

¹⁹Referred to by Chatterfi, Indo-Aryan and Hindi, p. 7.