penance and knowledge of the Veda, according to the classification of Patañjali.20 They were non-Aryan Brāhmaṇs, considered to be abler than the Aryan ones. That was finally the reason why Dravidian civilization exercised such a great influence upon the whole Aryan nation from the very beginning of their stay in India. "The Vedic religion," says Sir Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, "absorbed, embodied and preserved the types and rituals of other cults. Instead of destroying them, it adapted them to its own requirements. It took so much from the social life of the Dravidians and other native inhabitants of India that it is very difficult to disentangle the original Aryan elements from the others."21 This may explain the great difference between the high philosophical conception of the first and tenth maṇḍala of the Rgveda (Vāk, Hiraṇyagarbha, Puruṣa, Creation, etc.), which are now acknowledged as the last compiled maṇḍalas, and the primitive materialistic conceptions prevalent in the others, though some foreign influence is already discovered even in the latter. Dravidian influence on the later philosophico-religious books is now easily acknowledged by all independent scholars. Says Dawson : "This search for the Absolute found its earliest and most complete expression in India, where it developed not as might have been expected, from the comparatively advanced ethical ideas connected with the worship of Varuṇa, but from the more primitive type of religion which is represented by the ritual magic of the Brāhmaṇas and which perhaps owes its origin to the native tradition of the conquered Dravidian culture."22 "To the orthodox Aryans," says Prof. Brown, "the doctrines of the Upaniṣads are the New Thought of their time; the kings and sages at the courts, where these doctrines are newly preached, hear them with wonder and amazement. Yet the doctrines are, in spite of their newness, apparently the result of a long period of elaboration, and new only to the Aryan court. One may venture the opinion, that these doctrines represent the highest phase of the ancient religion and philosophy of the Dravidians, interpreted by the Aryans who strove to be faithful to their hereditary cult, but who at best could produce only a syncretism in which the essentially non-Aryan predominated."23 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 20 Patañjali, Mahābhāṣya on Paṇini, V, 1, 115. 21Radhakrishnan, Eastern Religions and Western Thought, p. 308. Dravidian influence in Vedic civilization is likewise readily admitted by Mons. Silvain Lévi (Journal Asiatique, CCIII. pp. 1-15) and Dr. Berriedale Keith (The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanisads, I, p. 269). 22 Dawson, Progress and Religion, p. 127. 23 Brown, "The Sources of Indian Philosophical Ideas", in Studies in Honor of Maurice Bloomfield, pp. 82-83. Cf. Heras, "The origin of Indian Philosophy and Asceticism", in Karmarkar-Kalandani, Mystic Teachings of the Haridāsas of Karnātak, pp. XXXVII-XL, |