of other nations of the west were soon found out by other authors. "It seems," says Dr. Suniti Kumar Chatterji, "that there were Chaldaean (Sumerian as well as Semitic) and Western Asiatic, and possibly also Aegean elements in the oldest stratum of Indian Aryo-Dravidian Culture. These Western elements might have been pre-Aryan, having been already present in Proto-Dravidian, before the advent of the Aryas into India.⁴⁴ Not long after, even ethnological affinities between the Dravidians and the Mediterraneans were also pointed out. "The race or races," says Prof. Ojha, "seem to have spread from the Mediterranean coasts, along the sea coast and river deltas right up to the Indian coasts and plains and even perhaps onwards." ⁴⁵ At about the same time Fr. Alio, O.P., qualifies the Dravidians as "a race which shows many somatic relations with the Mediterraneans, their pigmentation having turned black, only owing to the climate or to their mixing with the aboriginal peoples of the country.⁴⁶ It was consequently supposed that the so-called Dravidians of South India were the same Mediterraneans of the heliolithic culture of South Europe, settled in India and here mixed with the pre-Dravidian population.⁴⁷

Further studies in the comparative history of early cultures have shown the possibility of a migration in the opposite direction, viz., that the Dravidians did not travel from South Europe to India,⁴⁸ but from India to South Europe. Their seafaring activities for purposes of trade, from very ancient times add probability to this possibility. "Long before our era," acknowledges Mons. Courtillier, "the Dravidians enjoyed a culture of their own, and their commercial relations with the West, Mesopotamia and Egypt, which had begun in very early days, continued down to the disruption of the last forces of the Roman Empire." ⁴⁹

It was therefore not strange that scholars finally realised and definitely acknowledged the immediate first-rate role that India has played in spreading civilization through the South European nations of the ancient world. "It has been established beyond a possibility of doubt," says Prof. Frankfort, "that India played a part in that early complex culture which shaped the civilized world before the

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

⁴⁴ Chatterji, The Origin and Development of the Bengali Language, I, p. 27.

⁴⁵Ojha, "The Indra-Vṛtra War and the 'Serpent People'", J.B.O.R.S., XXVIII, p. 63.

⁴⁶ Allo, "Religions de I'Inde" in Brilliant Sedoncelle, Apologétique, p. 897.

⁴⁷ Cf. Slater, The Dravidian Element in Indian Culture, pp.35-41; Keith, The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads, II. p. 630. Keith nevertheless does not agree with this view.

⁴⁸ Cf. Banerji, op. cit., p. 13.

⁴⁹ Courtillier, Les anciennes civilizations de Il” Inde, pp. 111-112.