continued existence of the pre-Rigvedic religions alongside of or in opposition to the orthodox Hinduism of the Brahmarshidesha. . . . His general conclusion is that the cults of Vishnu, Shiva and Sakti 'originated among a people of different ethnic origins from the mid-lantic Aryans'. The point to be emphasized here is not so much Chanda's precise conclusions as the evidence he adduces of the survival of pre-vedic religion alongside and inside the later forms of Hinduism, and of their gradual absorption and acceptance as a recognized part of it, which has perhaps since developed into the position of their forming the most important part of it.

IV. Ancient Poetry

P. T. SRTNIVASA AIYANGAR, the author of History of the Tamils from the earliest times to 600 A.D., Madras, 1929, points out certain fields in which Tamil literature and culture developed independently of Sanskritic influences. The reading is from pages 153 to 155.

TAMIL LIFE PURSUED the even tenor of its course for many centuries untouched by anything Sanskritic. Very few Sanskrit words found their way into early Tamil literature, for the old Tamil vocabulary was perfectly competent to express the concrete ideas which alone appealed to the Tamil genius. The bulk of the Tamil people lived their life in their own old ways without being affected by Ārya practices and Ārya theories of life. Hence there were two parallel currents of life in the Tamil country, that of the Tamils and that of the Southern Āryas, which did not mix their streams. The genius of the Tamils was utterly different from that of the Āryas. The Tamils accepted the seen world and were satisfied with the joys of of the living present. The ineffaceable sex-urge and the delirious joys of fighting, love of women and hatred of enemies, respectively called Agam and Puṛam, were enough subjects for their songs. The Āryas, especially of the age succeeding the Bhārata Armageddon, were brooding over the vanity of earthly and heavenly loves and the greater vanity of wars, the fleeting joys of love and the dead sea fruit of the delights of fighting which turns into ashes in the mouth; they were constantly devising ways of escaping from the wheel of birth and re-birth, the contemplation of whose never ceasing revolution created in their hearts vairāgya, literally, lovelessness. Hence the Sanyāsa was developed among the Vaidikas, the Vaiṣṇava and śaiva Āgamikas, the Jainas and the Bauddhas, with the hope that the renunciation of the evanescent pleasures of life would lead