research9 into the name of Hanumant warrants us in assuming, that there was a great Monkey-God who obtained the worship of the pre-Aryan-poeples (namely Dravidians) of India, and whose name was in the Dravidian speech just "the Male Monkey" (in Tamil, Aṇ-manti). The Aryan speakers came to know this god, and his name was at first translated into the Aryans' language as Vṛishā-kapi. His worship was slowly entering by the backdoor among the Aryan speakers through contact with the Dravidians, and this was resented by a certain element among the Aryan people: but others were acquiescing in the introduction of this "native" cult. An echo of this ideological conflict we find in the Vṛishā -kapi became admitted into the newly formed Aryan-non- Aryan pantheon, and his original Dravidian name Aṇ-manti as in Tamil, was then Sanskritized into Hanumant, and this name he is still a powerful deity in popular Hinduism, the sublimation of his character by Bhakti adding but fresh lustre to his pristine popularity as a strong helper in need and remover of distress, the rough and ready god of a primitive people. The extent to which the Aryan religion has been modified by Austric and Dravidian contacts is sufficient indication of the profound influences exerted by the latter in the evolution of the Hindu religion. There has been a widespread racial mixture, as anthropology has indicated. In culture, speaking in the Indian way, one may say that over twelve annas in the rupee is of non-Aryan origin. The bases of Indian economy - food (rice or wheat or millet with pulses or lentils as relish, milk products like ghee and eurds, vegetables, occasionally a little goat or mutton, and fish and oil of various sorts milk is not common, as opposed to the Aryan meal of barley cakes and meat and butter), dress (unsewn cotton cloth worn in three pieces as dhotī or sārī, i.e. loincloth, dupaṭṭā or shawl, and head-cloth or turban, in place of the woollen garments of the Aryans), and dwelling, are pre-Aryan; our way of thinking is un-Aryan- the syntax of the later Indo-Aryan dialects agrees more with that of the Dravidian languages than with that of Vedic and of the extra-Indian Indo-European languages; our counting and computation is largely on the basis of eight, which is Dravidian (Mark Collins has explained ompattu the Tamil word for "nine" as being really the Aryan ūna ''one less" plus Tamil pattu "ten," and the Telugu tommiḍi as really 'meaning "broken ten" thus suggesting that eight was the common humber in computation), combined to some extent with counting by tens, which is Aryan, and to a slight extent on the basis of twenty as the highest number, which is Austric (as Jean Przyluskji has shown). Many of our social institutions and conventions (e.g., Cer- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ JRAS., 1913, p. 400 |