most of these Dravidian loans into Sanskrit took place. In the Vedic literature they are comparatively few, although a number of them have been pointed out, and, consequently, we know that even at this early period the Aryans must have been in contact with Dravidians. Also the Vedic language was the possession of the sacerdotal class, and they zealously guarded its purity against the influence of mleccha languages and against the corruptions of the popular speech. Consequently, there was likely to be considerable time-lag between the words becoming current in Indo-Aryan and their being admitted into the sacred language. It is therefore likely that many such words were in use considerably earlier than they appear in literature.

Coming next to the epic literature, we find that the bulk of the Dravidian words which have been accepted into Sanskrit are well established by this time. The epics in their final form are perhaps not very early, but the tradition they embody, including style and language, goes back a considerable time. Furthermore, these same words, which appear in the epics for the first time, turn up also to a large extent in the early Pali texts, and this certainly takes them back well before the Christian era. In view of these considerations, we may fix the period when Dravidian influence on Sanskrit was most strongly exercised as the late Vedic and early classical period. As regards the later history of Sanskrit, it is true that new words from various sources continue to appear in the centuries following, but the interesting thing is that very few of these appear to be Dravidian. Proceeding to Prakrit, the influx of new words is again abundant, but the percentage which can be found a Dravidian origin is comparatively small (a useful list of these was compiled by K. Amrita Row and published in Indian Antiquary, XLVI, pp. 33 ff.). Again, in modern Indo-Aryan there is a significant access of new words, but (leaving out the special case of Marathi) whatever the origin of this vocabulary, it is clearly not Dravidian.

Certain conclusions follow inevitably from these facts. It is not possible to account for these Dravidian words in Sanskrit on the theory that the source was the existing Dravidian languages of South India. This is impossible, because the period when the bulk of these words must have been acquired preceded that of any extensive contact between Aryan and South Dravidian, This begins in the Maurya period or, at the earliest, in the Nanda period, but it is not until the Āndhra period that we get any close connection between a section of the Aryans and the South Dravidians. It is possible that a few Dravidian words may have gained currency in this way, but as far as the origin of the majority of them is concerned, it is definitely ruled out.