others seem to have been deified ancestors or local heroes. There was certainly serpent worship, and some other animals may have been revered. There can be little doubt that the pre-Brahmanic religion was heavily concerned with phallic worship and fertility rites of various sorts. Magical practices seem to have been more important than in the North.

The northern empires of the pre-Islamic period were in general unable to extend their control over the Dravidian South. Only Asoka in the 3rd century B.C. conquered the Deccan, and his successors soon retreated northward. As a result, the Dravidians were under no compulsion to accept the culture of the Indo-European North, and what they took from it they took selectively. Their acceptance of Buddhism and later Hinduism was no doubt facilitated by the numerous non-Aryan features, presumably drawn from Northern Dravidian cultures, which had been incorporated into these religions. Northern tradition has it that the first Brahmans visited Southern India in about 800 B.C., and by the 2nd and 3rd century B.C. Brahman, Jain, and Buddhist missionaries were operating in the region in considerable numbers. The Dravidians seem to have welcomed all three, no doubt largely because of their interest in the magical powers which the new cults claimed, and the whole South, with the exception of a few backward hill tribes, accepted the Northern religions. The process of Northern cultural penetration was probably much like that which took place in Indonesia at a somewhat later date. We know that there Indian princes or Brahmans, reinforced by the prestige of their higher culture, established themselves among the native tribes and either allied themselves with ruling families by marriage or enjoyed highly lucrative positions as prime ministers or as intermediaries between the new converts and the Hindu gods. It is interesting to note that by the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D. there were. Brahman kings in Southern India. The acceptance of the Northern religions seems to have been enthusiastic. Their missionaries were showered with royal gifts, and some of the most striking monuments of the Buddhist period in India are in the South, where monumental stupas of the 2nd and 3rd centuries still survive.

III. Pre-Aryan Civilization.

The culture and civilization similar to those of the Indus Valley appear to have extended over a wide area stretching down to Lothal, near Bombay, and eastwards to Patna. The suspicion is that they.