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form
the Bay of Bengal, Arabian sea etc., thus isolating the peninsula of India.1
(ii)
Pre-Aryan Indian Culture still preserved in the South
“Attention
has been concentrated too long on the North, on Sanskrit books, and on
Indo-Aryan notions. It is time that due regard should be paid to the non-Aryan
element.
“This
book being deliberately confined almost exclusively to the summary presentation
of the political history of India, I am precluded from following out the
suggested line of research, but I cannot refrain from quoting certain
observations of an eminent Indian Scholar, prematurely deceased, which
seem to me worthy of serious consideration, and are as follows:
‘India
Proper in the South’
“‘The
attempt to find the basic element of Hindu civilization by a study of
Sanskrit and the history of Sanskrit in Upper India is to begin the problem
at its worst end and most complicated point. India, south of the Vindhyas
- the Peninsular India - still continues to be India Proper. Here the
bulk of the people continue distinctly to retain their pre-Aryan features,
their pre-Aryan languages, their pre-Aryan social institutions. Even here
the process of Aryanization has gone indeed too far to leave it easy for
the historian to distinguish the native warp from the foreign woof. But,
if there is anywhere any chance of such successful disentanglement, it
is in the South; and the farther South we go the larger does the chance
grow.
“The
Scientific historian of India, then, ought to begin his study with the
basin of the Krishna, of the Cauvery, of the Vaigai, rather than with
the Gangetic Plain, as it has been now long, too long, the fashion.
“When
the ideal Early History of India, including institutions as well as political
vicissitudes comes to be written on a large scale, it may be that the
hints given by the learned Professor will be acted on, and that the historian
will begin with the South.”2
1.P.S.I.p.p
2.E.H.I.Introduction,p.8
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