the whole of India and not that these people must necessarily have come into India from outside the country. No single fact has yet been adduced that compels us to believe that the ancient people of India were not autochthones.

     “Moreover, the artefacts and other relics of ancient times discovered so far in Southern India form an unbroken series, showing that there has been in this country a regular evolution of culture, which was never rendered discontinuous by any catastrophe, from the lowest palaeolithic stage to the latest age of metals. The Tamil language existed in South India during the course of this evolution. The words necessary for the linguistic expression of every stage of this culture, are found in the earliest strata of Tamil, and the customs of these early ages continued sufficiently long to be enshrined in the earliest extant specimens of Tamil literature. It may therefore be taken as fairly certain that the Tamils were indigenous to South India.”¹

     “The Theory of the Pre-Dravidians and Proto-Dravidians is a myth of the 20th century. Neither the archaeologist nor the historian of South India could furnish tangible proof of a displacement of peoples and of culture from one age to the other either by a catastrophe or other causes. On the other hand, there is everything in favour of continuity of paleolithic culture passing peacefully to neolithic, the neolithic to iron culture. The archaeological finds clearly indicate a regular progress of culture. It is wrong to say that the jungle and hill tribes are ethnically different from the Dravidians of South India as we understand by the term today. Students of the Anthropogeography of the Deccan know that five types of culture persisted in this land since the Neolithic times. Of these, the types of peoples who embraced hunting and fishing are the earliest, belonging to the lowest Paleolithic Age. Continuous living down the ages in forest and coastal regions respectively has resulted in their developing peculiar modes of life and mental habits. The question of pigmentation need not disturb us; for it is to be attributed to the climatic environment and to some extent the nature of occupation