Aryan tribes and Dramila societies coexisted and interacted for mutual benefit
By MR Mallya
As Tamil developed, combined with the Indo-Aryan it produced a literary tradition in Maharashtrian Prakrit of which the Sattasai is the most famous example. This southern literature was so rich that its ideas and conventions were probably taken by such great Sanskrit poets as Kalidasa and made into an integral part of the new Sanskrit tradition.
Ancient India has often been pictured as Dravidians occupying the Indus civilisation, while the Aryans were supposed to have come later, displacing them southwards. The history of North India was given prominence, with the Rig Veda, Mahabharata, the Buddha, Alexander and the Mauryan empire.
There was some reference to Cankam literature in the far South (Pandya) but none was sure of the ancient dates. Tamil land i.e. South India was rarely mentioned in the history textbooks until the Pallavas and the Kadambas formed their kingdoms. The Mahabharata refers to Pandya kings. So also Ashoka’s inscriptions refer to Chera, Pandya and Cholas as border kingdoms that must have existed about 300 BC.
The South with Dravidian culture was interacting with the North even from early times of the Rig Veda and Panini. It produced the old Tamil grammar Tolkappiyam. Some Dravidian loanwords figure in Rig Vedic time, that must have happened as early as 1500BC. This early interaction is hardly touched upon by historians in the north who do not known old Tamil. But scholars who known Tamil and Sanskrit mention valuable data for writing our ancient history, enriching both civilisations.
Unfortunately these studies have been isolated as literary studies to be compared with Sanskrit, Prakrit, etc. One ought to regard it as part of ancient history in its sociopolitical narration, as now suggested.
An interesting book Passages: Relationships between Tamil and Sanskrit edited by Kannan M and Jennifer Claire, Pondicherry, that outlines the profound and intimate relationship of Sanskrit and Tamil from very early times till the age of the Cholas, has been published by the ‘Institute Francais de Pondicherry’ in collaboration with the Dept. of Tamil Chair, South East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, the USA 2009. It contains valuable articles by scholars in the field Indian or foreign.
It will be rather narrow to regard it as merely dealing with the interaction of two languages, instead of a fruitful interaction of two civilisations from the time of the Vedas to the present.
We have been unfortunately brought up on the notion of Aryan conquerors versus Dravidian civilisation and even to this day there is an academic debate whether the Indus script is Dravidian or Aryan. If the two communities coexisted and interacted with each other and they were slowly evolving scripts like Tamil Brahmi and Prakrit/ Sanskrit Brahmi in different areas of the vast Indus Saraswati civilisation, there should be no difficulty in understanding the variation in scripts that adds to the richness of ancient Bharat. This is the unconscious message that the various articles in the book give the reader. That it is emanating from Tamil scholars who often know Sanskrit, confirms it.
In the above book the articles including the foreword and introduction by the Editors and essays of I Mahadevan, George Hart, Leslie Orr, etc. convinces us of the coexistence and interaction of the two cultures from an early era. I have attempted to summarise the salient features of their remarks as aiding in a proper reconstruction of ancient Indian history.
(One need not get entangled in certain claims from both sides of having contributed considerably to the other culture. We can leave it to literary pundits and concentrate on the essentials of Tamil Sanskrit interaction and History)
Early stage of Tamilakam
Mahadevan: The earliest contact between Dravidian Indo-Aryan is evidenced by a few Dravidian loanwords in the Rig Veda. (1500 BC).
Correspondingly, Indo-Aryan loanwords form Prakrit and Sanskrit occur in Tamil Cankam literature (200 BC-200 AD).
Recently large number of coins, seals and rings have been unearthed at river beds of Amaravati near Karur, and South Pennar and Vaigai. The legends are mostly in Tamil and some are in Prakrit. They pertain to 3/2nd century BC and later. At that time the Tamil script was modified from the Brahmi to suit the phonetic pattern of Tamil.
Jean Filliozat: Tamil of course is an ancient language, parallel to Sanskrit from whom loanwords have been borrowed now and then, as also from Prakrit but its literature was autonomous. That does not mean absence of fruitful contacts with Prakrit, and Sanskrit.
The Tamil grammar Tolkappiyam does indicate some knowledge of Vedic Pratisakhyas and of the Nirukta. These were utilised with a fine feeling of the genius of the Tamil language different from Sanskrit.
Another parallel adoption was an ideal akin to Dharma of Ashoka. It was the general and universal good order typified in Buddhist forms, but also in Brahmanical ideas of cosmic, social and ethical norms like Rta. This was the composite creed of Ashoka.
Parallel to it was the Tirukkural, an admirable book on the practice of virtue, where Aram is mentioned without any sectarian bias, an ideal of good order of universal interest.
Tamil had developed autonomously, with its own poetry. But on other matters of knowledge books in Sanskrit were of use in the South.
George L Hart: In a large measure, the history of South Asia is the story of the interaction of the Dravidian and Aryan languages and their cultures, from as early as the Rig Veda. Though Tamil was autonomous and developed independently they borrowed from each other and it is impossible to determine which the source is.
By the time of Cankam literature around the first century, the Indio Aryan languages had started to impinge on the Southern Dravidian languages.
In certain areas Tamil folk literature was enriched by sophisticated musical and performative elements that has been later refined as Carnatic music, Bharatnatayam, etc.
As Tamil developed, combined with the Indo-Aryan it produced a literary tradition in Maharashtrian Prakrit of which the Sattasai is the most famous example. This southern literature was so rich that its ideas and conventions were probably taken by such great Sanskrit poets as Kalidasa and made into an integral part of the new Sanskrit tradition.
The Sanskrit, Tamil and North Indian tradition made deep inroads to produce the great poems of Alwars and Nayanaars. This awakening of religion that flourished in the South was, exported back to the North were it produced many saints and poets who enriched modern Hinduism.
The situation in Chera (Kerala)
MR Raghava Varrier: In Chera the social impact was somewhat different though both were Dravidian. Sanskrit influenced Chera in a major way. When an early Chera king eulogised for having performed a yajna ritual for progeny, it means that his ideal changed into that of a chief of the Vedic time. As the custodians of the Vedic ritual forms that were taken seriously by the kings, the Brahmins became a principal group in the society.
In Chera the brahmanical agama temple worship became common and also the natysastra which slowly evolved to Kathakali.
Following the above changes, Manipravalam, a hybid literary style of Sanskrit and Malayalam made its appearance on the Kerala literary scene and marked a separate stage in the literary history of Malayalam. The use of Manipravalam was as a medium for traditional scientific knowledge of ancient India such as Rastratantra, (political science) Ayur Veda, (health science), Jyotirganita (astronomy), Vastuvidiya (architecture), etc.
In short, the cultural contact of the South with the North in general and Kerala in particular was wider than what is generally believed..
It is from the Grantha characters that the Malayalam alphabet developed.
We have made a brief survey of the sociopolitical happenings in the South of Ancient India before the Southern kingdoms came to be formed and when Brahmanical and Sanskrit influences became more prominent.
This early impact needs to be given importance in ancient Indian history as reflecting aspects of a composite culture from very early times, regardless of whether Aryans were indigenous or were migrants from outside India.
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