The
Dravidians in Vedic and Puranic Lore
Some Vedic texts, like the Aitareya Brahmana of Manu Samhita, have looked at the
Dravidians as people who have fallen from Vedic values and practices.
However, they do not look at them as indigenous or
different people but as descendants of Vedic kings, notably Vishvamitra, who have taken
upon unorthodox practices, these same texts look unfavorably upon certain peoples of North
India, like the Mahabharata criticizing peoples of Sind and Sauvira or west India as
unaryan, as deviating from Vedic culture, even though such people were obviously
Indo-European in language.
Other texts like the Ramayana portray the Dravidians, the inhabitants of Kishkindha
(modern Karnataka), as allies of Aryan kings like Rama.
Hence there
appears to have been periods in history when the Dravidians or some portion of them were
not looked on with favor by some followers of Vedic culture, but this was only
temporary. If we look through the history of
India, there has been a time when almost every part of India has been dominated by
unorthodox traditions like the Buddhist, Jain or Persian (Zoroastrian), not to mention
outside religions like Islam or Christianity, or dominated by other foreign conquerors,
like the Greeks, Scythians (Shakas) or Huns.
|