Aryans 2

Three Lines of Evidence 

There are three lines of evidence which can be utilized for 
constructing a picture of the life of the ancient Tamils before the 
rise of the Arya triple-fire cult in India, north of the Vindhyas. The 
first source of information regarding ancient South Indian life is the 
catalogue of prehistoric antiquities of South India, of artefacts, dis- 
covered by geologists and others, belonging to the Neolithic and 
early Iron Ages and deposited in the various'' museums of India, 
fl'he study of these artefacts has to be supplemented by a careful 
examination of the sites whence these relics of ancient Indian man 
have been derived and which represent the settlements of Neolithic 
and early Iron Age men. Besides a careful study of ancient settle- 
ments the investigator ought also to observe the sites of ancient 
graveyards and conduct excavations of Neolithic and early Iron Age 
graves in the Tamil country before he can understand their implica- 
tions with regard to the lives led by the ancient Tamils. The second 
line of evidence is furnished by a study of the words which the Tamil 
language possessed before it came in any kind of contact with 
Sanskrit, the sacred language of the Aryas, Nouns and verbs 
constitute the trunk of a language and the objects and actions which 
nouns and verbs refer to- must have been possessed by or known to 
the speakers of a language before they could use those essential 
parts of speech in their talk. If we could make up a list of the nouns 
and verbs which, we are certain, belonged to the earliest stratum of 
the language of a people, we may infer from it what objects they 
handled or had observed, what actions they were able to perform, in 
other words, what was the nature of the life that they lived, what was 
the general culture they had attained to. This is the main object of 
this study. Our third line of evidence is the early literature of the 
Tamil people. The existing specimens of this literature no doubt 
belong to times later than what we are investigating. But we are 
certain that the even tenor of the life of the people in that ancient epoch 
was not disturbed by catastrophic changes ; therefore, as the life of 
the people mirrored in the early literature, which we now possess is, 
but an unbroken continuation of that of the earlier epoch, the evidence 
of that literature can be used to confirm the conclusions reached by 
tlie use of the other two lines of evidence. It is proposed in this 
study to construct a picture of the culture of Tamils five thousand 
years ago by utilizing these sources of information.