THE ARYAN-DRAVIDIAN DIVIDE

barney · March 2, 2004

Aryan and Dravidian Races

The idea of Aryan and Dravidians races is the product of an unscientific culturally biased form of thinking that saw race in terms of color. There are, scientifically speaking, no such things as Aryan or Dravidian races. The three primary races are the Caucasian, the Mongolian and the Negroid.

Both the Aryans and Dravidians are related branches of the Caucasian race, generally placed in the same Mediterranean subbranch. The difference between the so-called Aryans of the north and Dravidians of the south is a difference in skin color, but this is not a racial division.

Biologically both the North and South Indians are of the same Caucasian race, only when closer to the equator the skin becomes darker, and under the influence of constant heat the bodily frame tends to become a little smaller.

While we can speak of some ethnic differences between North and South Indian peoples, they are only secondary.

For example, if we take a typical person from Punjab, an other from Maharashtra, and a third from Tamil Nadu we will find that the Maharashtrians generally fall in between the other two in terms of build and skin color. We see a gradual shift of characteristics form north to south, but no real different race.

An Aryan and Dravidian race in India is no more real than a north and a south European race. Those who use such terms are misusing language. We would just as well place the blond Swede of Europe in a different race from the darker haired and browner skinned person on southern Italy.

Nor is the Caucasian race the "white" race. Caucasians can be of any color from pure white to almost pure black, with every shade of brown in between.

The predominant Caucasian type found in the world is the blond-blue-eyed northern European but the black hair, brown-eyed darker skinned Mediterranean type such as we find from southern Europe to north India.

Similarly the Mongolian race is not yellow. Many Chinese have skin whiter than many so-called Caucasians. In fact of all the races, the Caucasian is the most variable in its skin color. Yet many of the identification forms that people fill out in the world today still define race in term of color.

North and South Indian Religions

Scholars dominated by the Aryan-Dravidian radical idea have tried to make some Hindu Gods Dravidian (Non-Aryan) and other Hindu Gods Aryan (Vedic), even though there is no such division within Hinduism.

This is based upon a superficial identification of deities with color, Krishna as black and therefore Dravidian, which we have already shown the incorrectness of (to think that sages or deities were named only after the color of their racial stock).

In the Mahabharata, Krishna traces his lineage through the Vedic line of the Yadus, a famous Aryan people of the south and west of India, and there are instances as far back as the Rig Veda of seers whose name meant dark (like Krishna Angirasa or Shyava Atreya).

Early investigators thought they saw a Shaivite element in the so-called Dravidian Indus Valley civilization, with the existence of Shiva linga like sacred objects, and seals resembling Shiva.

However further examination has also found large numbers of Vedic like fire-altars replete with all the traditional offers as found in the Hindus literature known as the Brahmanas, again refuting such simplistic divisions.

The religion of the Indus (Sarasvati) culture appears to include many Vedic as well as Puranic elements (note also the article on the Unity of the Vedic and Shaivite Religions).

Aryan and Dravidian Languages

The Indo-European languages and the Dravidian do have important differences. Their ways of developing words and grammars are different. However, it is a misnomer to call all Indo-European languages Aryan.

The Sanskrit term Aryan would not apply to European languages, which are materialistic in orientation, because Aryan in Sanskrit means spiritual. When the term Aryan is used as indicating certain languages, the term is being used in a Western or European sense that we should remember is quite apart from its traditional Sanskrit meaning, and implies a racial bias that the Sanskrit term does not have.

We can speak of Indo-European and Dravidian languages, but this does not necessarily mean that Aryan and Dravidian must differ in culture, race or religion.

The Hungarians and Finns of Europe are of a different language group than the other Europeans, but we do not speak of them as of a Finnish race, or the Finns as being non-Europeans, not do we consider that their religious beliefs must therefore by unrelated to those of the rest of Europe.

Even though Dravidian languages are based on a different model than Sanskrit, there are thirty to seventy percent Sanskrit words in south Indian languages like Telugu and Tamil, which is a much higher percentage than north Indian languages like Hindi.

In addition both North and South Indian languages have a similar construction and phraseology which links them close together, that European languages do not share.

This has caused some linguists even to propose that Hindi was a Dravidian language. In short, the language compartments, like the racial ones, are not as rigid as has been thought.

In fact if we examine the oldest Vedic Sanskrit, we find similar sounds to Dravidian languages (the cerebral letters, for example), which are not present in other Indo-European tongues. This shows either that there already were Dravidians in the same region as the Vedic people, and part of the same culture with them, or that Dravidian languages could also have been early offshoots of Sanskrit, which was the theory of the modern rishi, Sri Aurobindo. In addition the traditional inventor of the Dravidian languages was said to have been Agastya, one of the most important rishis of the Rid Veda, the oldest Sanskrit text. The oldest forms of Dravidian languages are written in Brahmi, the script for Sanskrit, and contain much influence of Sanskrit as well.

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.

That Gujarat was a once suspect land to Vedic people when it was under Jain domination does not cause us to turn the Gujaratis into another race or religion. That something similar happened to the Dravidians at a point in history does not require making them permanently non-Aryan.

In the history of Europe, for example, that Austria once went through a Protestant phase, does not cause modern Austrians to consider that they cannot be Catholics.

The kings of South India, like the Chola and Pandya dynasties, relate their lineages back to Manu. The Matsya Purana moreover makes Manu, the progenitor of all the Aryas, originally a South Indian king, Satyavrata.

Therefore there are not only traditions that make the Dravidians descendants of Vedic rishis and kings, but those that make the Aryans of North India descendants of Dravidian kings. The two cultures are so intimately related that it is difficult to say which came first. Any differences between them appear to be secondary, and nothing exists like the great racial divide that the Aryan-Dravidian idea has promoted.

The Dravidians as Preservers of Vedic culture

Through the long and cruel Islamic assault on India, South India became the land of refuge for Vedic culture, and to a great extent remains so to the present day. The best Vedic chanting, rituals and other traditions are preserved in South India. It is ironic therefore that the best preservers of Aryan culture in India have been branded as non-Aryan.

Dravidians do not have to feel that Vedic culture is any more foreign to them than it is to the people of North India. They need not feel that they are racially different than the people of the north.

They need not feel that they are losing their original culture by using Sanskrit. Nor need nor they feel that they have to assert themselves against north India or Vedic culture to protect their real heritage.

Hindu culture has never suppressed indigenous cultures or been opposed to cultural variations, as have the monolithic conversion religions of Christianity and Islam. The Vedic rishis and yogis encouraged the development of local traditions. They established sacred places in all the regions in which their culture spread. They did not make everyone have to visit a single holy place like Mecca, Rome or Jerusalem. Nor did they find local or tribal deities as something to be eliminated as heathen or pagan. They respected the common human aspiration for the Divine that we find in all cultures and encouraged diversity and uniqueness in our approach to it.

The people of North India also need not take this north/south division as something fundamental. It is not a racial difference that makes the skin of south Indians darker but merely the effect of climate. Any racial group living in the tropics for some centuries or millennia would eventually turn dark.

And whatever color a person's skin may be has nothing to do with their true nature according to the Vedas that see the same Self or Atman in all.

Nor is it necessary to turn various Vedic Gods into Dravidian Gods to give the Dravidians equality with the so called Aryans in terms of the numbers or antiquity of their Gods. This only gives credence to what is a superficial distinction in the first place. What is necessary is to assert what is truly Aryan in the culture of India, North or South, which is high on spiritual values in character and action. These occur not only in the Vedas but also the Agamas and other scriptures of the greater tradition.

The Aryans and Dravidians are part of the same culture and we need not speak of them as separate. Dividing them and placing them at odds with each other serves the interests of neither but only damages their common culture (which is what those who propound these ideas are often seeking). It is time, therefore, to look beyond the Aryan-Dravidian difference, which is much smaller than believed, and look to the greater commonality of Hindu culture.

maadhav · March 4, 2004

thanks barney!

March 4, 2004

There was a Chola called Manu-Needhi Chola, who governed his kingdom based on the laws of Manu and was fair to all living things.

Legend says, he had a huge bell hung outside his palace, and anybody who needed justice can ring it. The king himself personally looked into the affairs and ensured there was justice.

Once, the kings son drove his chariot very rash and run over a calf and killed it. The mother of the calf ( the cow ) saw all this and went and pulled the bell for justice.

The king found out what happened, and to ensure justice, made his son lie down on the road and ran the chariot over him and killed him.

And to make things ridiculous, in the recent past, Dravidian parties have renamed Manu - needhi Cholan as Pasu- Needhi Cholan . Pasu is in tamil for cow.