Truly amazing thread with some great posts...took me about 2 hours to read through it but it was worth it.
Joe Shearer,
What is the documented history of South India and how far back does that go? My parents come from South India and I would be happy to learn more about my ancestors.
I am glad you asked. This is a hugely neglected aspect of Indian history, and we really should get away from the excessive concentration on the happenings in the Gangetic Plains.
This present thread has taken on disturbing, polemic aspects, otherwise the history of the trans-Indus regions, extending to present-day Ferghana, the outskirts of the Takla Makan, and Uzbekistan, and their surrounding steppe-lands on the one hand, and the ancient and mediaeval cultural focal centres of Balkh/Badakshan and Khurasan is utterly fascinating, and ranges in scope of time from before 3000 BC, perhaps more, to contemporary times. Unfortunately, it has become a propaganda battlefield, and I am deeply saddened at the hyper-patriotic approach taken by some commentators (not Roadrunner, who, to his credit, has come out with considerable ability and command of the big picture, betrayed by defects in specific knowledge and technical information; there are other, presumably younger people who are quite maddening in their approach).
The approach that the originators have taken is flawed at its foundation; it is based on a minor thing, the name of the sub-continent in European accounts, which gives no distinction worth its while to the land on both sides of the Indus, in spite of strenuous attempts to prove that there is in fact some identity. On the other hand, there is rich and ample evidence of the historical unity, though not a cultural unity, of the cultures on the banks of the Indus, excluding some sections. It is a surprise that they do not concentrate on that, which is in historical terms so self-evident that all will align themselves behind the proposition.
On the other hand, the history of South India illustrates a point that I have yet to make, not having found an opportunity. The fact is that ancient Indian history should be based on people, not on regions; if considering regions at one remove from people, it should concentrate on river basins, not on empires; if considering empires, it should concentrate on their linkages with other developments before, during and after their moments in history.
Without claiming that the book has all these aspects within it, I urge you to lose no time in getting your hands on a copy of Nilakantha Sastri's magisterial work "A History of South India". I first encountered it as an undergraduate, and remember the delight and shock with which I devoured it, at one sitting, a treat after the sludgy writing and academic drone of typical history texts on India, not excluding the Cambridge and New Cambridge Histories. Excluding only Romila Thapar and the remarkable D. D. Kosambi.
When you read Nilakantha Sastri - it is very readable, but yet not an easy read, because of the sheer breadth and scope of his vast subject - remember that this was a scholar of Titanic proportions. It was the same man's edited Comprehensive History of India which kindled my interest in the north-west and the fascinating period of the Indo-Greeks, the Indo-Scythians, the Pallavas, and the Kushana.
There are several others you can read thereafter. A completely different approach and treatment is R. C. Majumdar's books; the old man, by the time he stopped writing, had reeled off a matchless set of books, some examples of which (apparently still in print) are:
- Champa: History and Culture of an Indian Colonial Kingdom in the Far East, 2nd to 16th Century AD;
- SuvarnaDvipa: Ancient Indian colonies in the Far East;
- History of Kambuja-Desa;
His other books are heavy going (not that these listed aren't) as he is always addressing a professional audience. They concentrate on the history of eastern India, and on very specialised subjects, including the Vakataka-Gupta period and rule, aspects of Mughal rule, and so on. I have suggested these as he is the only good source that I have read on the Indian interaction with south-east Asia in historical times.
There has been so much incredible work done over the last 40 years that I find myself always swamped with a huge backlog of reading, and can never keep up. It is quite possible that some excellent recent texts have been omitted due to this, and this possibility may kindly be forgiven.
You asked about its dates. Tamil (= Dramila = Dravida) civilisation predates the Indo-Aryan language introduction in India, and the civilisation arguably covered the entire peninsula. Brahui is a remnant of a Dravidian language in the north-west; recently, by undertaking mathematical pattern-matching exercises on a very powerful computer, some purely scientific and mathematical researchers located in Chennai (not Tamilian themselves) found that Tamil patterns matched the Mohenjodaro patterns most closely. A direct linkage between IVC and Tamil is still unproven although tempting, but must await the discovery of a Rosetta stone before it can be confirmed.
Before turning to historical notices and confirmed evidence, it may be noted that the Dravidian languages are apparently cognate to Kol/Mundari; the conclusion is that the original population of India spoke Dravidian languages in one form or the other throughout the sub-continent. This dates back many thousands of years before Christ; the first movement of people out of east Africa is dated to around 40,000 years earlier than today, and the backwash may have taken place - with migrants to south-east Asia and to the archipelagos of Indonesia and the Philipines flowing back to the sub-continent - perhaps 10,000 years later. These dates are pre-historical and speculative; they must be avoided in any academic discussion except as an unproven possibility. In genetic terms, all of the sub-continent except the Pushto are identical in blood-grouping; the Indo-Aryans contributed their language, which swept northern India from end to end, but not much variation occurred in genetic terms. The Pushto are found to be Iranian by blood and genetic analysis. It is amusing to note that pretentious claims of exclusivity by this, that and the other caste group are totally belied by this recent research; there is no genetic difference between Brahmin and Chandal, none between men and women, none between north and south. Facial and skin-colour differences are finally, genetically, in almost undetectable percentages. The north-east is differently constituted, I understand.
In historical terms, the first mentions of the Tamils are from the Sangam era. For the rest, I suggest Nilakantha Sastri. Happy reading and happy learning.
