From: ksrao@power.ee.ndsu.nodak.edu
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian.telugu,soc.culture.indian
Subject: FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Date: 20 Oct 92 14:31:59 GMT
Reply-To: ksrao@power.ee.ndsu.nodak.edu
Organization: North Dakota Higher Education Computing Network


      The title should actually be: IS INDIAN CULTURE PRIMARILY ARYAN OR
DRAVIDIAN.

     In this article, the author does not mean to equate the adjective Tamil to
Dravidian. This article is a paragraph written in the book " INDIA: An
Anthropological Perspective" by Stephen A. Tyler.

       As an introduction to a chapter titled The Hindu Synthesis he writes,


'Aryan orthodoxy was obliterated by heterodoxy, and even though the heterodox
cults themselves eventually declined, the pattern of Aryan domination was
forever shattered. Remnants of Aryan culture were to survive the destruction
but only in "Dravidianized" form. In every cultural sphere the ancient
Dravidian forms reasserted themselves, transmogrifying Aryan doctrines and
conventions, reducing Aryan gods to Dravidian gods, replacing the Aryan cult of
the family altar with the Dravidian temple, subordinating ritualism to
devotionalism, transforming class divisions into caste distinctions, and
welding loosely knot tribal confederacies into centralized empires. The Hindu
synthesis was less the dialectical reduction of orthodoxy and heterodoxy than
the resurgence of the ancient, aboriginal Indus civilization. In this process
the rude, barbaric Aryan tribes were gradually civilized and eventually merged
with the autochthonous Dravidians. Although elements of their domestic cult and
ritualism were jealously preserved by Brahman priests, the body of their
culture survived only in fragmentary tales and allegories embedded in cast,
synchrestic compendia. On the whole, the Aryan contribution to Indian culture
is insignificant. The essential pattern of Indian culture was already
established in the third millennium B.C., although the Aryans destroyed the
Indus cities, the form of Indian civilization perdured and eventually
reasserted itself.'

        He writes further in the same chapter under a section entitled 'New
Gods':

The character of Siva and Visnu, two of the most important Hindu dieties,
clearly reflects the elements of this syncretistic process. The Vedic deity
Visnu gradually accumulated a number of popular divinities who came to be
regarded as his avatars. Of his ten traditional avatars, some, like the boar
and the man-lion, were thriomorphic divinities. Others, like Rama, were human
heros elevated to divine status by martial tradition. Most important of his
incarnations is the god Krsna, himself the product of earlier syncretism.
Different aspects of the Krsna legend indicate that he is a composite of a
hero-god, a fertility deity associated with pastoralism, and a child-god. Since
the name Krsna means "black", it seems clear that Krsna in his pastoral aspect
evolves from the pastoral deity Mayon (the black one) of early Tamil
literature.......

not only does Visnu represent a composite of numerous non-Aryan divinities, but
the very theory that rationalizes these divinities as his incarnations derives
from non-Aryan sources.


Then in the Appendix on Language families, he writes:

The most important aspect of these changes (to Indo-Aryan languages) involved
what might be called the "Dravidianization" of Indo-Aryan. There is evidence of
Dravidian loan words even in Vedic Sanskrit, but more important are Dravidian
influences on phonology and syntax. The presence of cerebral consonants is the
most apparent evidence of Dravidian phonological influence. Somewhat later, the
extensive use of noun compounds in Indo-Aryan languages attests a more
pervasive Dravidian syntactic influence. Finally, the use of post positions and
the noun-noun predications in modern Indo-Aryan corresponds closely to
Dravidian syntax......

....   In general the pattern of mutual influence between Dravidian and
Indo-Aryan confirms an essentially Dravidian substratum in the modern
Indo-Aryan languages. Thus the modern Indo-Aryan languages were built on a
Dravidian base which was superficially modified by the Sanskritic and Prakritic
dialects of the Indo-Aryan invaders. In previous chapters it has been seen that
this same pattern prevails in other aspects of the culture. All of Indian
civilization is built on an underlying base of Dravidian language and culture.
K. Sankara Rao                          e-mail ksrao@power.eee.ndsu.nodak.edu

Department of Electrical Engineering
North Dakota State University
Fargo, ND 58105  USA

Phone:  (701)237-7217  (o)
        (701)235-9912  (h)

----------------Article quote ends---------------------------------------------

Selva Selvakumar
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian