AGASTYA IN THE TAMIL LAND
7
this 'confusion worse confounded', the later Paurānic writers also have spun all sorts of amazing tales of mystery and imagination round this Aryan sage without an eye to smooth away inconsistencies and escape contradictions. Probably they may have thought that the sage was too great a man to sink under the weight of their legendary lore.
As a first step in the so-called Aryanisation[1] of Dakṣiṇāpatha (Southern India) and Further India, the northern tradition which has gathered round his hermitage near Daṇḍakāraṇya gives us a valuable clue.
- ↑ If by 'civilization' one means the possession of a body of literature, religion and philosophy, as is too often done by certain Sanskritists, then Dravidian India could be truly spoken of as aryanised. If, on the other hand, the term signified, as it should, very much more than these very late accomplishments, as for instance man's control of Nature by wresting from it not only the necessities but the comforts and conveniences of life by a well-developed and well-ordered system of arts in almost every department of human pursuit, and the consequent amelioration of man's estate both in his individual and corporate existence in society by all the devices at his command and by all the efforts he is capable of, then more than three-fourths of the belongings of the present-day life must go to the credit of an indigenous civilization the Dravidian has inherited from his ancestors. Take for instance, two of the prime arts of life, Agriculture and Architecture. Where is the Aryanisation in them? To speak still of the Aryanisation of Dravidian India, in the extremely limited sense, is to lose the right historical perspective and growing even unfair to the substantial contributions of the Dravidians to the stock of the present-day South Indian civilization. Even in the field of letters, religion and philosophy, no student of history will be inclined to discount the characteristic share of the Dravidians, although it may not compare in quantity favourably with that of the Aryan nation.
