Dravidians and Africans Dear Friends The issue of the linkage
between Africans and Dravidians is not something that can be
dismissed as something that has no substance in it at all. Anyone
who sees the Ethiopians and Tamils could see a remarkable physical
resemblance and during my stay in London I mistook some Ethiopians
in fact for Tamils. Perhaps some Dravidian tribes at least, are
people with intimate relationship with some Africans, a notion that
deserves to be investigated further. Such studies were promoted at
one time by the political leaders in Senegal and some books
published by the anthropologist K.P. Aravanan, now the Vice
Chancellor of a university in Tamil Nadu owe to this. One of them
is the collection of articles, some quite rare indeed and edited by
K.P. Aravanan, and published under the title Dravidians and
Africans. The copy I have was published in 1997 and Tamil Koottam
holds the copyright. The book also contains many photographs that
reveal the presence Muruka worship among the East Africans where
the Vel, the Spear and the Mayil, the peacock are unmistakably
similar to those in Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. I shall select only
some relevant parts from some of these essays so that they enjoy a
wider publicity and the issue of the African connections, among
others, of the Dravidians folks becomes a lively again. This may
also serve as an antidote to the very popular and highly publicized
Aryan Racialism of many scholars both European and Indian. Loga
Negrititude and Dravidian Culture Leopold Sedar Sengkor (President
of Senegal) (Lecture delivered in Madras under the auspices of the
International Institute of Tamil Studies on the 23rd May, 1974) 1.
-------. Southern India is in the same latitude as Senegal, Mali,
Niger, Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia. More than this, only the
Indian Ocean separates the eastern coast of Africa from the south
of India. As a matter of fact, geologists maintain that the Indian
sub continent was formerly attached to East Africa. In this respect
the findings of marine biology are of outstanding importance. All
that is needed, therefore, is for archeologists and pre historians
to have a chance to explore the depths of the seas, to discover old
lithic industries or human skeleton fossils, in the area stretching
from East Africa to Southern India. Unless, of course, the Indian
Ocean existed long before the human race appeared. In any case,
Tamil legends refer to
the existence, from time immemorial, of flourishing cities long
since buried beneath the seas. This is perhaps a reference to that
stretch of land which was supposed to have linked India and Africa
and was presumably engulfed by the ocean during the Neolithic
revolution, that is to say, the period of prehistory when Homo
Sapiens achieved his first revolution, by laying the foundation of
the recorded civilizations through new techniques he had invented.
I should like in passing to note that it is not at all fortuitous
that early civilizations which arose in the valleys of the Nile,
the Tigris and Euphrates, and lastly of the Indus, bore the marks
of black men. It might, however, be quite simply a vague memory of
the universal flood to which the cangkams tried to give a poetic
interpretation in their oldest literary masterpieces, such as the
Cillapatikaaram. In any case, it is remarkable that the
pithecanthrops - proconuls and australopithecs - who whilst not the
ancestors of the human species, are zoologically their next of kin
as infra and parahominins, proliferated simultaneously in East
Africa and Southern India. Here is what Pierre Teilhard Chardin
wrote in his book L Apparition de l Homme (The Appearance of man):
It was on a tropical and subtropical area of the Old World, an area
which in fact extended across India to Malaysia, but basically
located on the African continent, that the evolution of the higher
primates gradually took place. Thus re-stated, this theory would
not be too much at variance with Islamic belief, which claims that
Adam, the father of mankind, appeared in India and Awa, our
maternal ancestor, in Southern Arabia, and that they met at
Harafat. It is curious coincidence that attan is the word for
father in Tamil (-n and -m being interchangeable in that language)
and ava, the word for mother in Kannada (avvai in Tamil, av in
Kota, ave in Kodagu) Origin of the Dravidian Race We know that some
anthropologists tried to identify the Dravidians with what is known
as the Mediterranean race. Such a general label which conceals gaps
in our knowledge of anthropology is indeed confusing -- I had said
dangerous, since it could suggest an interpretation of the concept
of race in terms of geographical demarcation, whereas the notions
of race, when stripped of certainly accessory details boils down
essentially to skin colour. This is the sense in which we speak of
black race, white race or yellow race. Consequently, it might have
been less ambiguous, as some experts have done, to call that
Mediterranean race the Negroid race , since its characteristics are
precisely those of the blacks in general: an elongated skull, dark
or brown skin, these two adjectives being quite
often euphemisms for black . I refer you to Alexander Morets
description of the ancient Mediterraneans. This is the place to
mention once again the fact that the ancient Greeks did not label
as white the former inhabitants of North-West Africa, that is to
say, of the present Magreb_Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia -- since
they called the inhabitants Mauroi or moors, meaning men with a
dark skin. And Herodotus tells us that the Colchidians, a Middle
East people, were as Black as Egyptians ( Notes(Loga). In Tamil
there is a term maRavar, maaRan etc a name of a group of Tamils
especially in Pandiya country. It is interesting that the root maRu
also means black ) In any case, as I stated in a lecture I gave at
Cairo University in February 1967, on the Foundations of Africanity
or Negritude and Arabism, my professor at the Ethnological
Institute in Paris, Dr. Paul Rivet, used to say: there is a ratio
of 4 to 18 per cent black blood around the Mediterranean sea. He
thus referred to the Negroids of the early Paleolithic and
Mesolithic - Grimaldi Man and Caspian Man -- an important group of
the Mediterranean populations until the Neolithic.
`````````````````````````````````````````````````` We shall not
mention all the theories on the origins of the Dravidians, since
the problem is still very much unsolved: we shall mention one only,
namely, a black sub-race among the populations of Southern India.
This said, we should not underrate the importance of the blood ties
between Dravidians and the Black Africans , especially as the black
Dravidian sub-race is the same as the black East African sub-race
which is to be found in the same latitude. During my last visit to
Addis Ababa, I was very much impressed with the large number of
Ethiopians who, with their fine features, black skin and straight
hair, look like Dravidians. I mentioned this to the Emperor who,
with a knowing air, merely smiled a royal smile. In short, as we
can see, the similarity between India and Black Africa, is
essentially based on geography, anthropology and history.
Cultural Contacts First, on the subject of ethnology, we have
facts to which certain authors, particularly German ethnologists,
have drawn attention. Foremost among them is Leo Frobenius, who had
defined Eritrean Culture, as being probably the survival of an
ancient culture common to southern Asia - more particularly to
India - and Black Africa. This culture probably came to Africa via
the North and the South, on the one hand, from the Red Sea and
Ethiopia, on the other, via the Mozambique coast.
Of the characteristics of this cultural cycle, I shall dwell
mainly on metallurgy and cotton spinning, which will enable me to
prove that, in actual fact, Eritrean Culture is the survival of an
ancient Indo African Culture. As a matter of fact, the vocabulary
relating to metallurgy and cotton spinning is exactly the same in
the Negro-African languages and the Dravidian languages of India.
As regards metallurgy, the following comparisons might be made: In
Wolof xanjar, bronze; and in Telugu xancara, work in bronze; in
Bambara numu, forge, and in Telugu inumu, iron; in Wolof kamara,
name given to the blacksmiths caste, and in Telugu kamara, name
given to the blacksmiths caste. This latter name can be found in
other Dravidian languages and in some Indo-Aryan ones as well. As
to cotton spinning, the Wolof use of the eec, producing yarn from
raw cotton, which can be compared with the Pengo verb ec, meaning
to card cotton. After Leo Frobenius, G. Montandon defined seven
cultural cycles in Balck Africa, four of which were supposed to be
related to certain sectors in India, Malaysia and oceanic islands.
Using D.P.de Pedrals enumeration of the elements of these four
cultural cycles, we have been able to detect the following
elements: (1) in the totemic cycle we have : totemism, the exogamic
patriarchal clans, initiation tests for adolescent youth with
sexual mutilations, the round hut with cone-shaped roof, the sheath
of the penis or the phallic sheath and the use of the assegai. (2)
In the paleo-matriarchal cycle, we have : the matriachate, exogamic
matrimonial classes, initiation ceremonies for women, secret
societies for men wearing masks, ancestral worship, the mythology
of the moon, magic, wooden drums, the use of the hoe for tilling
and the square gabled hut. (3) In the neo-matriarchal cycle, we
have : the matriarchate, monogamay, ceremonies accompanying the
first menstrual period, ancestor worship, magic, trellis-work,
basket making, ceramics, the use of the hoe for tilling, the
domestication of dogs and poultry, and houses on stilts or pillars.
(4) In the pastoral cycle we have: animal husbandry,
breast-feeding, metallurgy, social classes, the round domed hut. As
you wil have noticed, we have, in each of these cultural cycles,
deliberately underlined one or two elements to indicate our
intention to expand on them. Cultural Contacts (continued) As
regards totemism, it should be noted that the word cubbaa , which
connotes the peacock in Kurukh, is to be found in the Wolof proper
name joob, which is given to all the members of the clan whose
totem is the peacock. People actually say, dont they, jambee joob,
which means, the peacocks name is Diob. Or again, Jooba, Juba,
which is
a hypcoristic way of calling all the individual members of the
group whose totem is the peacock. Morever, Mr. Cheik Tidiane NDiaye
has told me that he discovered, among other things, the rule of
phonological similarity which is as follows: The sonorous palatal j
in Wolof = the dull palatal c in Dravidian As regard the use of the
assegai, the Wolof word xeej, assegai. May be equated with the
Gondi Muria terms kac, assegai. The following morpho-phonological
rule should be noted in passing: Wolof CVVC, Dravidian CVCC. On the
question of the use of the hoe for tilling, the wolof word konko, a
curved hoe , is exactly the same as the naiki word konki, a curved
hoe. I should like to refer you to the Dravidan Etymological
Dictionary, 1689. (Notes( Loga). There is word in Sumerian kak
which means a hook and which corresponds to Ta, kokki . The Tamil
word kakam also means the arrow.Thus probably the original meaning
of Su. kak/ Ta.kok is a shrap pointed tool , perhaps a hoe or a
plough. In relation to joob above we have Su.gu Ta.kuuv meaning to
call out normally said of birds) Where the domestication of dogs
and poultry is concerned, one can easily identify the Wolof kuti, a
pup with the Tamil word kutti, a pup; also the Wolof word kur,
which is generally used to call poultry, with the kui kuur word
used for calling poultry, as was noted by W.Winfield. Lastly,
turning to animal husbandry, the following comparisions are quite
significant. In Wolof xar sheep, and in Barahui xar, a ram; in
Wolof nag, cow;, in Sere naak, in Poular nagge and in Tamil naaku,
a female buffalo, in Tulu naaku, heifer, in Kota nag, a young
female buffalo from two to three years; in Poular mbeewa, a goat
and in Parji meeva, a goat; in Sere bir, to milk; in Poular birde
and Konda pur ( Notes(Loga) : If naaku means cattle or buffalo then
it may be possible that the ancient group of people of Tamil Nad,
the naakarkaL, the nagas are in fact cattle breeders, or cowherds
of a kind, also known as aayers closely linked with worship of
KaNNan, the Black One) Apart from Leo Frobenius and G.Montandon, H.
Baumann and D. Westermann also had a word to say about the ethnic
relations between India and Black Africa. Indeed, in their work
entitled The People and Civilization of Africa, they hold the view
that certain farming methods in the neo-Sudanese cultural cycle, (
manuring the ground, terracing, irrigation canals etc.) are due to
the wave of men who came from Southern India via Abyssinia or
Ethiopia. It would appear that the path they followed from Nile to
Senegal, was studded with certain agricultural implements as well
as with megalithic monuments associated with agrarian forms of
worship. Still on the subject of the ethnic kinship between
Southern India and Black Africa, mention should be made of the
works of Andrie Leroi Giurhan and Jean Poirier who, in
their book on the Ethnology of the Frebch Union, pointed out the
similarity that existed between various articles found in Togo and
those in India, such as war hatchets, daggers with ring-shaped
hilts, ankle rings etc. It is these very articles that D.P. de
Pedrals had picked out as being elements in Montaudons Sudanoid
Cultural Cycle, to which he had added jewels matched by comparable
ones in India. In short, it is in the context of all these ethnic
affinities that Ratzels famous dictum must be set: Practically the
whole of Africa seems to be one great unit of echoes from Asia
attenuated in varying degrees. Dravidian and Negro-African
Languages In the 19th Century, Alfredo Trombetti was one of the
first to have the presentiment that Dravidian and Negro-African
languages represented a common language, akin to Sumerian.
Recently, in a letter to a Cameroonian friend, Father Englebert
Mveng, on the deciphering of the writing of the first civilization
recorded in the Indus Valley, I wrote as follows: You have probably
thought, like me, of making a comparision between Egyptian,
Dravidian and Sumerian writing. I have the impression that the same
blood or, better still, the same spirit of the Blacks runs through
those three civilizations. In any case, it was Negroid people who
first occupied the valleys of Egypt, Mesopotamia and North-West
India where they founded the first agrarian civilizations in the
Neolithic; These first settlers of eastern valleys, wrote Alexander
Moret, were Negroid peoples who came from regions in India and
Africa, driven north when the forests were transformed into
savannahs and later into steppe-lands. If I may make a digression
on the relations between Sumerian and Dravidian, I would point out
that A. Sathasivam of Colombo University, as everyone knows took up
an unambiguous position in this matter: he was sure Sumerian
writing was of Dravidian origin. Better still, Sumerian was a
Dravidian language. I would refer you to the two following works:
Sumerian, a Dravidian Language ( Berkeley, 1965) and The Dravidian
Origin of Sumerian Writing( Proceedings of the first International
Conference of Tamil Studies, Kuala Lumpur, 1966) This theory which
it is difficult to refute, when one considers how pellucidly clear
and profound the demonstration is, confirms the conclusions reached
by Father H. Heras of Bombay, namely that the culture of Mohenja-
Daro and Harappa pre-dates Sumerian culture and, very likely, the
latter was produced by the former. The only difficulty surrounding
the controversy about the Indus Valley civilizations predating the
Sumerian, is that according to the archeologists, Sir John Marshall
and Sir Mortimer Wheeler, to be precise, the Mohenja-Daro and
Harappan civilization must have arisen during the third millennium
before our era ( 2800 B.C.), while the Sumerian civilization was
already in existence, 4000 B.C.
But , according to Father H. Heras, the Proto-Indian people, the
Dravidian people, as it happens, had distributed their zodiac signs
and devised their system for the divisions of time about 4980 B.C.
This view was confirmed by Father A. Romana , who was at the time
Director of lObservatoria del Ebro, Tortosa, when he said that the
beginning of the Aries constellation, among the Mohenjadarians,
coincided with the winter solstice that year ( 4980 B.C.). In this
way, Father H. Heras, with this declaration as a basis and his own
reading of the three inscriptions, asserted that :Mohenja-Daro
belongs to the fifth millennium before our era. After this long
digression, let us go back to the kinship between the Dravidian and
NegroAfrican languages, taking a look at the authors who have dealt
with the subject. Miss Lilian Homburger, in Jules Blochs book The
Grammatical Structure of Dravidian Languages, had recognized a
number of morphemes which are to be met with in several Saharan
idioms. Since then the idea of kinship between the Dravidian
languages and certain Negro_African languages had become dear to
her heart. And so she began to study in succession the
Senegalese-Guinean languages, Mende Bantou and ancient Egyptian,
comparing them with the Dravidian languages. This is what led her
to publish the following articles in turn: Dravidian elements in
Pheul. ( Journal de la Societe des Africanistes, Paris, 1950), The
Telegu and Mende dialects (ibid, 1951) , The CanaraBantou, A few
elements common to the Egyptian and the Dravidian languages and
Sibilants in Indo-African. The point worth noting is that Miss
Homburger was convinced of two things: (1) She was sure that the
Dravidian languages make it possible to explain the morphology of
the Senegalese group, particularly Serer-Pheul. (2) She was also
convinced that there is a kinship between Kannada and the Bantu
languages. Indeed, the Bantu infinitive with a final -a , the
subjunctive in -e, the preterite in -i or -idi, the doers name in
-i, are to be found with similar values in Kannada and in other
Dravidian languages. The Bantu causal suffix is -is, and in Kannada
a suffix --is/-u performs a similar function. The dative -ku is
characteristic of the Bantu groups and Kananda (and other Dravidian
languages); it is a prefix in Bantu and a suffix in Kannada. (
Notes(Loga) Most of the grammatical particles mentioned above are
found also in Sumerian and some in archaic forms. A detailed study
of these in comparision with Dravidian languages is something the
interested scholars can pursue. Perhaps then the studies of the
type Homburger initiated can be pursued with greater scientific
precisison) Unfortunately, Miss Homburger did not live to carry her
theories to completion.
It is also worth drawing attention to Edwin H. Tuttles
publication on Nubian and Dravidian. The article, ten pages long
approximately, is a brief census of facts rather than a detailed
study. Besides, it sheds no light on the nature of the kinship
between Nubian and Dravidian. The only complete study so far
undertaken is a thesis which is now being prepared by a Senegalese
, Cheik Tidiane NDiaye on the Kinship between the Wolof and
Dravidian languages. This thesis to which I attach great
importance, deals with phonology, morphology, grammar (morphology
and syntax) and lexicology. We hope the writer of the thesis has
derived the maximum benefit from the three years he spent at
Annamalai University as Senior Research fellow.
The Worlds Elder Sons If I have endeavoured in this paper to
advance reasons why the Institute fondomental de l Afrique noire
(IFAN) has created a Department of Indo -African Studies, it is, as
you can imagine, to come to the following conclusion: It is of
great advantage that Dravidian and the Black people of Africa
should get together and investigate, through fundamental research,
the points of convergence or rather of kinship in the values of the
civilizations characteristic of the two black worlds -- the world
of the Black Dravidian and the world of the Black Africa. I should
like, by way of conclusion, to return to Lilias Homberger, or to
put it differently, to the time when, as a young professor of
French, Latin and Greek, I also attended lectures in prehistory and
linguistics at the Paris Institute of Ethnology and the Ecole
pratique des Hautes Etudes. It was then that I began to develop a
certain vision of the past of the black peoples. In the Neolithic
period, they occupied our Fertile Crescent , and laid the
foundations of Civilization. By fertile crescent , in this
particular context, I mean the arc of circle stretching from the
straits of Gibralter to the north of Indo-Chinese peninsula.
Actually, the Black peoples occupied the Mediterranean basin and
the whole of Southern Asia with the Middles East, the Indian
sub-continent and the Indo-Chinese peninsula. It was they who laid
the foundations of the first recorded civilizations of Egypt, Sumer
and India. The poetic works of the ancient Greeks were not mere
flights of fancy, because they were in fact poiesis, that is to
say, the expression of human realities. As far as the ancient
Greeks were concerned, the Ethiopians, in other words, the blacks
were the oldest inhabitants on earth and had religions and law, art
and writing. When in those happy years, I looked at pictures
reproduced in books I mean pictures illustrating the pottery and
sculpture of the early civilization of the Indus valley, I was
struck by a similarity in their style and the style that obtained
in Black Africa. Therefore,
I was not in the least surprised when in 1969 a flash from
UNESCO announced that the writing of the early civilization
expressed a Dravidian language. I managed to get hold of the
phamphlet in which Mr. Asko Parpola of the Scandinavian Institute
of Asiatic Studies told the story of how that writing was
deciphered. The scholar whom I met last year, reveals the fact that
the language was a Dravidian language and that Hinduism was nothing
more than the religion of the ancient Egyptians with their animal
gods, but a religion thought out afresh by Aryan minds. This was
the confirmation of the theory which, as a militant for Negritude
in the years 1930, I upheld with my friends Aime Cesaire and Loan
Damas. That theory was and still is that far from being ashamed of
our black skin and our original values of civilization, we should
be proud of them. For, in the words of Cesaire, who invented the
term negritude, we are the worlds elder sons. And I will say that
before we became consumers, we had been for thousands of years the
first producers of civilization. And yet, the point is important,
it is miscegenation which has led to the development of
civilizations that history has known, whether Egypt, Sumer or India
. A civilization with no admixture is a cultural ghetoo. As the
French anthropologist Paul River pointed out, all the earliest
civilizations in history which were produced in the Mediterranean
latitudes were the results of miscegenation of Blacks and whites,
or of the Black and the Yellow peoples. The merit of these
civilizations and, above all, of Indian civilization, is that they
have embodied the dichotomic reason of the Whites in the intuitive
reason of the Blacks -- and it is said that the Yellow people have
something of them both -- the purest mind in most rhythmic, the
most living flesh. And this is the ideal of every great
civilization. In any case, it is the ideals of Pan- Human
Civilization which is being hammered out in this second half of the
twentieth century, with the participation of all nations,
particularly the three great ethnic groups and the offspring of
their miscegenation. ( Sengkors essay concluded)
_______________________________________________________________________
___________ Dravidians And Africans -2 Links between Ur and the
Indus David Howard Day 1 Introduction Archaeological discovery has
rarely been as controversial or its ramifications so widespread as
those connected with the origins of the Indus Valley civilization,
and the extent of trade between the people of the Indus and those
of the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea.
From prehistoric times, three great trade routes have connected
India with the West. H.G. Rawlinson, credited with the decipherment
of cuneiform, outlines these trade routes as follows: (1) the
easiest and probably the oldest, was the Persian Gulf route running
from the mouth of the Indus to the Euphrates; (2) the overland
route from the Indian passes to Balkh, and thence to the Caspian,
and (3) the rather circuitous sea route down the Persian and
Arabian coasts to Aden, and up the Red Sea to Suez. It is the
primary aim of the present paper to examine selected archaeological
sites along the Indus-Euphrates-Persian Gulf route focusing on the
archipelago sheikdom of Bahrein ( or Bahrain) . We wish to comment
on the extensive work of the Danish Archaeological Expedition to
Bahrein and that of the Oxford University Expedition to the island
Socotra in 1956. In our investigation of the relationships between
Mesopotamia, Bahrein and the cities of the Indus, an attempt will
be made to illustrate the changing foci of archaeological research
from mere dating and classification to the meeting of some of the
following new demands : data on population size and density;
seasonal and climatic cycles; settlement patterns; rate of
population growth; food production techniques; extent of the total
exploited habitat; short and long-run changes in natural biodata;
techno-environmental effects; incidence of warfare; size of
food-producing and non-food-producing groups; nature of social
organization defined in the terms of house groups, village , or
town groups, and general or specific social change. 2. Background
to Ancient Indian Trade Due to their geographical situations, the
pre-Harappan sites lying to the west of the Indus were not in a
position to derive the benefits of the natural maritime highways of
the Indus and as a result, became culturally and economically
backward. Meanwhile, a number of Harappan sits situated on the
Indus rose to prominence. Marshall has pointed out that the
remarkable cultural affinities of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa
presupposes the existence of routelink between the two, although
they were some 350 miles apart. The Urban culture of the Indus
eventually stretched from the foothills of Simal in the North, to
the site of Sutkagen-dor on the West Pakistani (or Makran) coast,
and east into the modern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Port towns,
thriving during what must have been the zenith of the Indus Valley
civilization, have been located primarily at Lothal, on the Gulf of
cambat, western India and still further west along Makran coast at
Sutkagendor 2. Background to Ancient Indian Trade(continued) How
the civilization of the Tigris- Euphrates on the one hand, and the
Indus Valley on the other hand were connected, is not clearly known
to us, though several elements of affinity linking the two distant
civilizations have been indicated beyond doubt. It seems
probable
that the trade intercourse between India and Sumer was both by
land and by Sea. A synthesis of various feasible land routes is
provided by Srivastava in an unusually welldocumented account of
ancient Indian trade and commerce. The maritime route by which the
Indians could have reached Sumer must have been coastal. Most of
the Makran-India coast remains unexplored, however, and no definite
lines of voyage have been traced. While the Indus is now three
miles from Mohenjo-Daro, there is evidence that in ancient times
the city stood on the east bank of the main river, or an important
branch of i. We know in fact, that probably more than once,
Mohenjo-Daro was flooded and temporarily deserted. As may have been
the case at the head of the Persian Gulf the seacoast at the head
of the Gulf of Cambay was probably further north in that epoch.
Mackay, remarking in 1934 about recent discoveries of the two
representations of India boats, suggests: The one with the mast
could have been used for sea travel. Quite small vessels voyage
today between Karachi and Aden, a distance of some 1,500 miles,
keeping the shore in sight most of the way ,,,,,,,,,,. The number
of small Arab dhows that range as far as Zanzibar from parts of the
Indian coast and the Persian Gulf today is remarkable. A voyage in
ancient times from the Indus cities to the ports of Mesopotamia and
the Gulf and back would have a simple matter. (Notes(Loga) In Su.
there are several terms for boats of which ma ma-gur and makur-kur
are most frequent. These can be equated with Ta. maa ( a log)
maa-kuurai, a boat with a roof and maa-kuurkuurai: a boat with
several roof tops. It may be possible that kuurai is the mast and
in which case the maa-kuurkuurai might have the ocean going large
boats which had several masts consistent with their size. Also in
the account of Deluge here is a mention of boat-like a balloon
sealed completely from all sides so that it will keep on floating
in the ocean no matter how heavy the rains) Lothal has yielded a
single circular steatite seal which closely resembles the seals
from the Persian Gulf islands found by the Danish expedition led by
Glob and Bibby. Although we shall deal with Bahrein extensively
below, it may be noted here that the principal ancient settlement
on Bahrein lay at the northern end of the island at Ras-al-Qala.
According to Wheeler, Bahrein was one of the coastal entrepots
between the Gulf of Cambay and the head fo the Persian Gulf. A
study of the Lothal seal and the seals from Bahrein aptly named by
Wheeler as Persian gulf Seals indicate the existence of a coastal
route between Lothal an Bahrein W.F. Leemans found two words, Magan
or Makkan and meluhha inscribed on clay tablets from the city of
Ur. He and Glob identified with the sea coast of Makran in Pakistan
and meluhha with the coast of western India including Sind and
Sautrastra. It is probable that traders from both meuluhha and
Makkan approached Bahrein, which Oppenheim idenfies with their
counterparts from Ur. From Telmun or Bahrein, Harappan traders who
wanted to ahev direct approach to Mesopotamian markets, sailed for
some proto-historic ports
near Bundur Abbas and Bundur Bushir ,,,,,,,,,,, from Bundur
Bushir Ur was approachable thorugh a coast-wise journey along the
northern coast of the Persian gulf. (Notes(Loga) The Identity of
Sumerian Magan and Meluhha There are many references to "magan" and
"meluhha" in Sumerian literature the identity of which is still in
dispute. On the basis of my identification that Sumerian is Archaic
Tamil, I am proposing here that Magan was probably India of those
days and which was " maa-kaaN" a large territory , a word still in
use in the form of " maa-kaaNam" : a large state, or large
landmass. I also propose that Meluhha is in fact Meru-aka , a land
mass in AfricanSEAsian region and from which the Sumerians
themselves might have migrated or simply a ''desert land" . This
word can be compared with place names such Moluccas Island as well
as Melakka in Malaysia and where the straits between Malaysia and
Sumatra is named Malacca straits. One of the references where both
lands are mentioned come Gudea Cylinder A as Given by C.J. Gadd in
his ' A Sumerian- Reading Book". The following lines are taken from
Text XIII pp. 97. 1. e -nin-gir-su-ka (The temple of ningirsu)
du-de (to build) 2. ........... nim ( the Elamite) nim-ta (from
Elam) mu-na-tum (brought to him) 3. INANNA.ERIN -e (the Susian )
INANNA.ERIN-ta (from susa) mu-na-tum (brought to him) 4. ma-gan
me-luh-ha (Magan and Meluhha) kur-bi-ta (from their mountains )
gu-gis (a store of wood) 5. mu-na-ab-gal (provided for him)
e-nin-gir-su-ka (and the temple of Ningirsu) 6. du-de (to build)
gu-de-a (for Gudea) uru-ni-gir-su-(KI)-su ( to his city of Girsu)
7. gu-mu-na-si-si (they brought it together) Thus we see here that
Elam (Nim-ta: from the hills) ma-gan and melluha were territories
from where TRESS were brought TOGETHER from their hills. This
immediately rules out the possiblity that they were desert lands
and hence land masses in Arabia. These lands were with hills that
supplied valuable timber, something the Sumerians LACKED as Sumer
they occupied was largely on the shores of Tigris and Euphrates,
and hence mainly alluvial plains .
Magan as Ta. maa-kaaN: a large land mass: India ? In Su. ma
means "boat: as in ma-gur: a large boat (ship?) This may correspond
to Ta.maa, maram : tree . It may in fact be a variant of Ta. muu-a:
that which grows, perhaps a general term for trees and plants at
first but later restricted to trees. The initial boats may be
simply logs put together-- kattamaram- and hence a transfer of
meaning from tree to that which is made out of it. In Su. ma, mah
also means "great" corresponding to Ta. maa, makaa and Sk. maha.
For ex. in line 18 of the same text we have " mus-mah-am" meaning "
a might dragon"; and in 24. kar-mah-ka-sur-ra-ge: the main wharf at
the boundary Gate . Note kar Ta. karai: banks, wharf. Su. gan,
corresponds to Ta. kaN, kaaN, kaaNi: land mass, cultivated land
etc. We have the use of this in this sense in following line in the
same text 32. har-sag-urud-gan-ki-mas-ta: from the mountain of
copper in the territory of Kimash. Thus here 'gan" means simply
"territory" Thus together "ma-gan" may be " maa-kaaN" : a large
territory and hence an archaic form of "maakaaNa-am" Now as it is
also understood as a territory the hills of which contained large
trees, and coming as it does after Elam, it may be possible that by
"Maa-kaaN" is meant India, and more specifically that part of India
along the West coast where probably teak wood was available and
hence the coasts of ancient Tamil Nadu. Meluhha as Meru-a-ka The
Su. mel which may be a variant of 'mul" means something bright as
in dingir.mul: radiant deity. In Ta. we have mul: bright, white;
Ta. mel> veL: bright, white, clean . Ta. viL-a-kku: light, that
which lights up. We have also Ta. meru, muru: bright, glistening,
hot etc. In Malay we have "merah" : red Such meanings point again
to perhaps to Volcano , a meaning also available in Su-meru or a
DESERT, an intensely hot region (Arabia?) (a)-ka corresonds to Ta.
akam: inside, territory etc. as Tamiz-akam etc. Thus it may be
possible that meluhha is a variant of meru-aka, meeru-aka meaning a
land of volcanic hills or simply that of blazing sun. ) 2.
Background to Ancient Indian Trade(continued)
While Ur seems to have been the key port for entry into
Mesopotamia between 2350 B.C. and 1700 B.C., we are told by
Openheimer that during this period, Mesopotamia and Indian traders
(or sometimes through their middlemen, such as those of Bahrein, as
noted by the individual character of the seals found there)
imported into Ur various Indian commodities like gold, silver,
copper, lapis lazuli, carnelian, beads, exotic woods and inlay.
Trade between Ur and the ports on the Indian coast is divided by
Wheeler into three periods summarized as (1) an initial trade
period at the time of Sargon of Akkad(c.. 2350 B.C.) when traders
from Meluhha were either directly approached by the Sumerians, or
they themselves went to the Mesopotamian markets like Ur; (2) a
second stage, under the third dynasty of Ur (c. 2100 B.C.).
Meluhha, now out of direct trade contact with Ur, dealt with either
Makkan or Telmun, and was dependent on Bahrein middlemen, and
finally, (3) a third phase of Indo-Sumerian trade characterised by
the dominance of Bahrein middlemen between the fall of the Larsa
dynasty (c. 1950 B.C.) and the decline of the Hammurabi dynasty (c.
1700 b.C.) The determination of Indias trade with the West during
historical times has been greatly facilitated by references in the
remarkable anonymous Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, of the first
century A.D. It is known from the Periplus that the island of
Socotra at the entrance to the red Sea, had a mixed population of
Greeks, Arabs and Indians. The Periplus expressly mentions that
Indians, among others, had emigrated to carry on trade there. It
was also in the first century A.D. that Indian merchants began
their expansion into what is now Southeast Asia. Before discussing
briefly the arts and crafts of the Indus Valley and the light they
throw on he probability of links with Sumer and Elam, it is worth
citing a neglected passage from Mackay concerning the similarity of
building materials between the ancient nuclear areas: A striking
feature of the masonry of Mohenjo_daro is the frequent use of
bricks laid in an unusual way. In one particular wall we have a
link with Elam and Sumer, for D. Wooley has lately reported that
mud bricks were laid in a similar manner in a building at Ur dated
to about 2000 B.C. and I am told that an example of the same method
of bricklaying has been found at Susa ,,,,,,,,,,,, The outer walls
of the houses had a better or inward slope, a very characteristic
feature of the architecture of Mohenjo-daro and also found in
ancient Sumerian and Egyptian buildings It is possible that certain
types of Indus Valley pottery were exported. On a fragment of a
stone-carved scene found by the French expedition to Susa some
years ago, a man is seen carrying an offering-stand identical in
design with those found in Mohenjo-daro; and as none of these
stands have been found at Susa it is reasonable to infer that the
one
represented was an importation from India, perhaps also that the
figure is that of an Indian On the evidence of Indus Valley axes
and adzes, Mackay observes that the usual types of axes and adzes
by the Indus Valley people were plain blades of copper or bronze,
almost identical in design with similar blades from Susa and early
Egypt 3: Bahrein : Its Archaeology and Geography To this point we
have been examining some of the evidence for, and educated guesses
about the likelihood and nature of Indo-Persian-Mesopotamian
contacts. We now wish to describe one of the most important recent
clusters of discoveries in archaeology, linking the two prominent
civilizations of the third millennium B.C., that of the Indus and
Sumer. These discoveries, as we shall see, have been made largely
by the Danish Archaeological Expedition on the Persian Gulf island
of Bahrein over the course of the past seventeen years. The
Setting: The state of Bahrein, whose ruler is His Highness Sheik
Sulman bin Hamed Al-Khalifa, consists of a cluster of islands, the
majority of which are inhabited, lying between Qatar, the prominent
Persian Gulf peninsula and Saudi Arabia. The total area of the
Bahrein group is 240 square miles, with a population in 1965 of
182,233. Of these 9,385 (or 5.1 % of the total population) are
labelled in the 1965 Bahrein census as Asians. Though the breakdown
of Asians by country is not known, it is likely that at least 3,000
of these are of Indian origin, with a still smaller minority of
Pakistanis. The majority of the inhabitants are Moslem Arabs and
the Shia and Sunni sects of Islam are about equally represented. In
the past Bahrein owed its importance to its position as the centre
of the pearl industry of the Persian Gulf; today, however, it is
better known for its oil filed and refinery. James Belgrave, son of
the former senu=ior British administrator in Bahrein, makes the
following observations with regard to contemporary pottery making
on the island: All the processes which go into the making of
pottery take place in small sheds,,,,,,,,,,,,, most of the ovens
arebuilt in the prehistoric tumili south of the village (of Aali).
A hole is made in the rof of the tomb and another at the side; in
the former the objects to be baked are placed and the latter is
filled with firewood. When the fires are lit the tombs become
miniature volcanoes with thick smoke belching from their
peaks,,,,,,,,,,,,, Now it was precisely the discovery of three main
groups of tumuli that first attracted the Danish Archeological
Expedition to the island in 1953. Before their arrival, however,
Ernset Mackay (later of Mohenjo-Daro fame) had been sent from Egypt
by Flinders Petrie to survey the bahrein mounds. The danes debt to
mackay is summed up by Geoffrey Bibby himself:
He had done a very competent job on the Bahrein mounds, opening
nearly fifty of them ,,,,,,,,,, and listing contents,,,,,,,,,. He
had shown that every one of them covered a stonebuilt chamber,
lying roughly east-west, with its entrance to the west ,,,,,,,,,,,
and there was very little in the graves other than bones and
pot-sherds, only some fragments of worked ivory and worked copper
being recovered ,,,,,,,,,, All the graves he opened had been
plundered. But there was a second and more basic reason for
journeying to Bahrein and this was the desire to attempt to solve
one of the major controversies in Measotamian scholarship, the
question of the ancient land of Dilmun and its precise location.
Early theories concerning the provenance of the people who used the
island as a graveyard are dramatic, but as we shall show incorrect.
Mackay himself persisted in the belief that the Pre-Islamic people
buried in the grave chambers were natives of the Arabian peninsula
who had merely used the island of Bahrein as convenient burial site
for their dead. A second belief about the burial mounds is that
they are Phonecian. Birish Museum analysis of ivory grave objects
had suggested them to be of Phoenician workmanship. It was
subsequently shown that not only did the ivories have nothing to do
with Phoenicia, but they did not even resemble Bahrein statuettes.
The Arabs of Bahrein had firmly believed that burial mounds to tbe
the graves of the Portuguese who had garrisoned the island in the
sixteenth century, A.D. With the above background and aims, the
Expedition set forth for Bahrein,,,,,,,,,,,
3: Bahrein : Its Archaeology and Geography The Discoveries on
Bahrein News of the teams activities in the Persian Gulf began to
filter back to Europe where some of the results from Bibby and his
senior colleague, P.V. Glob were published. They began to
demonstrate dramatically the ancient between the civilizations of
Ur, Dilmun and those of the Indus Valley. In 1960 Glob was to
remark explicitly that Bahrein has proved to be the legendary
Dilmun referred to in the cuneiform texts of Sumer, the bridge
between that primary seat of the urban revolution and the
civilization of Indus Valley in what is now Pakistan. in the same
year Belgrave, with Globs exuberance, recorded the first finds of
Bahrein: The three temples at Barbar ( North coast) were built one
top of another, apparently dating back to the third millennium B.C.
These well-built temples contained numerous
copper figures, tools and weapons, gold ornaments, pottery and,
the most spectacular find of all, a magnificent copper bulls head
Limestone for the construction of the temple of Barbar was imported
from Jeddah. The temple was dated somewhere between 2500 B.C. and
1800 B.C., largely on the basis of a copper figurine, os a male
supplicant found within the temple. The figurine, or icon, was very
Sumerian in appearance. If he had been found in Mesopotamia he
would certainly have been dated between 2500 and 1800 B.C. and he
could not be of different date here. And one of the alabaster vases
was of a shape known to have been used in Mesopotamia in the final
centuries of the third millennium B.C. In the temple , near what
was quite clearly an altar or pedestal in front of which libation
were offered, Bibby and Glob found several lapis lazuli pendants of
a type found in the cities of the Indus Valley. Whereas on the one
hand, the Barbar temple is thus reminiscent in its layout to the
temples of early dynastic Sumer, but with its bathing pool, it also
recalls the ritual baths of the Indus Valley cities (Notes: Just a
note on the word Barbar in the phrase of Temple of Barbar where it
is not clear whether a temple or a place that is being named thus.
There is a Su. word babbar which means both silver and the God
Brahma as in asimbabbar (Ta.aatimpaarpaar) occurring in the Hymn to
Inanna written by EnHudu anna( c. 2200 B.C.) This word occurs in
Tamil as paarppaar which is also a name of Siva VishnU and so forth
as well as the Brahmanahs given over to scriptural studies. Brahma
is also known as the Veetan, the god of the scriptures. This deity
may also be the same as the Sumerian Ea the Tamil version of which
is ayan. This may be a variant En-aa meaning the deity of the
waters and which may be linked with the practice of ritual baths
which is alive to this day. Almost all South Indian temples have a
tank specially built for this purpose.) One of the highlights of
archaeological research operating in the span between the Indus and
sites at Ur, has been the relatively frequent discovery of stone,
or steatite stamp seals. Seals of cylindrical type have been
associated with Mesopotamia while those indigenous to the Indus
have been square. Yet a third, much rare type has been discovered
in one of the most exciting finds at Bahrein. Bibby puts it neatly:
It was ,,,,,,,, a round stamp seal. It was about an inch in
diameter, flat on one side, with a design cut in the face, which I
could already see depicted two human beings. The other side was a
flat dome, pierced by a hole so that it cold be hung on a cord. And
the dome was decorated with a band of three incised lines and with
four incised circles, each with a dot in the middle. The material
was steatite, a soft stone of rather greasy appearance and
feel,,,,,, Now, among the thousands of cylindrical seals found in
Mesopotamia, there are a mere seventeen of those round seals. They
were not native to Mesopotamia and appeared to date to the period
between 2300 and 2000 B.C. Several bore inscriptions in the unknown
language of the Indus Valley. Moreover, three examples of the same
type of seal had been found in Mohenjo-Daro, though they were not
native to Mohenjo-Daro, where, as we have asserted, larger, square
seals have been shown to be the indigenous type. These three
intruder seals were, to reiterate, of the same type as the round
stamp seals with the Indus script found by Wooley at Ur and
published by Gadd 3: Bahrein : Its Archaeology and
Geography(continued) Two points now emerge: (1) the presence of
identical seals at Ur and Mohenjo-Daro proved that there had been
contact between India and Mesopotamia at the time of the Indus
civilization and (2) the round stamp seals were foreign both in
India and in Mesopotamia. If the round seals were alien in India
and in Mesopotamia, could it be that they were native to Bahrein?
It became apparent to glob and Bibby that the round seals were
native to Bahrein and belonged to the people who traded with both
Mesopotamia and India, and appear to have had a culture distinct
from both. The seal evidence suggests , furthermore , that in pre-
or proto-historic times Bahrein may have been an important
entreport of trade, a half-way house between the Indus and the
markets or ports at Ur. Glob, in fact, was led in 1958 to stae that
,,,,,,,, Bahrein was inhabitd by big businessmen who led this
trade. It is they and their families who lie buried in the 100,000
grave-mounds of Bahrein and it is presumably they who are described
on the city clay tablets of Ur as the Alik Telmun ( the traders to
Dilmun) [Notes(Loga): the word alik Telmun taken as archaic Tamil
means simply the people ( Ta. aaL, aaLu) of Telmun. This can be
ascertained only by re-reading the original Ur text being mentioned
here.] A list of objects located at Bahrein sites but foreign to
the area includes the steatite from which the locally used seals
were made. Steatite may have come from Persia or Oman, as well as
from points further a field. Copper fishhooks excavated at Bahrein,
as wel as large amounts of unworked copper were also of uncertain
origin, though copper would have been available in India and
Persian Luristan. The ivory, however, pointed more definitely to
India, though not with absolute certainty. The carnelian bead, on
the other hand, could only have come from India As far as its
material goes, the perfect cube of polished flim, found on Bahrein
could have originated there, yet it was recognized immediately as a
weight of the type in common use in the cities of the Indus Valley
and used nowhere else. Why had the merchants of Bahrein (Dilmun)
used the standard weights of the Indus valley? For Bibby there can
be only two explanations: either the first commercial impulses to
have reached Dilmun must have come , not from Measopotamia but from
India, or else India was a far more important commercial connection
with Dilmun than was Mesopotamia( where a completely different
weight system was in use) 3: Bahrein : Its Archaeology and
Geography(continued)
Before proceeding to a discussion of the relevance of other Gulf
sites to our topic, it is necessary to explicate the Bahrein-Dilmun
equation. In 1881, about 20 years after the first reading of
cuneiform, there existed some half-dozen documents mentioning a
land called Dilmun. Many such documents containing the names of
scores of obscure lands and cities had emerged from the libraries
of Assurbanipal. In 1880 Durand had found a cuneiform inscription
on Bahrein. The author of the inscription described himself as
slave of the God Inzak. In the British Museum tablet that Rawlinson
had himself deciphered and published, the God Inzak was defined as
the God Nabu, in other words, the principle deity - of Dilmun. And
Dilmun, according to the annals of Sargon of Assyria, was the land
whose ruler dwell thirty double-hours away in the midst of the sea
of the rising sun. Rawlinson, for what it was worth claimed that
Bahrein was identical with Dilmun. We are, we must confess with
Bibby, still away from knowing the exact location of Dilmun,
although Bibby tens to agree with Rawlinsons interpretation as the
one best fitting the facts. Another suggestive element is that our
word abyss comes to us from the Sumerian word abzu over a gap of
more than 4000 years. Abzu meant the fresh water below the earth.
Leonard Cottrell, Bibbys reviewer, recounts that: The Sumerians
envisaged the earth as a crust, below which was a sea of sweet
water and above was the salt or bitter sea. Dilmun, according to
their legends, was one of the places where the fresh water rose to
the surface. It has become clear from the excavations in which
Mr.Bibby has participated, that Bahrein was in ancient times, rich
in fresh water springs and reservoirs. We note, finally, that as
recently as 1964, Professor Kramer of the University of
Pennsylvania, and one of the worlds great authorities on Sumerian,
maintained his hypothesis that Dilmun may turn out to the Indus, or
some part of it. Suggests Kraner, The Mesopotamian people which
settled in India and sparked the Indus civilization were ,,, not
the Sumerians, but -- most probably -- the original settlers of
sumer, the Ubaidians ,,, With the aid of cuneiform translations it
is thus rather well established that Dilmun was aholy land in the
eyes of the Sumerians. Bibby regards it as very appropriate that
the first major building contemporary with Sumer that located on
Bahrein, was that of a temple. In order to pursue ancient trade
route and to determine the extent of the homogeneity (or
heterogeneity) of culture elements and artefacts along the south
shore of the Gulf, the Danish team expanded west to the island of
Failaka, and east to the borders of Muscat. It is to these areas,
to Socotra, Dubai, and the Handramaut that we now turn. 4: The Lure
of Other related Sites
While Bibby appears satisfied with the general
Dilmun-Bahrein-area equation, he is tantalized now by the riddle of
the Ubaid sites located by the team in the eastern province of
Saudi Arabia, just west of Bahrein. A find of barbed and tangled
arrowheads, flint implements, knives, scrapers, awls, thin
greenish-yellow potsherds decorated with geometric patterns in
dark-brown paint discovered at Tarut, near Dharan, was recognized
at once by Bibby as Ubaid, Over the span of 1000 years the first
agricultural settlers of the Tigris-Euphrates moved gradually into
lower Mesopotamia, their pottery spreading to the already-settled
regions of North Mesopotamia and Syria. This was the Al-Ubaid
culture. The nearest known settlement of the Ubaid culture to
Dharan (and earliest of them all) was at Eridu, 400 miles to the
north, yet now, as Bibby explains, the Ubaid culture lay also in
Arabia! Bibby summarizes the excitement generated by discovery of
the Arabian Ubaid sites: The fifth millennium B.C, must, with all
reservations, be the date of the Ubaid site on the coast. And it
changed all our concepts of the history of the Gulf. Had
civilization reached the Gulf from the north after all, and not
from the east? Or had the Ubaid culture originated in east Arabia
and spread from there to Mesopotamia? Was there some basis for the
old Sumerian legend of the fish-man who had brought agriculture to
Mesopotamia from Arabian Gulf? Whatever the answer, one thing was
clear: Civilization was over a thousand years older in the Gulf
lands than we believed, and somehow that for thousand years of
history had to be filled. It was tantalizing to know that there was
one place, and one place only, where missing centuries could be
investigated. The tell of Tarut had Ubaid were in its lowest, and
Barbar ware in its uppermost strata. In between would be the tale
of how the one developed into the other Another piece to the puzzle
of the growth and movement of the civilization of the Persian Gulf
emerges from the tiny island of Failaka at the head of the Persian
Gulf. The expedition, as guests of an Indian doctor on the island,
found sherds of thin, red, ridged Barbar ware. The significance of
Bahreini Barbar ware on Failaka in Kuwait (over 250 miles from
Bahrein) lay in the likelihood that failaka too, was part of Dimun.
In this case, Dilmun would be musch bigger than originally believed
or, in Bibbys words, the distance from Bahrein to Failaka was the
distance from Eridu, the southernmost city of bayloan, to Eshunna,
its northernmost city. In geographical extent, then, Dilmun could
measure upto Babylonia itself Dubai and Socotra Moving east along
the coast of the Trucial Oman, we wish now to mention again only
briefly that Indian contact with this region in historical times is
abundantly documented in the Periplus of the Erythraen Sea, as
translated by Schoff. The Periplus describes in remarkable detail
the antiquity of Indian trade, not only with parts and people of
makran coast, the Persian Gulf, Red Sea Greece and Rome, but on the
coast of Eastern Africa.
The present writer suggests that the history of Indian trade in
various locations along the Gulf is, in fact, a continuing
historical tradition. Reporting in the Hindustan Times in 1969,
A.K.Sen observes: Indian and Pakistani settlers in this tiny desert
state (Dubai) have formed themselves into thriving smuggling
syndicates. They use with impunity the British Protectorate
Sheikdom as a base for smuggling gold and consumer goods across the
Arabian Sea into India,,,,,,,, The Dubai merchants exchange gold
for Indian silver, tea and jute, cardamon, white and black pepper,
cloves and cinnamon. The tea and jute are smuggled into
Iran,,,,,,,,, There are financial rackets which have contracts with
Indian settlers who send money home from Britain and East Africa.
Indias long and unguarded coast,,, has become a safe rendezvous for
Indian and Dubai smugglers. A unique Indian bronze has been found
at Khor Reiri, 45 kilometer east of Salaha in the province of
Dhofar of Haudramat. Goetz suggests that Khor Reiri is perhaps
identical with the ancient port of Sumhurun, or Moscha mentioned
several times in the Periplus. Goetz dates the bronze to the third
century A.D. We can regard it as certain that our bronze statuette
came to Simhuran just at the time when, before the crisis of the
Roman Empire just at the time when, before the crisis of the Roman
Empire in the second and third quarters of the third century, the
trade between Alexandria, South Arabia and India had been on its
zenith As the bronze was unearthed in the ruins of a private house,
it could not apparently belonged to the inventory of a temple or
even of a public chapel, but had been the private property of some
rich Indian merchant, probably part of a house shrine, and having
been damaged by some accident was left behind when the flat was
vacated. The merchant probably was a member of the Jaina or
Buddhists communities who represented the overwhelming majority of
maritime traders. Socotra, Cape Guardaful The island of Dioscordia
( Socotra) is mentioned in paragraph thirty of the Periplus, whose
author remarks: The inhabitants are few and they live on the coast
toward the north, which from this side faces the continent. They
are foreigners, a mixture of Arabs and Indians and Greeks. . . . .
There is also produced in this island cinnabar, that called Indian,
which is collected in drops from the trees. Both Ptolemy and the
unknown author of the Periplus bear witness to the number of
merchants engaged in the Indian trade, and the former draws much of
his information about India from men who had voyaged there and even
resided for long in that country? During the 1956 Oxford Expedition
to Socotra was the belief that : Socotra had been an important
entrepot for trade between the Far East and the Mediterranean
between the second century B.C. and the sixth century A.D. Schoff
states that the cloths and
precious stones, the timbers and spices - particularly cinnamon
-- brought from India largely by Indian vessels, were redistributed
at Socotra or Guardfui, and carried to the Nile and the
Mediterranean. Could these goods have been transshipped through
Oppenheimss and Globs class of Alik Telmun? Hoping to discover
Roman ruins, P.L. Shinnie, a member of the expedition, made a
survey of the eastern half of the island. Aside from Portuguese and
Ethiopic ruins, however, little else was found on the coast that
gave any indication of important ancient settlement. The
multi-disciplinary Oxford Expedition, being not only
archaeological, but geographical and medical, carried out a series
of rather extensive blood-typing tests upon the Socotri Bedouin. A
note in the expeditions report is tantalizing, if vague: The
overall results ( of the blood tests) are not very similar,
generally, the Socotrans appear more Asiatic. . . . I personally,
seeing that Socotra is a little nearer Africa than Asia, was
expecting an African blood picture. . . . The roundheadedness and
other physical features of the Bedouin suggested that the Socotran
aboriginals are remnants of a Hamitic population once widespread in
South Arabia, and later driven out by a long-headed Semitic race
from the north. They may thus, perhaps, be called one of the few
genuine Arab communities. . . . . ( Note: Could this roundhead
Bedouins who are Blacks like the Africans or Ethiopians be a group
of Dravidians somehow lost there? This may explain why the Telugus
call the Tamil people aravalu meaning perhaps people from Arabia.
Just a thought - Loga) This description by Botting has relevance
for what Laura Thompson calls the integrated anthropology.
Realizing that the population of such small islands as Fiji, Guam,
and Tahiti preserve relatively isolated gene pools, Thompson urges
their study as favorable model natural laboratories. Such remote
and fast-disappearing populations might be investigated from at
least two interrelated angles: (1) as evolving human breeding
populations of micro-races, and (2) as culture-creating and
culture-transmitting historical groups, for purposes of research
into related problems concerning the evolution of microcultures. It
is our opinion that the non-Bedouin (aboriginal) population of
Socotra provides such a model population breeding unit, and bears
immediate further study. It is regrettable that the medical results
of the Oxford groups researches have not been conclusive, nor have
been made available for scrutiny by the wider scholars.
A final word is in order on the life-style of Socotras
non-Bedouin inhabitants, who constitute the muqqadam (headmen) and
merchant class, acting as agents between the Bedouin and the
visiting dhow captains. This means that they must travel round the
country acquiring goods from the Bedouin by purchase or barter, and
selling these goods to dhown traders from India, Abadan, Muscat,
Mukalla and Aden.
5. Conclusion: In our exploration of the intercourse between the
civilizations of the Indus Valley, Mesopotamia, Dilmun and other
points, we have illustrated the continuing role of archaeological
evidence, as well as that of historical documents or narratives,
such as that of the Periplus. The reconstruction of the picture of
Indias links with the West has been marked by tremendous zeal on
the part of many Indian scholars, and by conservative optimism on
the part f western scholars. The later are often hesitant to give
credence to Rig Vedic, Upanisadic or Puranic evidence of the
antiquity of Indias outside contact. Yet, on the basis of such
recent evidence as that from Bahrein, ( for example, the Indus-type
weights found in early Dilmun levels) it is conceivable that
extensive trade contacts between India and the Persian Gulf existed
even before the height of the Indus Valley Civilization. Perhaps
even more important, is the accumulating testimony of the advanced
role of the Indian traders who, as we have attempted to show, may
have carried their sphere of influence, as well as some of their
products, to the gates of Ur itself. A reading of Bibby impresses
one with the importance of a sound methodology. Although we have
not been able to deal deeply with archeological filed method in
this paper, the interested reader will find in the works of the
Danish team in the Gulf, a rare sensitivity to the myriad problems
of field work in new areas, and an underlying concern for the
co-operation with host-country personnel, and traditional leaders
which resulted in an enrichment of the latters appreciation of
their own culturalhistory.
_______________________________________________________________________
__________________________________ Dravidian and Negro-African
(Ethnic and LinguisticAffinities) By U.Pupadhyaya Susheela
O.Uphadyaya
The language spoken in the Indian sub-continent are classified
into four groups. Among these four families of languages, the
Dravidian, spoken mainly in South India occupies the second place
next to Indo-Aryan sub-branch of the Indo-European family according
to the number of speakers it has, but it occupies an equal - if not
more important position because of the contribution made by it to
the totality of the literary and cultural heritage of India. Though
the native tradition considers all these languages as derived from
Sanskrit, modern scholarship has proved a century ago the four
literary languages of
the South, together with at least a score in the North-West and
Assam in the East belong to a distinct linguistic stock different
from the other three linguistic families namely IndoAryan,
Austro-Asiatic and Tibeto-Burman. From he beginning of the 19th
century, modern scholarship began to investigate the structure and
parentage of the Dravidian family of languages. In the early
decades of the century, William Carey, a missionary from Bengal
noted that the languages of South India should be differentiated
from the Aryan languages of the North. His opinion was further
supported by the great linguists of those days Max Muller, Ellis
and Stevenson. The epoch-making work of Bishop Robert Caldwell in
1856 named A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian languages proved
beyond doubt the existence of a separate language family and laid
the foundation for a new era of linguistic scholarship in India. He
not only proved that these languages belong to a distinct genetic
group, but also showed the structure and characteristic features of
this family of languages. In spite of the fact that the twentieth
century scholarship has modified many of the conclusions arrived at
by Caldwell, the monumental work produced by him proves to be an
indispensable companion for a modern scholar because of the wealth
of information contained in it. Since then these languages have
been considered to belong to a separate stock and the scholars have
been interested in penetrating into the origin and antecedents of
this linguistic and ethnic group. Were they really the autochthonos
or the original inhabitants of India? If not, from where did they
come to India? To which other ethnic stock of the world are they to
be related? What were they like in their linguistic and cultural
habits in the remote past? What is the nature of their contact or
confrontation with other linguistic or ethnic groups within and
outside India? What was their contribution to the evolution of
pan-Indian civilization?
Of the four major ethnic groups of India, the Austrics are
believed to be oldest inhabitants. This long-headed and medium
sized race is considered to be one of the oldest offshoots of the
so-called Mediterranean race, tough on their way from the
Mediterranean to India they were much mixed with other peoples and
acquired new characteristics. Before the Austrics there were
certain Negrito people whose identity and origin is yet to be
investigated. Dravidians and Sino-Tibetans came later, the former
from the NorthWest and the latter from the east. Aryans, one of the
sub-groups of the Indo-European stock, are the last to enter the
sub-continent whose confrontation with the earlier inhabitants is
now almost an accepted fact and also recorded in their literature.
It is also believed that the composite culture of India is the
creation of the incoming Aryans and the already established
Dravidians. The presence of Dravidian languages throughout the
length and breath of the subcontinent, e.g. Brahui in Baluchistan
and Afghanistan, Kudukh and Malto in the Eastern part of India and
the numerous tribal languages spread throughout the hilly regions
of Central India proves it beyond doubt that the Dravidians are not
simply the inhabitants of
South India, but have, at one time occupied the entire region of
the sub-continent. The excavations of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro have
also brought to light the fact that Dravidian Civilization reigned
supreme in the North-Western part of the sub-continent in a period
about three to four millennia before the Christian era : a period
before what is termed the Aryan invasion of India. These factors
have indicated the possibility of the Dravidians having come to
India - if at all they came from outside - from the North -Western
frontiers. If this is to be taken for granted, which part of the
North-Western region did they come from? Who are the kinsmen of
these Dravidians who were left behind or who might have migrated to
some other direction? Are they related to the ancient races like
Aegean, Sumerian, Caucasion, Finnish, Elamite, Pelasgian, Basque
etc? Or to the Proto-HamiticSemitic population whose descendents
now occupy the North-West Africa and Arabia? Or to the
Negro-Africans who are now completely extinct by the onslaughts of
other races and hence whose descendents now survive only in
India?
Caldwell, the pioneer of Dravidian linguistics is not unaware of
the problem of the affiliation of these languages. He has discussed
in some length the possible relationship of the Dravidian languages
with what he termed Scythian tongues, the numerous languages once
spoken in the Middle East region. The idea first expressed by a
Danish scholar Rusk was elaborated by Caldwell in considerable
detail. The translation of the inscriptions discovered at Behistun
in Western Media in the language of the Scythians has thrown some
light on the connection of the Dravidian languages with the
Scythian group. [ Note:The cover term Scythian of Caldwell includes
the languages like the Finnish, the Turkish, the Mongolian, and the
Tungusian families. But the later research has grouped the
Finno-Ugric under a separate family and the Turkish, Mogolian,
Tunguz and Korean are considered as belonging to the Altaic
family.] Caldwell cites instances like the presence of retroflexes,
presence of stop consonants as voiceless in the initial position
and as voiced in the medial position of a word, genitive forms
ending in na and nina, dative suffixes ikki/ikka, accusative forms
ending in un/in, use of relative participles etc. etc. which lead
him to conclude: The Pre-Aryan inhabitants of the Deccan should
appear, from the evidence furnished by their language alone, in the
silence of history, in the absence of ordinary possibilities, to be
allied to the tribes that appear to have overspread Europe before
the arrival of the Teutons and the Hellenes and even before the
arrival of the Celts Caldwell has also noted that in the vocabulary
of certain Dravidian languages, a few Semitic analogies may also be
discovered which appeared to him to be of no significance and hence
might be due to the contact of the Dravidians with the Semitic
people their arrival in India. He also discusses the possibility of
some relationship of the Dravidian
languages with an African language Bornu and some Australian
tongues, but this was not elaborated further due to the lack of
information about these languages. Up to the first few decades of
the 20th Century, our sources of information were limited tot eh
Dravidian languages and the history of Dravidians in South India.
The advances made by the sister-disciplines like Archaeology and
Anthropology during the middle of this century with development of
the technique of historical reconstruction in Linguistics have
thrown a flood of light on the problems connected with Dravidian
ethnology The Indus valley excavations and the interpretation
offered by a host of scholars right from Father Heras to modern
scholars like Asko Parpola of Scandinavia together with many other
excavations conducted in different areas of middle East, Egypt and
other Negro-African regions by the bands of English, German and
French scholars during the first half of our century have widened
the horizons of modern scholarship and directed our thinking about
peoples of prehistoric times in an altogether new line. One of its
great contributions is to uphold the supremacy of ancient
civilizations which led us to believe that the Indo-European and
Semitic races are not the only leaders of civilization in the world
and numerous tribes spread over the vast continents of Africa,
Europe and Asia had their own well-developed civilizations in
Pre-Indo_European and Pre-Semitic times. This has not only led the
scholars to estimate the contribution of these ancient
civilizations in forming the composite cultures of these regions in
the post-Christian era, but also focused the attention of the world
on the possible links of these ancient civilizations which form the
substrata. Mohenjodaro and Harappa excavations have revealed the
existence of well-organized urban civilization in India before the
entry of Indo-Aryans. It has been an admitted fact that when Aryans
came to India they were like semi-nomads whereas Dravidians at that
time formed a settled community of agriculturists and herdsmen.
They lived in cities with fortifications and they had many
amenities of advanced city life like public bath, drainages etc.
Exactly in the same manner Schliemans discovery of Pre-Hellenic
Pelasgian sites among the ruins of the old cities of troy in
Asia-Minor and in Mycenae in Greece revealed the existence of a
highly advanced urban civilization in those regions. Similar
Archaelogical excavations conducted in Egypt, Nubia, Ur and many
other African, Mediterranean and Middle-eastern regions have proved
the existence of advanced city civilizations in the regions from
Africa to India. As a result of these excavations the scholars in
the first half of this century tried to link the Ancient Dravidians
with the Mediterranean races of he Neolithic era. Nilakantha Sastri
and Suniti Kumar Chatterjee the two great authorities on South
Indian History and Indian linguistics respectively have
demonstrated the identity of the Dravidian race with the
Mediterranean races based on anthropological and linguistic
evidences. Lahovary has cited a number of linguistic evidences as
well as toponymic evidences to prove the racial unity of the
Basques, Caucasians and Dravidians. Though not organized
systematically Lahovarys work merits a serious consideration
because of the wealth of information it contains about some
phonetic and morphological features and hundreds of lexical items
as well as toponymic items gathered from many ancient languages of
the Middle East. He
has rightly focused the attention of the scholars on the
fruitfulness of toponymic studies in determining historical
relations. As he observes In toponymy there can be no questions of
cultural or commercial loan-words, nor of fortuitous resemblances,
for it is the direct and faithful mirror of the language of the
people of a country at a given time and even long outlast it
Ramaswamy Aiyar too has noted many similarities between the
toponymy of Dravidian India and Persia. Sadasivam has attempted to
prove the common parentage of Dravidian and Sumerian languages and
Tuttle has cited many lexical and grammatical resemblances between
Nubian and Dravidian. Zvelebil attempted to prove that the
Dravidians were a highlander folks who lived, sometime around 4000
BC in the rugged mountainous regions of North-East Iran where they
were in contact with the Ural_Altaic people and from there they
migrated into the Indian Sub-continent and played a leading role in
the ethnographic composition of the Indus Valley peoples before
they ultimately reached Southern India. McAlpin has cited many
lexical and grammatical points to indicate the relationship of the
Elamite and Dravidian. Some French, German and African scholars
have also attempted to trace the common heritage of ancient
Dravidian India and Negro Africa in culture, language and
civilization. As early as 1897 the German ethnologists Frobenius
noticed some cultural similarities between Negro Africa and Ancient
India. Baumann and Westermann in their monumental work on African
ethnology and civilization have noticed the influence of Indian
Culture on Neo-Sudanese Culture. Cheik Anta Diop has traced many
resemblances between Negro-Africa, Egyptian and Oriental
Civilization. Cheik Tidiane NDiaye has shown that many words and
expressions denoted by the Indus Valley Script can be related to
Dravidian as well as Senegalese languages like Wolof and Pular. L.
Homburger had brought to light for the first time, some phonetic,
morphological and lexical parallels between certain African
languages and Dravidian languages. Though her studies were limited
to a few isolated languages of these groups, they have drawn the
attention of the linguists and the statesmen like L.S. Senghor to
make a deeper probe into the prehistoric ties of
Negro-Dravidian-Mediterranean races which have laid the foundations
of civilizations much before the dawn of modern western
civilizations. The researches being carried out now at the Institut
Fundamental dAfrique Noire of the university of Dakar and the
Center of Advanced Study in Linguistics of the Annamali University
are expected to provide very strong linguistic evidence to support
the hypothesis formed by the ethnologists about the ancient ties of
these races which once occupied the entire region from Negro-Africa
to south India through the Mediterranean and Middle-East. Though
the present inhabitants of the peninsula India and Negro-Africa
have very few common physical characteristics due to mixture with
different races, the pre-historic excavations go to prove the
racial and cultural unity of these peoples. As Dravidians are
considered to have come from the North-West of India and not to be
original inhabitants of South India , it is also recognized that
the Negroes of Africa are not the original inhabitants of their
regions, though they have evolved in that region for a considerable
period of time in the history of the continent. It is generally
recognized that the Pygmies
and Bushmen of the equatorial forests and the Kalahari desert
are the survivals of the races which were spread over the whole of
Africa before the arrival of Mediterranean peoples in the North and
of darker skinned people in the North-East. The brown or black
population seems to have invaded Africa from the East and tradition
points to the regions east of the upper Niles as being those from
which they spread South and West. It is now generally accepted that
in the Neolithic and early metal ages about 8th to 3rd millennia
BC, the vast region of Western Asia with its extensions up to Niles
and Indus, was occupied by what may be called a blackish race with
its local variations like ProtoMediterranean, Mediterranean and
Hamite. This race is characterized by blackish brown complexion,
long head, long straight and narrow face etc. The racial features
of these peoples are testified not only by anthropological
considerations but also by the homogeneity of cultural
considerations by the study of their monuments artifacts and tools
unearthed in those regions. As Lahovary, points out, the Neolithic
Civilizations, which have so profoundly influenced human evolution
have had a single origin and a single center of diffusion-- namely
the Near est. This region endowed with a good climate and blessed
by the river irrigation facilities, contributed much to the
evolution of civilizations and it was here that the arts of
agriculture, cattle breeding, weaving and pottery developed and
later spread into Europe and other regions through migration. It is
from this area that Bronze-Age civilization was carried to and
spread in Europe before the advent of the Indo-Europeans. A series
of migrations in different directions from that center until the
break in the development of this civilization, was well testified
by the archaeological discoveries. In spite of some local
differences like the Prot-Mediterranean type in Egypt and India,
Hamitic type in East_Africa and Ibero-insular Mediterranean type
from Anatolia to Western India, we can see, on the whole a
fundamental racial and cultural unity in all this part of the
ancient world which is rightly called the cradle of civilization.
Three principle waves of migrations may be specially noted here.
The first of these possessed no common name for metal and
introduced Neolithic civilization into Europe together with the
ribboned and incised pottery and a little later the painted ware.
The second and third series of migrations gave Europe megalithic
civilization and that of the first metal and bronze ages. The
fourth series of migrations gave writing to Europe. The fundamental
unity of these Pre-Indo-European civilizations spread over this
vast area from Dravidian India to Negro-Africa can be observed by
the resemblances noticed in anthropological traits, social customs,
religious beliefs, artifacts and linguistic features. Though due to
pressure or onslaughts of the incoming races like Semites and
IndoEuropeans many of them are either completely exterminated or
survive in some remote corners in the mainland (like the Basques,
Elamites, Caucasians etc), those who had earlier migrated into
distant places like India and Africa survived preserving and
developing their age-old customs and civilizations. These primitive
people contributed a major share in the creation of the composite
culture of the later periods with IndoEuropeans and Semitic
peoples.
Anthropologists have shown many similarities between the human
skeletons unearthed in Dravidian India and the Western regions of
Neolithic times. Most of the skeletons found in Mohenjo Daro were
very much like those of the megalithic civilizations of the
Mediterranean regions. The skeletons found in Sialkot present great
analogies with those of the pre-dynastic Egypt and of Mesopotamia.
The conclusions arrived at by the Indus valley excavations are
further supported by the epoch making discoveries made by the
excavations at Jericho, Upper Galilee, Northern Iran, Egypt, Kenya,
Tangkanyika and other regions. The ancient matriarchal system of
this civilization is found even today among the Dravidians,
especially in Kerala and South Kanara, the Basques of Pyrenees, the
Berbers of Sahara and many communities of Negro-Africa, where
inheritance is transmitted through women. The Cult of Serpent The
Cult of Serpent is another prominent feature of Dravidian India,
Pre-Hellenistic Mediterranean world and Negro-Africa. Almost every
village in Dravidian India, especially the wets coast belt, has
what is known as sarpa-kavu or naga bana, a bush or a piece of land
surrounded by the thick growth of trees and bushes wherein the
stone-idols of serpents are worshipped. This is also associated
with a variety of rituals in which we also find, among other
things, dialogues between priest possessed by the serpent-god and
the devotee. Many of the rituals associated with snake-worship in
Africa find their parallels in the practices noticed in the Western
Coast of South India. As the dead body of a serpent is cremated in
Dravidian India with due funeral rites, it is buried by many
Africans tribes with ritual formalities. Mother-Goddess Worship of
the Mother Goddess is an important religious rite commonly noticed
among the followers of this culture and we find this custom
practiced throughout this region. The later Indo-European ancestors
of the Greeks and Aryans brought with them the worship of the gods
who lived in the sky and who were just anthropomorphized forces of
nature, In contrast with these heavenly gods the Dravidians,
Aegeans and other folks of these regions worshipped primarily the
great Mother Goddess residing on the earth. This goddess has a male
counterpart who is a passive figure. The concept of Shakti and
Shiva in India grew out of this Dravidian belief. It is worth
noting here that she is considered as Black Goddess (kali) in India
as well as the Pre-Hellenistic Greece. She is the source of all
life and also the goddess of death. Some of the Sumerian rituals
relating to the marriage of the Mother Goddess with the Moon g=god
find their parallels in the temple rituals of South India
especially in the marriage of the Mother Goddess with Shiva. The
god Nyame of the Ashanti and other peoples of West Africa is
considered to be female, the great mother who gives life to all and
is symbolized by the moon. The name Great Mother is one of the
epithets given to the supreme being in African regions. Murugan,
the god of mountains, the son of the mother goddess is a prominent
and typical deity of the Dravidian India. It is interesting to note
that at least twenty-five tribes in East Africa
worship Murugu as supreme god, and like the Dravidian god
Murugan, the African Murungu resides in the sacred mountains.
During the first millennium BC, the cult of the mother goddess
gradually lost its primacy in the Mediterranean regions and in the
Middle East under the influence of religious transcendentalism and
of the patriarchal culture of the Semitic and Indo-European
peoples. Dravidian India and Northern Africa, comparatively less
affected by these influences, have kept these ancient beliefs with
some local modifications. Even today, in almost all villages of
Southern India a form of the mother goddess is worshipped as a
village deity and she is specially worshipped to ward off evil
spirits and contagious diseases or epidemic and the rituals
associated with this worship do not bear any influence of the Aryan
customs and the Brahmanical ways of worship. The word amma used to
refer this village goddess as well as the disease of small-pox etc
caused or cured by her will have its parallel in the same word amma
used by the Dogons of the French Sudan. As in Dravidian India,
altars are built in those parts of African also for sacrifice and
communal worship for the deity amma. It is worth noting the
contrast between the patriarchal system and the male gods of the
later Indo-European culture and the matriarchal system and the
mother goddess of the ancient cultures of this region. The offering
of hair by women for fulfilling a vow to god and the practices of
offering a maiden to the service of gods in temples ( the so-called
sacred prostitution or Devadasi System) are some of the rituals
noticed in Ancient South Indian temples, Middle East and the
Mediterranean areas. Similarly the worship of tress -- fig, oak, or
peepul - to fulfil a vow or to get boon , is also a common practice
in Dravidian India, Mediterranean and African regions.
It is also believed that the cult of animism originated in
Ancient Babylonia and made its way to Sub-Saharan Africa via the
Carthaginian Civilization which called it the cult of Astarte. This
cult was later on introduced to South America by African slaves. It
is likely that some of the above mentioned beliefs common to
Dravidian and Negro-Africans originated from the same source. The
practice of placing the dead body in terra cotta jars was current
in Ancient South India, especially in the regions of Pondichery
even up to the late iron Age. A similar practice was brought to
light by the excavations in Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean
regions. It may be noticed here that resurrection is an important
belief of the religions of this area and the departed soul will
come back in course of time. The jar is perhaps believed to be womb
of the mother goddess. It is perhaps this belief in resurrection
that led to ancestor worship. As in the case with Dravidian India,
the Ancestral spirits play a prominent role in African and
Mediterranean thought. The practice of offering sacrifice to
ancestors at regular intervals is noticed in
almost all African tribes from South Africa to Sahara. The
Ancestors are believed to have survived death and to be living in a
spiritual world, but still taking a lively interest in the affairs
of their families. The Ancestors who have not received proper
burial or funeral rites become ghosts and wander between this world
and the next, causing considerable harm to the members of the
family. But those who are properly buried according to accepting
rituals attain divinity and rank with other gods and look after
their descendents on the earth. The common features noticed in the
areas of religious and social customs find their parallel in art
and architecture also. As early as 1918, James Hornett noticed
similarities existing between the South Indian boat designs and the
Ancient boat designs of the Nile and Mesopotamia. He observed that
before splitting off from the original stock the Dravidians living
around Mesopotamia borrowed or invented the circular coracle and
the reed raft. Coomarasamy has noticed that the ancient ritual and
decorative designs of the Aegeans and the Dravidians are very much
alike. In the technique dying, jewellery and in the making of metal
weapons the West African Peuls and the Dravidians show remarkable
resemblances. The Gonds of Central India, a Dravidian tribe, even
now erect the houses similar to those erected by the Gallas of
Somaliland. Archaeologists have also noticed resemblances between
the megalithic structures, tombs and monuments of the Dravidian
regions and the Mediterranean regions. The objects found in the
Megalithic monuments of Hyderabad are similar to the objects
discovered in the Egyptian regions belonging to the second dynasty.
The ornaments of gold discovered in the tombs of Adichanallur of
Dravidian India resemble those discovered in Enkomi, Cyprus and the
surrounding regions of the Bronze Age. Nilakanta Sastri hs shown
the existence of numerous analogues between certain types of
pre-historic tombs of predynastic Egypt and South India as well as
between the Stone urn burials of South India and Syria. The bronze
bowels discovered in Nigiris (South India) show remarkable
resemblances to those found in Ur (Sumer) of the third millennium
BC and Assyria. The art of making pottery with various designs on
it, one of the achievements of the Paleolithic period, also aids us
in discovering the possible relationship of these ancient races.
Many archaeologists have noted resemblances between the pottery
designs of Dravidian India and the Mediterranean regions) In this
vast territory of great civilizations, we can distinguish at least
three important linguistic types. Of these three the Indo-European
an inflectional type is evidently brought by the later conquerors
of these regions. Hittite is the only one which is now considered
to be related to the Indo-European family. The other ancient
languages which show agglutinative and inflectional tendencies may
be considered as belonging to two separate families. Of these two,
the proto-Semitic forms the upper layer. Other languages which show
an agglutinating tendency with invariable roots using chains of
detachable suffixes belong to the still earlier inhabitants of this
region who founded the earliest civilizations.
It is perhaps due to the pressure of the Semitic stock that the
earlier inhabitants speaking these agglutinative languages were
dispersed from this area and went in eastern directions towards
India and in Western directions towards Africa. The speakers of the
Dravidian languages and the Ne