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- மறைமலையம் LOMMLDMWWILD – 31
"They (the orientalists) pictured the pre-Aryans as little more than untutored savages (whom it would have been grotesque to credit with any reasoned scheme of religion or philosophy). Now that our knowledge of them has been revolutionized and we are constrained to recognize them as no less highly civilized-In some respects, indeed, more highly civilized - than the contemporary Sumerians or Egyptians, it behoves us to re-draw the picture afresh and revise existing misconceptions regarding their religion as well as their material culture." And in another place of his remarkable work he says: "The Indus civilization was Pre-Aryan and the Indus language or languages must have been Pre-Aryan also. Possibly, one or other of them (if, as seems likely, there were more than one) was Dravidic. This, for three reasons, seems a most likely conjecture-first, because Dravidic speaking people were the precursors of the Aryans over most of Northern India and were the only people likely to have been in possession of a culture as advanced as the Indus culture; secondly, because on the other side of the Krithar Range and at no great distance from the Indus valley, the Brahu is of Baluchistan have preserved among themselves an island of Dravidic speech which may well be a relic of Pre-Aryan times, when Dravidic was perhaps the common language of these parts; thirdly, because the Dravidic languages being agglutinative it is not unreasonable to look for a possible connection between them and the agglutinative language of Sumer in the Indus valley, which as we know, had many other close ties with Sumer."
So much precaution and reservation with which the above statement made by Sir John Marshall as regards the high antiquity of the Dravidian people, their language and culture, may seem unnecessary to those who possess an intimate knowledge of ancient Tamil literature, some of the extant works of which such as Tholkappiam, Paripadal, Purananooru and others date from 3500 B.C. to the first century A.D. and bear witness to the high level of civilization which the Tamils reached in Pre-Aryan times. Certainly there could have been at that remote period none but one Dravidian language spoken not only all over India but even beyond its frontiers,
