Book Title: Handbook of History of Religions
Author(s): Edward Washburn
Publisher: Sanmati Tirth Prakashan Pune

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Page 544
________________ [Footnote 1: The Dasyus, heathen, or pagans, are by no means a wholly uncivilized mass to the poets of the Rig Veda. They have wealth, build forts, and are recognized as living in towns or forts. We learn little about them in Brahmanic literature, except that they bury their dead and with them their trinkets. Their graves and dolmen gray-stones are still found.] [Footnote 2: Some scholars think that the Dravidians entered from the Northwest later than the Kolarians, and, pushing them to either side of the peninsula, descended through them to the South. The fact that some Kolarian tribes closely related by language are separated (to East and West) by hundreds of miles, and have lost all remembrance of their former union, favors this view of a Dravidian wedge splitting and passing through the Kolarian mass. But all here is guess-work. The Dravidians may have been pushed on by Kolarians that entered later, while the latter may have been split by the Aryan invasion; and this seems to us more probable because the other theory does not explain why the Kolarians did not go South instead of taking to the hills of the East and West.] [Footnote 3: The whole list of these tribes as given by Cust, Sketch of the Modern Languages of the East Indies, is as follows: The Kolarians include the Sunth[=a]ls, Mund[=a]ri Koles (Koches), Kh[=a]rians, Juangs, Korwas, Kurs, Sav[=a)ras, Mehtos, Gadabas, P[=a]h[=a]rias; the Dravidians include the tribes called Tamil, Telugu, Kanarese, Malays=allim, Tulu, Kudagu, Toda, Kota, Khond, Gond, Or[=a]on, R[=a]jmah[=a]li, Keik[=a]di, Yeruk[=a]la.] [Footnote 4: The sacrifices of the wild tribes all appear to have the object of pleasing or placating the god with food, animal or vegetable; just as the Brahmanic sacrifice is made to please, with the secondary thought that the god will return the favor with interest; then that he is bound to do so.

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