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JAINISM
Burmese or to Mon-khmerese. The ethnical map of the settlement of these people in ancient India is not yet made.13
The ancient Aryans in the process of their marching along India must have undoubtedly had contacts with all these peoples and borrowed from them many elements of material and spiritual culture," but it is difficult to ascertain what precisely was borrowed in the west, in the regions of the civilisation of the valley of the Indus and what in the east, on the plains of the Ganges.
Several research scholars assume that the kins of Saudyumna and Satadyumna, referred to in the geneological lists of Puranas originated from the Mundas.15 The culture of the hidden copper treasure and yellow ceramics, the contemporary civilisation of the valley of Indus, which is widely known at present and referred to in every work on the ancient history of India, was also quite possibly created by the ancestors of the Mundas.16
13. All the researchers who have written about the ancient history, ethnography or geography of India, have expressed their opinion on this question. More or less new works, attracting wide attention of indologists are: K. Shafer, Ethnography of Ancient India; Sh. B. Chaudhuri, Ethnic Settlement in Ancient India; K. M. Pannikar, A Survey of Indian History (published in Russian translation); G. K. Pillai, Traditional History of India; R. Gopal, India of Vedic Kalpasutras; and D. S. Sirkar, Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India.
14. Refer to I. Zarubin, The Vershik Speech of Kanjut Language; F. B. J. Kuiper, Proto-Munda Words in Sanskrit; G. T. Bowles, Linguistic and Racial Aspects of the Mundas Problem.
Pillai in his work Traditional History of India writes that in the Santali (the strongest language in the Munda family) the word 'Jambu' which formed a part of the ancient name of India-Jambudvipa-means 'strong heat' and the words 'Sind, Sindh' mean 'break into', 'make a breach into'. In as much as the word 'Sind' gave birth to the name of the country viz. India, Pillai considers that it is possible to interpret it in the sense that Aryans as though 'broke through' in this country. This is given here as only an example of numerous attempts to clarify the degree of influence of pre-Aryan population and in particular of the Mundas, on the language and culture of Aryans. Shaffer narrates that on the atlas Constable's Hand Atlas of India (Westminster, 1893, pl. 9) Mundas are shown at 75 miles from the town of Patna-capital of modern Bihar, i.e. quite recently they settled even in Bihar, very much more to the north than they live at present.
15. G. K. Pillai, Traditional History of India.
16. Review of material on this question, given in the book Peoples of Pakistan, by Yu. Gankovsky, pp. 33-35.
