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CHAPTER XXXV
THE SAVARAS
The Savaras or Sabaras referred to in both the Great Epics were a non-Aryan tribe. The earliest mention of them is to be found in the Aitareya Brāhmana (VII, 18), where it is stated that the elder sons of Viśvāmitra were cursed to become progenitors of such servile races as Andhras, Pundras, Savaras, Pulindas and Mūtibas.1 The implication of this passage seems to be that the Savaras were a non-Aryan people dwelling somewhere in the Dakṣiṇāpatha. The Matsya and Vāyu Purānas definitely locate them in the south, describing them as Daksiņāpathavāsinah.2 The Mahābhārata (XII, 207, 42) also places them in the Deccan along with the Andhras and Pulindas:
Daksināpathajanmānah sarve naravarāndhrakāh Guhāḥ Pulindāḥ śavarāś Cucukā Madrakaih (?) saha.
Ptolemy 3 mentions a country called Sabarai which is generally held to be identical with the region inhabited by the Savaras. Cunningham identifies the Sabarai of Ptolemy with Pliny's Suari, and further identifies both with the aboriginal Savaras or Suars, a wild race who lived in the woods and jungles without any fixed habitations, and whose country extended as far southward as the Pennāt river. These Savaras or Suars are only a single branch of a widely spread race found in large numbers to the south-west of Gwalior and Marwar and S. Rajputana where they are known as Surrius.4
The Rāmāyaṇa story of the Savara women who were deeply attached to Rāmacandra also seems to indicate that the Savaras were a wild tribe inhabiting the forest regions of the south.5
1 Roth, Zur Litteratur und Geschichte des Weda, p. 133. 2 Matsya P., 144, 46–8; Vāyu P., 45, 126. 3 McCrindle: Ptolemy's Ancient India, Ed. S. N. Majumdar, p. 173. 4 Ibid., p. 173. 5 See Rāmāyana, I, 1, 55 sq. (Cf. Rām., III, 77, 6 sq.)
