Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/422

 364 THE KINGDOMS OF THE SOUTH Malayalam. The Chola and Pandya kingdoms both belong to the Tamil-speaking region. Thus all the kingdoms of the south were occupied by races speaking Dravidian languages, who are themselves generally spoken of as Dravidians. No Aryan language had penetrated into those king- doms, which lived their own life, completely secluded from Northern India, and in touch with the outer world only through the medium of maritime commerce, which had been conducted with success from very early times. The pearls of the Gulf of Manar, the beryls of Coim- batore, and the pepper of Malabar were not to be had elsewhere, and were eagerly sought by foreign mer- chants, probably as early as the seventh or eighth cen- tury before Christ. But the ancient political history of Southern India is irretrievably lost, and the materials for tracing the development of the high degree of civilization unques- tionably attained by the Dravidian races are lamentably scanty. Nor is it possible to define with any accuracy the time when Aryan ideas and the religion of the Brah- mans penetrated to the kingdoms of the south, although there are reasons for assuming that 500 B. c. may be taken as a mean date. The missionaries of Asoka introduced Buddhism, and his brother Mahendra built a monastery in the Chola country, but whether or not they found any form of the Brahman religion in possession it is impos- sible to say. The Jain religion also found great favour in the southern countries, but how or when it was