Page:Origin and spread of the Tamils.djvu/18



AUTHORS OF EARLY TAMIL CULTURE 7 a far more rigid and critical investigation than we are apt to do at present. A study of the statues and reliefs of Sumer shows ethnically a South India type. What Dr. Hall threw out as a suggestion even before the discovery of the Indus finds has become almost an accomplished fact. The consensus of opinion is that the Sumerians were the Indus people. They passed by land and by sea through Persia to the valley of the two rivers Euphrates and the Tigris. On their way they left the seeds of culture in Elam. If the ethnic type of the Sumerians and of Indus Valley people is of the South Indian type--and this cannot be controverted--then there is every reason of a migration of the Indus people from Indus Valley to Dravida and from Draviđa to Indus Valley. It receives corroboration from an unexpected quarter. The legend of Oanpes, the Man Fish swimming up the Persian Gulf to the Sumerian cities like Eridu bringing with him the arts of civilization clinches this statement. If there was then a westward wave from the Punjab to ancient Sumer, the theory of Dravidian--Mediterranean race goes to the wall. Secondly we have the ethnologist's view of Dravidian origins. According to H. Risley the Dravidians were of low stature, black skin, long heads, broad noses and long forearm. They formed the original population later on mixed with the Aryan, Saka or Scythian and Mongoloid elements (The Peoples of India, p. 46). Four different stocks are said to have contributed elements in their population, Theories of Australian