Page:Origin and spread of the Tamils.djvu/83



72 ORIGIN AND SPREAD OF THE TAMILS abandoned in distant places) and the Uddhaitas (those exposed on elevated localities.) Exposure of the dead persists to-day in & modified form among the Tibetans and Parsis. Yuan Chwang, the Chinese pilgrim, mentions this as one of the three recognized methods of disposal of the dead in India." The editor of the Pudukottah Manual says that the period to which any of the burials under consideration belongs can only be determined by the nature of the associated finds. In cases where only neolithic implements are found without any iron or bronze belong to the pre-historic age. Where urn and megalithic burials contain an abundance of iron implements and vessals and no neoliths, these may be said to belong at the earliest to the Iron Age that succeeded the Neolithic Age and continued into historic times. See my paper on the Disposal of the Dead in S. India in the Proceedings of Tenth All India Oriental Conference, pp. 530-533. Page 26, 1. 26. 32. Maritime intercourse affected India according to Perry even about the middle of the third millennium B.C. But the distribution of the megaliths suggests that land routes also have got to be considered as well as sea ones. There must have been contact betweep Mesopotamia and South India very much earlier. We cannot agree with Dr. H. J. Fleure or any archaelogist who speaks of early immigrations to India from Mesopotamia and Egypt.