252 



MANUAL OF THE nIlAOIRI DISTRICT, 



Early 

 History. 



CHAP. XI. in that State in which there are not effigies of the serpent carved 

 in stone, erected on a raised platform near the entrance for the 

 adoration of the public. ^^ ^ The same is the case in Coimbatore ; 

 but the Nilagiris, as already stated, possess no such stones, though 

 representations of the serpent are occasionally met with among 

 those of other animals on the pottery in the cairns. The conclu- 

 sion therefore seems to be, either that the Hills were not yet 

 occupied when the Nagas possessed the neighbouring countries ; 

 for had this been the case it is probable that these enterprising 

 serpent worshippers would have brought the dwellers thereon 

 under their power, or that the people of a country where the 

 serpent^s bite is not death cared not to take measures to 

 propitiate this reptile. The sustainer of life, the buffalo, never 

 lacked reverencers. 



The story of Rdma — the scene of some of whose exploits was in 

 Mysore, and in whose history even the Todas, as before mentioned, 

 claim a place, asserting that they were the palanquin-bearers ^ 

 of the giant Rdvana and were expelled from Lanka, — would 

 seem to indicate that the early religions of the peninsula, such 

 as they were, were not formulated or organized. Rama meets 

 in his march no walled cities, no temples, no priests. His 

 enemies are monkeys and serpents, demons and giants, birds 

 and beasts of prey.^ His aim is to rescue the holy ascetics, 

 of whom Agastiya is the chief, from such enemies. As an 

 evidence, however, that at this mythic period either the sub- 

 jacent country was not thickly peopled, or that missionaries 

 had not obtained a footing therein, the Nilagiris and also the 

 neighbouring hills, so far as my information goes, possess no sacred 

 hill bearing testimony, like the Agastiyamale in Tinnevelly, to the 

 devotion and piety of some saint. The spread of the Aryan cults 

 seems to have been very gradual, but that of Brahmanism was 

 especially slow in many parts of the peninsula ; and although the 

 Aryanised inhabitants of the richer and more accessible parts of 

 the country along the Malabar and Coromandel coasts — the 

 revolution in the former preceding that in the latter tract — were 

 gradually Brahmanised about the beginning of the Christian era, 

 the extension of this system to the Carnatic country was probably 

 much later ; in fact there is no certain proof that Brahmanism was 

 ever established there until the overthrow of Buddhism in the 

 tenth century and the missionary enterprise of Sankya Acharya. 



' Mijsore Gazetteer, Vol. I, p. 363. 



2 The tradition is remarkable as existing among a tribe of herdsmen, -who 

 would not be likely to invent it. It existed amongst the Tddas when Europeans 

 first visited the Hills. 



' Wilson'h Descriptive Catalogue, Vol. I, Introduction. 



