36 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [Feb. 



times under very different circumstances, and it is not to be supposed 

 that their intellectual condition should remain alike at all times and 

 under all circumstances. As far as we know, the Hellenic and the 

 Teutonic Arians left their common home at a very early period, and the 

 Indians the latest. There would he nothing inconsistent or illogical, 

 therefore, in the supposition that the later colonists went forth in 

 a more advanced social condition than their predecessors, having 

 originated a system of alphabetic writing. But supposing, and 

 most probably such was the case, that they came to India before 

 they had discovered the art of writing, there is nothing to prevent 

 a highly intellectual race from doing so in their adopted country. 

 Indeed the stability of the major of Mr. Thomas is entirely dependent 

 upon the issue of this minor ; if it can be shewn that the Hindus 

 did succeed in devising a system of alphabetic writing without borrow- 

 ing from their neighbours, the general proposition must break down, 

 and the enquiry therefore may, without fear of error, be confined to 

 India. 



" Now, in India the Arians came in contact with the Dravidian 

 aborigines, and Mr. Thomas therefore supposes that they must have 

 got their alphabet from those aborigines. But there is not a shadow 

 of historical evidence to shew that those aborigines had a written 

 literature at the time when the Arians came to this country, or for 

 some time after it. Nobody has yet discovered a Dravidian book 

 or inscription sufficiently old to justify such a presumption, nor is there 

 a single tradition extant of there ever having existed a Dravidian 

 literary composition, either sacred or profane, of a pre-Vedic era. The 

 ancient history of the Dravidians, apart from the Arians, is a blank. 

 All that we know of them is from the writings of the Brahmans, 

 and there we find them to have been the very reverse of a literary 

 race. The races alluded to are the Coles, the Bheels and the 

 Minahs of our day — the rude primitive people who inhabit our woods 

 and wilds, and contend with the tiger of our jungles for a precarious 

 existence. They might have been more civilized before : that some 

 of them owned houses and fortified places, large herds, and stores of 

 gold, is susceptible of proof : but the only source of information 

 accessible to us of these prehistoric times are the Vedas, the oldest 

 Arian records extant, and they describe them to have been, in the days 



