Principles and Practice of Hindu Religion
A Comprehensive Study of the Ancient Tradition and the Perennial Philosophy

Chapter - III : A Historical Approach to the Hindu Traditions
A Study of the History and Evolution of the Faith along with
the Beliefs and Culture of India over the Time of Several Millinea.

Lesson - 37 : The Racial and Ethnic Groups of Community
Who are the "Aryans" and "Dravidians"?
Most readers and researchers of Hindu Religion and South Asian cultures often mention about "Aryan" and "Dravidian" groups in India. Some scholars said all groups in the Northern part of India as Aryans and those in the South as Dravidians. Some mistakenly regarded all belonging to the Upper Castes as Aryans. There is no real dividing line separating the groups as only Aryans and Dravidians. In fact, there does not seem to be a Dravidian race in any research books, only a mention of Culture, Architecture and Language styles listed as Dravidian. Germans under Adolph Hitler and Persians and some Central Asians claimed themselves to be "Aryan" race, when they had no other ancient history of a civilization to adhere to. For the sake of simplicity of understanding these terms were used in this articles to separate two distinctive cultural and ethnic groups that existed in India from ancient times though they were well mixed all over the land.

 

In the most ancient times, several thousands of years back, the Indian subcontinent was occupied and populated by an ancient group of aboriginal dark skinned people and traces of some of them are still said to be living in many remote areas of the land. They were the nomadic hunters belonging to the later stone age. After this period, there were agricultural groups using copper tools, domesticated animals and a distinctive cultural practice in groups with religious prayer and burial rituals noted among them. These were the original ancient "Indian Ethnic groups". There were the people with a mixture of Australoid racial features, similar to the Australian aboriginal and Indonesians, Caucasian ethnic groups like the Central Asians, Mongolians from the East and Negroid ethnic groups with African racial characters. There were also migrations from the Italian and other Mediterranean areas to the west coast, northwest and southern parts of India. The Sumerians, Greeks, Central Asians and Eastern Europeans from the West also came. They are all believed by some to be the origin of the so called "Aryan" and "Dravidian" groups.

 
Sanãthana Dharma Šãsthra
Lessons: - 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46, 47 , 48 .