Dravidian Towns in the Mahavastu and Milindapanha: A Demographic Study

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The influence of the Dravidian peoples and language on Buddhism, Pali and the Indo-Aryan people in general is one of the most understudied areas of South Asian scholarship. This is in part due to a lack of data; for though the Buddha certainly taught in non-Aryan languages, none of his direct teachings have been preserved and we are only left with scattered references to what once must have been a thriving Dravidian Buddhist sangha. Certainly we have, inter alia, many bhikkhus, bhikkhunis, upasakas and upasikas with Dravidian names and various literary works (in whole or part, like Manimekhalai, Kuntalakeci and Nilakeci) which attest to the popularity of the religion in Dravidian speaking areas of India: but there are still many "blocking factors" that prevent linguists from acknowledging the important influence of Dravidian and other autochthonous languages on the Indo-Aryan culture. Emeneau (1954: 284-285) identified four of them as 1) the assumed superiority of Sanskrit and the IA culture 2) the unwillingness to acknowledge borrowings from Dravidian and the attempt to find Indo European etymologies for all Of words, 3) ignorance of the Dravidian languages and 4) the general caution of Indo-European scholars when confronted with a substratum situation, as we have here with the Dravidian and Munda languages. Kuiper made a similar observation (1991: 3-5) attributing the resistance in accepting indigenous, non-IA influence on Vedic India to 1) traditionalism, 2) prejudice against the "black barbarians" of autochthonous India, 3) the alleged purity and sacredness of the Sanskrit language and 4) the tendency to explain all so-called "borrowed" words with convoluted IE etymologies. Many Indo-European scholars assert even today that the influence of Sanskrit on Dravidian is far more substantial than the other way around and deny any structural influence whatsoever of the indigenous languages on Indo-Aryan.

Yet progress has been made, and an increasing number of linguists are waking up to the importance of native languages in their interactions with IA culture. It has been now 167 years since Robert Caldwell published his important study on the Dravidian languages in 1856 (first edition; second edition 1875). He was the first to outline the criteria by which one might determine whether a Sanskrit word had a Dravidian source, but it was not until the work of Murray Emeneau and Thomas Burrow in the mid to late twentieth century that indigenous linguistic studies were given a solid foundation with the publication of the Dravidian Etymological Dictionary (1961, 1984) and the development and evolution of the Indian Linguistic Area theory, the validity of which has been tested and proven time and time again by Emeneau himself and those who followed his work, like Colin Masica, Kamil Zvelebil, Bhadriraju Krishnamurti, Andrée Sjoberg, Franklin Southworth, and many others. Franciscus Kuiper and his student Michael Witzel have provided a similar theoretical foundation for the Munda and Austro-Asiatic languages, as has David Stampe et al., with his important, and still growing, Munda and Mon-Khmer Etymological dictionaries. In the last several decades important linguistic studies by such scholars as Mikhail Andronov, Kamil Zvelebil, Sanford Steever, Arno Lehman, Bhadriraju Krishnamurti (for Dravidian) and Hans Pinnow, Gregory Anderson, John Peterson, Toshiki Osada (for Munda) have provided a rigorous theoretical phonological, morphological and syntactical understanding of the different Dravidian and Munda languages and their relation to IA. Indispensable also is Manfred Mayrhofer's work on Old Indo-Aryan etymologies; although he has often been accused of having an Indo-European bias, he nevertheless was the first Indo-European linguist to fully acknowledge the influence of the indigenous languages on Old and Middle Indic. Mayrhofer's comprehensive work on Sanskrit etymology has shown that, inter alia, the study of Middle Indic word forms (i.e. Pali and other Prakrits) and the research into and analysis of the non-Aryan languages, like Dravidian, Munda and others known and unknown, can yield important insights into the linguistic history of India through understanding the evolution and interaction of all its many languages. This book is a modest contribution to that goal.

I wish to extend my sincere thanks to Prof. Panikkar and his editorial and publishing staff for all their excellent work in bringing this work to publication.

The evolution of present-day Indian society is due to the amalgamation of different ethnic groups having different languages, beliefs, practices and cultures. It is an undisputed fact that even before the Aryan migration to India, this country was inhabited by people belonging to different non-Aryan groups. The languages of those people (either indigenous or earlier migrants) were not in any way related to the Indo-European family. Two major linguistic groups inhabiting India at that time were the Dravidians and the Munda-speaking people. Actually, the intimate contact with the Aryan and non-Aryan tongues resulted in the evolution of Prakrts which subsequently led to the formation of Modern Indo-Aryan languages. The most predominant linguistic group in India at the time of Aryan immigration might have been the Dravidians. The Dravidian influence on Indo-Aryan is very extensive covering almost all areas like language, art, architecture, beliefs, food habits and the like. Also, both Buddhism and Jainism contributed a lot to mould the Indian society into its present form. Similarly, the influence of the Munda language and people on the immigrant Aryans too is a factor to be reckoned with.

It is a fact that the influence of the Sanskrit language and the Hindu religion penetrated into all spheres of life including language, religion, literature, art, science etc. The languages belonging to non-Aryan origin were very much affected by Sanskrit influence. Extensive studies were done on this aspect. However, the influence of Dravidian on Sanskrit and the Modern Indo-Aryan languages is in no way less than that of the former. This can be noticed in lexicon, phonology, morphology and even syntax. It is quite evident from the divergences one noticed in Indo-Aryan from the other members of the Indo-European family of languages. Unfortunately, the magnitude of the influence of Dravidian on Indo-Aryan is not yet fully realized by most of the people including the academicians. Similar to this, some sort of non-comprehension of the depth of the influence of Buddhism and Jainism on Indian society is also quite evident.

Dr. Bryan G. Levman is an erudite scholar who has done invaluable studies on the influence of Dravidian and Munda on Indo-Aryan and also on the contribution of the Buddhists to the literary, cultural, religious and social domains of Indian society. His present work "Dravidian Towns in the Mahavastu and Milindapanha, a Demographic Study", will definitely be another pathbreaking contribution in the field of Indological studies.

I express my sincere thanks to Time Offset Printers, Thiruvananthapuram, Mrs. Aswathy A., Mrs. Greeshma C., Mrs. Salini V.R., Dr. Muraleedharan Nair N., Dr. Aiswaria G. Shajan, Dr. Jeena S. Nair, Ms. Anju B. and Mrs. Rajitha K.V. for their kind help and co-operation in getting this work published.

The International School of Dravidian Linguistics proudly presents this publication "Dravidian Towns in the Mahavastu and Milindapanha, a Demographic Study" before the academic community. I am sure that the researchers in the field of Indology, linguistics and ethnography will gladly welcome this publication authored by one of the studious researchers in Indology and linguistics like Dr. Bryan G. Levman.

History provides ample evidence that the Sakyas were (historically) a Dravidian speaking clan and that the Buddha taught in both Dravidian and Indo-Aryan (IA) languages. Though Andhra Pradesh (ancient Kalinga) and Tamil Nadu were part of the Buddhist Sangha, it is intriguing that none of the Buddha's teachings and very little Buddhist literature have survived from that time in a Dravidian language (Levman 2023b:74-80). But vestiges of the Dravidian component of the Buddha's teachings may be found in both the Pali canon (Milindapanha) and in Mahavastu, a Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit composition. In Mahavastu, the residents of the Buddha's home town Kapilavastu are described and Milindapanha describes the residents of an ideal Dhammanagara. Approximately half of the vocabulary describing the towns and their occupants is borrowed from non-IA indigenous language sources. This suggests that the towns' residents were a mixed ethno-linguistic group, consisting of IA speakers and a Dravidian/Munda-speaking autochthonous population gradually assimilating the new Indo-Aryan language.

In order to negotiate the new economic, political and military order, the autochthonous peoples were forced to learn the language of the IA immigrants as they moved steadily eastward and mixed with the local populations. The mixed nature of the population and the incipient (and often inchoate) bilingualism of the local populations are reflected in the description of the towns which preserve 1) "double translations" of non-IA words along with their IA equivalents, 2) direct borrowing of non-IA words into IA with some aryanization, and 3) words directly imported into IA which have no discernible meaning in IA while retaining their meaning from the original language.