Saturday, November 28, 2009

History of South India

PRE-HISTORICAL PERIOD

South India specifically denotes the region that lies to the south of the two rivers, Krishna and Tungabhadra. Even in the Palaeolithic Age this region was inhabited by human beings as shown by the stone industry found here. The people of this culture made core tools, especially fine hand­axes, formed by striking off flakes from a large pebble, and they evidently had much better command over their ma­terial than the northern Palaeolithic men. This Madras Industry has affinities with similar core tool industries in Africa, Western Europe, and southern England, where it has been found in association with a more advanced type of human being-a true homo sapiens.

The people of the south also passed through the mesolithic and neolithic phases of the Stone Age. But generally r.20lithic settlements found in south India are not older than 2500 Be; in some parts they are as late as 1000 Be. The neolithic people of south India usually settled on the tops of the granite hills or on plateaus near the river banks. They used stone axes and stone blades. Fir baked earthen figurines suggest that they kept a large number of cattle, sheep and goats. They used rubbing stone querns, which indi­cate their acquaintance with the art of producing cereals. T. Narsipur, Paiyampalli, etc. are important neolithic sites of south India.

In south India, the neolithic phase imperceptibly faded into the chalcolithic phase, and so these cul­tures are called neolithic-chalcolithic though no copper implements have been found. In fact, in south India the Stone Age was succeeded by the Iron Age.

The neolithic-chalcolithic amal­gam was continued to about the middle of the first millennium Be. lt was then overlapped by the mega­lithic culture. Tradition speaks that a sage, named Agastya, of the later Vedic period in the north had crossed the Vindhyas to aryanise the south. The megalithic culture is characterised by the use of iron swords, spears, arrow-heads and axes, black-and-red pottery and frac­
tional burials with lithic appendage.

The megalithic people are known not from their actual settlements, which are rare, but from their graves. These graves are called megaliths because they were encircled by big pieces of stone. Tools, pottery, etc., were buried in these graves along with skeletal remains of the dead, which show that people had belief in after-life.
The megaliths are found in all upland area of the peninsula, but their concentration seems to' be in eastern Andhra and in Tamil Nadu. In many cases this phase persisted even as late as the early centuries of the Christian era. The Cholas, Pandyas and Keralaputras (Cheras), men­tioned in Asokan inscriptions were probably in the late megalithic phase of material culture. However, despite the use of iron, the megalithic people depended partly for settlement and burials on the hill slopes. Although they produced paddy and ragi, apparently the area of cultivable land used by them was very limited, and generally they did not settle on the plains or the lowlands due to the thick forest cover.

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