6_Glorious_Epochs_of_Indian_History

260 SIX GLORIOUS EPOCHS OF INDIAN HISTORY
residents of the place. After enquiry he found there is a
small section of people who grew tufts of hair on the top of
their {heads (as the Brahmins and other Hindus here did till
very recently). They told him that, according to a very
sacred legend handed down to them by their forefathers, they
were supposed to have gone there from India at some very
ancient time. It is believed that at the time of a great war
in India they had left for Arabia and established a colony
there, but never got themselves mixed up with the factions
of the natives there nor with their feuds and wars. That was
why they could be seen in their much the same original state.
The inference that the said traveller has drawn from this is
that these strange people must have been the same Hindus
who had left India at the close of the epic struggle of the
Kouravas and the Pandavas in Mahabharat^.
650. If we then assume from the foregoing statements
that Yadavas led by Balaram had gone to Arabia and
formed a big colony there, two more things seem to. support
such an assumption. The first is that Tamil was originally
called (Aravi), the aborigines Arabia were mostly Shaiv-
ites, worshipping the (Shiv) ling (as most of the historian
agree) and their priests were called Druids (Dravid s[f^) in
English—the same class which seems to have existed in
Britain and Ireland as per the old legends told by the
historians.
651. This is not the place to relate all these and other
legends bearing on this topic, but it can be fairly assumed
that Arabia and India had very close ties and trade relations
from very ancient times, and there must have been Indian
colonies established in that peninsula, and we can infer that
like those in Java, Sumatra and other lands in the Eastern
Ocean, in this land in the Western Ocean too, now known as
Arabia and others, there must have once thrived Indian
(especially South Indian) colonies, kingdoms and civilization.
But we cannot offer it here, as yet, as any proven fact or
theory. Only the various details leading to this conclusion
have simply been summarized here briefly so that they might