Development of Hinduism

19. KALABHRA INTER-REGNUM
Most historians think that there was a group of Buddhist or Jain marauders who were anti-
Brahminic anti-ritualistic who forcefully occupied the land during this period and whose identity
is not known. These people are called Kalabhras. Thus we have the Wikipedia statement:
”Historians speculate that these people followed Buddhist or Jain faiths and were
antagonistic towards the Hindu and Brahminical religions adhered by the majority of
inhabitants of the Tamil region during the early centuries C.E. As a result Hindu scholars
and authors who followed their decline in the 7th and 8th century C.E. may have
expunged any mention of them in their texts and generally tended to paint their rule in a
negative light. It is perhaps due to this reason, the period of their rule is known as a
‘Dark Age’ – an “interregnum”.
It is referred to as Kalabhra interregnum- the Dark Ages of Kalabhra Period. It is called a dark
age, not because it was anything evil or dark, but because of the lack of information about the
period. It is as though somebody took a marker and covered these pages with black ink. It is
an age that has been blacked out by some body because they did not like the Kalabrahs and
their ways. However identification of who this Kalabhra has remained a problem.
There had been a number of attempts to identify the Kalabhras based on the etymology of the
word.
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