DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

114 PRODUCTIVE BASIS FOR LANGUAGE [5.1
A NEW WAY OF LIVING, It does not necessarily follow that a Corresponding
physical migration also took place. A few people of mixed origin could
settle in clearings made within the forest and multiply so much more
than the previous food-gatherers as to become the main population
of the region. The height, nasal index, and even complexion often
change with living habits and steadier, ampler food supply. As I see
it, a few Aryan did migrate in each case, but the new colonies were
formed of Aryans and non-Aryans mixed at the difficult initial
settlement, developing into an exclusive ‘ Aryan’ tribe later on. The
language would have to be Aryan because the new tools and social
relations differed fundamentally from anything visualized by the
aborigines and by their languages. The jump was far greater than in
modern times from the pre-bourgeois to the bourgeois mode introduced
by the British. The change need not have been voluntary, nor even a
conscious step. Sudden access of greater trade, exchange of new produce,
the increased need for interchange of vastly more complicated ideas
between a suddenly augmented number of people divided into social
groups that did not exist before, and most of all a new ritual with its
strange mantra formulae to be chanted—all this would be far beyond a
primitive tribal language, though some could undoubtedly have
developed them, given ample time for slow adaptation. The Dravidians,
excluding a probably migratory island like the Brahui, seem to me to
have been groups whose members learned the new technique through
trade contacts; little immigration took place so that they managed to
develop their own language during acculturation. Where the aborigines
stubbornly failed to become food-producers—because of sloth, mistrust,
or the stultifying effect of certain types of primitive ritual—or later
immigrants lapsed into food-gathering, the population, remains tribal.
The ‘ Austric’ language was then also retained, whatever that may
mean when common features are sought of all the Indian tribal,
languages from Assam down to the Nilgiris. The linguistic problem has
not been studied from this point of view. Marr’s Japhetic theory did
start by taking into account such phenomena as totems, only to fall