Origins of Tamils?[Where are Tamil people from?] PART :57

Compiled by: Kandiah Thillaivinayagalingam] 

A large number of excavated terracotta figurines from Indus valley civilization are those of a semi-nude figures which is identified with some female energy or Shakti or Mother Goddess,who is the source of all creation.She is wearing numerous ornaments and a fan-shaped head dress.Also One depicts a nude female and her legs apart and a plant issuing from her womb.Some of the figures are smoke stained,and it is possible that oil or perhaps,incense was burnt before them in order that the goddess might hearken favourably to petitions.Hence,It is concluded from these smoke stained female figures that the people burnt incense before the deity & worshipped her as most of the tamils still do.

The people of Indus Valley disposed of their dead either by burial or by cremation.They buried their dead together with household pottery, ornaments and other articles of daily use.Even when they cremated the dead,they preserved the ashes of the bodies in clay urns.Both these practices show that people believed in life after death.

On the one hand,The basic unit of Aryan society was the extended and patriarchal family and there the birth of a son was welcome because he could later tend the herds,bring honor in battle,offer sacrifices to the gods,and inherit property and pass on the family name.further ritual suicide of widows was expected at a husband's death,and this might have been the beginning of the practice known as sati in later centuries, when the widow actually burnt herself on her husband's funeral pyre.On the other hand the Harappan society appears to have been matriarchal in nature.This view is based on the popularity of the mother goddess as indicated by the finding of a large number of terracotta female figurines However.as Harappan script

has not been deciphered till now,we have to satisfy ourselves with this limited information on this issue. Further,Sivalinkas which are found in the Indus Valley Civilization is later on degraded in the Vedas.According to archeologists,Mother Goddesses of the Indus civilization were “quite independent of any consort,while only at the present time (are they) being gradually provided with husbands from the orthodox Hindu pantheon.Further examples of a fertility cult are apparent in the abundance of lingas and yonis unearthed & also found lingas are often set in a yoni base,showing yonis are as prevalent as lingas.This predominance of the female elements in the religion of the Indus valley suggests that worship was at first directed towards the female,maternal aspect of Deity.Where the supreme Deity is female,women are respected in daily life.And,as Marshall acknowledges,in the religion of the Indus valley,The female elements appear to be co-equal to,if not predominant over the male.

In Dravidian culture Women were free to choose their mates one of the

examples is that Surpanakha who offered her love to aryan (Mahapurush) Rama who directed her to his younger brother Lakshmana.There Aryan and Dravidian culture clashed and Lakshmana chopped her nose considering she being shameless.Dravidians were sociable and less aggressive people than others and women enjoyed much greater freedom than Aryan women,for further example,in revenge of sisters assault,Ravana,King of Lanka took Sita away from Rama to his kingdom but did not dare to force her as all scripts say Sita did not have adultery during the captive.

It was once thought that the Aryans were responsible for bringing civilization to India,and that Dravidian contributions to Hinduism were negligible,but the utter fallacy of that belief has been revealed by Sir John Marshall’s excavations at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa.He has conclusively proven that most of the features of Hinduism date from pre-Aryan sources:the cult of the Mother Goddess,the cult of Shiva,reverence towards animals,including bulls,monkeys,and elephants,worship of tree spirits,worship of phallic,yoni,and aniconic stones [without human attributes] and yoga.The Aryans actually did not institute Hinduism;they merely modified an ancient form of belief.

PART :58 WILL FOLLOW