When did I make claims about all south Indians? The fact that you are setting up yet another strawmen here is telling...
The only thing that is telling is in your insistence to try & push discredited arguments.
There's that strawman again. The fact is that, racially speaking, different races have a preponderance in different geographical parts of India. The average south Indian skin tone is darker than in the north, regardless of how much you deny it. That is not a racist statement; it is a statement of racial distribution.
Irrelevant argument since you seem to argue that having some elements who are darker means that the average (of what) is on the whole darker. For that you have to assume a racial characteristic but since Dravidians are not a race & no one clams that anymore, you are the one using a strawman argument.
That would provide additional evidence, but their absence says nothing either way.
Maybe but since there is already a dispute of that version within Tamil scholars, it might be an indicator.
Dravida Nadu - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Initially, the demand of Dravida Nadu proponents was limited to Tamil-speaking region, but later, it was expanded to include other Indian states with Dravidian speakers in majority (Andhra Pradesh, Kerala].[1]) Some of the proponents also included parts of Ceylon (Sri Lanka),[2] Orissa, Karnataka and Maharashtra.[3] Other names for the proposed sovereign state included "South India", "Deccan Federation" and "Dakshinapath".
Claims mean nothing. The people of those areas obviously didn't agree.
It simply means that their ancient legends need to be revived and studied. Lack of other data points does not invalidate the Tamil data. The Vedic influence happened; that much is fact.
Influence does not mean conquest.
Again you bring in the AIT. Once again, the indigenous nature, or not, of the Vedic Aryans is irrelevant to the debate.
It is because you are drawing your arguments from the Rg veda and the battles referred therein. See below.
I already gave you examples from Rig Veda about dark skinned enemies, but you reject scholars' interpretations since they are politically inexpedient.
You are the one selectively using expedient arguments. While I support the argument that the supposed references to
"dark skinned" is a misinterpretation, even if otherwise, you arguments goes back to the AIT because these battles happened in North India & had nothing to do with the South. You can't run away from the AIT in general but use an argument originally made to support it & juxtapose it into a South Indian context.
You are contradicting yourself. Earlier you wanted evidence of Vedic conquests in southern cultures, and now you are denying that these regions even had a culture prior to Vedic ingress.
I'm saying no such thing. You are referring to Dravidian culture. No such culture exists. The word does not refer to a race or a group, merely to a language family, each of whom have distinct cultures and sub cultures. Tamil culture is only one part & your usage of a term that only has political meaning(other than the description of a language group) is without meaning.
In any case, I am accepting Tamil claims of the antiquity of their culture at face value since they are generally accepted at large, and I have no reason to doubt the established view.
Can't be selective about criteria used for accepting
"established" views.
Not at all. I reject your strawman that, unless all south Indians have dark skin, the Vedic claim is invalid.
No one has ever made any claim about all south Indians.
What then are the references you keep making to dark skinned enemies? You made a claim based on some criteria of an average you suggest and I pointed out the hopelessly inaccurate nature of that claim.
Already mentioned Agastya, his conquests southward, and the confluence with Tamil legends. Of course, you don't accept it but, like I wrote, that doesn't stop scholars from comparing and reaching conclusions.
Many have drawn different conclusions as you have accepted. Anything so disputed can hardly be termed as clinching evidence.
The rules of military conquest haven't changed and such conquests were the norm in the past, including the subcontinent. The Vedas, southern legends all attest to military conquest. The later indigenous empires grew through conquest. To assume that somehow things were different in this particular case is illogical, especially when we have legends like Agastya's to say otherwise.
What Southern legend alludes to military conquest? Agastya was a Rsi, not a military conqueror and to draw any conclusion from a legend which is one of many is silly. As already said by another here, the Velir show no trace of a indo-Aryan linguistic ancestry which then begs the question whether a leader of that clan as Agastya supposedly was could be of an
"aryan" descent. If he wasn't, your claim that he was part of an invasion is badly damaged. Nothing here that helps remotely your argument.
Illogical or not, Indian religious teachings were largely spread through debates & not through conquest. Since you are suggesting otherwise, you are required to rustle up the proof to back your claims.
Again, the AIT is irrelevant. It doesn't matter how many times you say it, it won't make it any more relevant to the debate.
See above & read your own arguments.
You keep setting up the AIT strawmen as some sort of rebuttal, but it falls flat. The Mauryas invaded and conquered much of the subcontinent; will you then claim that they were outsiders? How about the Guptas, and other indigenous conquests? Why do you need to posit that the southward invaders in this particular case, Vedic elite, could only have been outsiders? Why couldn't local tribes enter an expansionist phase driven by the usual factors?
Not my argument but then you would not be buttressing your claims with references to
"dark-skinned" persons & like. I have said that there is no evidence to back your claims of an
"Aryan" invasion, not that kings didn't invade at all. After all argument for cultural/religious amalgamation does need a contact to have occurred, just disputing the nature of the contact. For all we know, maybe South Indian kings moved northward & were responsible for that amalgamation.No way to disprove that either.
When you keep propping up strawman after strawmen, deliberately exaggerating statements to the extreme (all south Asians have dark skin, unified Dravidian culture, etc.), what else is there?
Ha, ha, you were not even referring to me when you said that, so if my arguments got you that way, you owe the poster you replied to an apology.
Who says it had to be unified? Yet another misrepresentation by you.
What matters is that there are Dravidians who believe they had their own individual culture before Vedics came along. I gave the link above about Dravidian nationalism. In fact, one of the things that broke up the movement was feat of Tamil hegemony.
There are no one apart from some Tamil nationalists of fairly recent vintage who have argued about a Dravidian culture. It simply does not exist under that nomenclature. Your link, as I explained, proves nothing.
No one's running off, but there's only so long that I can keep refuting irrelevant strawmen arguments about the AIT, lack of Tamil culture, etc. and all these deliberate exaggerations.
With your own super exaggerations?
Lots of things get clouded by centuries of dust.
What is not clouded is the staunch Dravidian claim that Sanskrit, caste system and other Vedic cultural constructs were imposed on them.
Bogus argument. Simply not supported by facts.
Large numbers of Hindus opted out as soon as they had the chance, first with Buddhism, then with Islam and Christianity.
Finally the religious angle. Do not care for your religious driven humbug but facts must be pointed out. Buddhism was never a religion of the rural, it was largely urban which makes your claim false. Islam?
If it makes you happy......
So it is reasonable to accept the Dravidian claim that these Vedic concepts were imposed onto them. Now, considering that the caste system was an integral part of the Vedic religious doctrine, then it follows that the religious aspects were also imposed.
What is the basis for your reasonableness? A Dravidian claim?
Prove imposition, your wish for such a occurrence is not proof.
A Hindu nationalist claimed that, unlike Abrahamic religions, Vedic Hinduism did not expand through conquest when, in fact, the ancient texts (Vedic and Tamil) as well as Dravidian nationalists say quite the opposite.
"Dravidian" nationalists, like other nationalists, say many things. Hardly constitutes proof.
