Why is Dravidian history ignored?

The indus valley culture was belonged to Dravidian. I heard that India's former prime minister Mr.Jawahar lal nehru wrote about this in his book Discovery of India, But i never read it before.

Till today, the mystery behind the destroyed indus valley culture is unresolved completely.

But there is an assumption that Aryan were used long range weapons (i.e. bows and arrows) where as Dravidian used short range weapons (i.e. spears). So that they lost in war and migrated to south india. But there is no proved evidence for this assumption.

I would suggest reading Chapter 4 of the book Hidden Horizons. This dispels all the old myths.

Dr Clyde Winters has done extensive research and answered for lot of questions above with detail proofs.

Especially the book "The Dravido-Harappans of Inner Asia" is very informative.

No references have been made to Dravidian mathematics and its use in the Tigris and Euphrates River Valley region (now Iran / Iraq), Elamatie and African presence in the Tigris and Euphrates River Valley region, sometimes referred to as "Mesopotamia." There are scientific reports in science magazine and other reputable sources concerning same, including Walter A Fairservis, Jr, The Script of the Indus Valley Civilization and Runoko Rashidi, More Light on Sumer, Elam and India in African Presence in Early Asia, Editors: Iva Van Sertima and Runoko Rashidi

There is a blog entry that tackles some questions. Opinionated, but has useful information.

Check out this genetic analysis of South Asians. It shows that Ancient South Indians and Ancient North Indians were "mixed up" long before 1500 BCE.

The Mahabharata has a lot of references to Dravidas, Andhras, Keralas and Karnatakis!

The whole Aryan invasion theory has come under serious debate with new research and studies coming to the fore. Since there is a political element attached to some of these studies and there are accusations of biased viewpoints influenced by ideologies rather than scholarly curiosity, it's always good to study both sides of the argument and attempt to arrive at one's own conclusions.

Till we have definitive evidence for one or the other, the OP's question cannot be answered satisfactorily as it contains certain presuppositions which might not be correct.

Here are some links I have found helpful in studying these newer viewpoints

• http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/india-denial.html
• http://www.amazon.com/Rewriting-Indian-History-Francois-Gautier/dp/0706999762
• http://www.amazon.com/Aryan-Invasion-Theory-A-Reappraisal/dp/8185689407

A list of critiques about "Eurocentrism" - http://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/h_rs/h_rs_malho_euro_frameset.htm

P.S. Like the OP, I am no historian but an amateur with an interest in history.

Regardless of what the Hindu nationalists vehemently claim, the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) has not been disproven. Merely called into question. It is India's version of America's bitter controversy about creation or evolution. In America our big disagreement is: Did we come from Adam and Eve, or from ape-like creatures? In India the issue is: Was it white people who migrated to ancient India and gradually became small and brown, or was it Puranic Hindus who migrated to prehistoric Europe and gradually became large and white?

Forget the dramatic differences in color between Indians and Europeans. Those are easily explained by differences of sunlight intensity. Study the facial features and hair-texture of these people, and you can easily tell that these are our bleached cousins. The languages of Europe have a long list of similarities with those of India. Ancient Roman and Greek mythologies contain deities and legends found in Hindu mythology with different names. The days of the week in both continent are named after the same gods.

Even the dhoti which my grandfather wore was a warm climate cousin of the Roman senator's toga. Anyone ignoring the fact that Europeans and Indians have some kind of distant kinship ignores the light of the sun.

The main problem here is that the civilizations of India were almost completely illiterate before the Aryan movements. So what is known about the Dravidian people before that time has to come either from archeology, speculative linguistic studies, or from the writings of their Aryan enemies (clearly not the most reliable of sources there).

Now it is true that the Indus Valley boasted one of the world's first literate societies. Sadly, their script is still undeciphered, and, as one of my sources put it, the only truly distinguishing charactaristic of their civilization seems to have been the totality of its collapse. But nobody is even sure exactly who they were. The theory I find most compelling at the moment is that they were part of a larger Elamo-Dravidian language group stretching from Iran to India.

So if you are willing to be a bit expansive with your definitions, then being related to the Indus Valley civilization, as well as the Elamites in Iran (I believe even mentioned in The Bible in a couple of places) is probably the Dravidian peoples' best claim to fame in the ancient world.

Source: Time of Dravidians

Different views are expressed in the world of research on Indus Valley Civilization. Some say it is of the Aryans while others opine that it is of the Dravidians.

On the basis of the four Vedas, the theory that the Indus Valley Civilization is of the Aryans was built up. Hence, the analysation of the Vedas throws much light on this line.

If Indus Valley Civilzation is of the Aryans, mother goddess worship that plays an important role in the Indus Valley Civilization should be described in the Vedas. But in the Vedas only minor female deities are mentioned. The Indus Valley deities normally have horns, whereas the deities of the Vedas are not portrayed with horns.1 Sivalinkas which are found in the Indus Valley Civilization is later on degraded in the Vedas.

The Vedas describe the wheels of the Chariots with spokes, but the wheels that are seen on the seals and vehicles of clay in Indus valley do not have wheels with spokes.2

Following analysation of Sir John Marshall on the Indus Valley Civilization here are given some clues.

1. "The picture of Indo-Aryan society portrayed in the Vedas is that of a partly pastoral, partly agricultural people, who have not yet emerged from the village state, who have no knowledge of life in cities or of the complex economic organization which such life implies, and whose houses are nondescript affairs constructed largely of bamboo.

At Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, on the other hand, we have densely populated cities with solid, commodious houses of brick equipped with a adequate sanitation, bathrooms, wells, and other amenities.

1. The metals which the Indo-Aryans used in the time of the Rigveda are gold and copper or bronze; but a little late, in the time of the Yajurveda and Atharvaveda, these metals are supplemented by silver and iron.

Among the Indus people silver is commoner than gold, and utensils and vessels are sometimes made of stone - a relic of the Neolithic Age - as well as of copper and bronze. Of iron there is no vestige.

1. For offensive weapons the Vedic-Aryans have the bow and arrow, spear, dagger, and axe, and for defensive armour the helmet and coat of mail.

The Indus people also have the bow and arrow, spear, dagger and axe, but, like the Mesopotamians and Egyptians, they have the mace as well, sometimes of stone, sometimes of metal; while on the other hand, defensive armour is quite unknown to them - a fact which must have told against them in any contest with mailed and helmeted foes.

1. The Vedic-Aryans are a nation of meat-eaters, who appear to have had a general aversion to fish, since ther is no direct mention of fishing in the Vedas.

With the Indus people fish is a common article of diet, and so, too, are molluscs, turtles, and other aquatic creatures.

1. In the lives of the Vedic-Aryans the horse plays an important part, as it did in the lives of many nations from the northern grasslands.

To the people of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa the horse seems to have been unknown

1. By the Vedic Aryans the cow is prized above all other animals and regarded with special veneration.

Among the Indus people the cow is of no particular account, its place with them being taken by the bull, the popularity of whose cult is attested by the numerous figurines and other representations of this animal.

1. Of the tiger there is no mention in theVedas, and of the elephant but little.

Both these animals are familiar to the Indus people.

1. In the Vedic pantheon the female element is almost wholly subordinate to the male.......

Among the Indus cults...........the female elements appear to be co-equal with, if not to predominate over the male.

As times goes on, doubtless many other salient points of difference will be revealed, but for the moment the above will suffice to demonstrate how wide is the gulf between the Indus and Vedic Civilizations. Now it may, perhaps, be argued that the difference between them is a difference of time only; that the Vedic civilization was either the progenitor or the lineal descendant of the Indus civilization........ Let us assume, in the first place, that the Vedic civilization preceded an led up to the Indus civilization. On this hypothesis the progress from the village to the city state and from the nondescript houses of the Vedic period to the massive brick architecture of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa would find a logical explanation, though we should have to postulate a long interval of time in order to account for the evolution. But what about other cultural features?

If the Vedic culture antedated the Indus, how comes it that iron and defensive armour and the horse, which are characteristic of the former, are unknown to the latter? Or how comes it that the bull replaces the cow as an object of worship in the Indus period, only to be displaced agains by the cow in succeeding ages? Or, again, how comes it that the Indus culture betrays so many survivals of the Neolitihic Age - in the shape of stone implements and vessels - if the coper or bronze and iron culture of the Indo-Aryans intervened between the two? Clearly these considerations put out of court any solution of the problem which postulates an earlier date for the Vedic than for the Indus Civilization. But if it was not earlier, are there any grounds for supposing that it was evolved out of the latter? In other words, could the Indo-Aryans have been the authors of the Indus as well as of the Vedic Civilization?

Here, again, we are faced with a like dilemma. For, though on this assumption we could account for such phenomena as the introduction of iron, of the horse, and of body armour, all of which might have signalized merely a later phase of the same culture, we are wholly at a loss to explain how the Indo-Aryans came to relapse from the city to the village state, or how, having once evolved excellent houses of brick, they afterwards conteneted themselves with inferior sturctures of bamboo; or how, having once worshipped the linga and the Mother Goddess, they ceased to do so in the Vedic Period, but returned to their worship later; or how, having once occupied Sind, they subsequently lost all memory of that country of the Lower Indus".3

Opinions of Asco Parpolo regarding Indus civilization and the review of Mahadevan on Asco Parpolo's view are given as follows.

The Survival of Brahui; a Dravidian language, spoken even today by large numbers of people in Baluchistan and the adjoining areas in Afghanistan and Iran, is an important factor in the identification of the Indus Civilization as Dravidian. Brahui belongs linguistically to the North Dravidian group with several shared innovations with Kurukh and Malto; no dialectal features connect it with the South or Central Dravidian languages. Hence Parpola cocludes that Brahui represents the remnants of the Dravidian language spoken in the area by the descendants of the Harappan population.4

Survival of place-names is generally a good indicator of the linguistic pre-history of a region. Parpola points out several place-names in the north western region like nagara. Palli, Pattana and Kotta with good Dravidian etymologies.5

Parpolo also points out that syntactical analysis of the Indus inscriptions has revealed Dravidian like typological characteristics, especially the attribute preceding the headword.6

It has often been pointed out that the complete absence of the horse among the animals so prominently featured on the Indus seals is good evidence for the non-Aryan character of the Indus Civilization.

Dravidians came to India much before the Aryans did. Their origins are uncertain. According to Tamil legend, the Dravidians came to India from the lost island of Kumari Khandam. It is possible that the residents of the lost Indus Valley civilisation may have been Dravidians.

Dravidians' Indus Valley civilization:

The Dravidians had a civilization called Indus Valley civilization. They were peaceful farmers. In about 2000 BC, a large group of tribes called the Aryans probably settled down about the Dravidians when many Aryans moved from Central Asia searching for new grasslands. As more and more Aryans began arriving, there was not enough land for everyone and so there were many battles between the Aryans and Dravidians. Unfortunately for the Dravidians, they were not trained for war and so they could not stand a chance against Aryans who were rough, fierce and good fighters and had fast chariots, metal weapons and leather armor. Many villages and towns were destroyed in these battles. By 1000 BC, most of the Dravidians had disappeared, many had been killed and some had fled to south to start a new civilization in the Deccan. Some had become slaves or workers for the conquerors.

This question raises a lot of passion among Indians and others alike for obvious reasons.

The Aryan Invasion theory is not an Indian concept per se. This has been brought in by the so-called etymologists from Europe.

Many of the latest studies which include cellular biology and genetics have revealed that there were never separate Aryans and Dravidians. To quote from the article:

We have conclusively proved that there never existed any Aryans or Dravidians in the Indian sub continent. The Aryan-Dravidian classification was nothing but a misinformation campaign carried out by people with vested interests

I would not get into the details of who all had vested interests and why as that is not the part of this question.

One such source: "New research debunks Aryan invasion theory" at DNA

As far as the question is concerned, there is no separate Dravidian History. The history of the Indian peninsula is pretty much the same thing. However you are right in mentioning that historical events south of Vindhyas has not been given due importance.

P.S.: I am not a historian but have keen interest in ancient history.