Did IVC have low-intensity wars?

[N. Ganesan]

V. Vijayaraghavan wrote:
>To some extent, the statements of these kind does not tell us much. For
>every statement of this  kind, so many counter examples can be brought
>which can render any statemnent meaningless.

The summary statements by scholars like Hart and Zvelebil
are valid for anyone studying sangam poetry thouroughly.
Not many counterexamples can be given to make the scholars'
summaries invalid.

>For example, if you take the statement "Tamil  .. poetry...antedates..
>Sanskrit culture", we know from the earliest
>days Indra and Varuna were worshipped as 'Thinai' gods. Indra is
>a quintessentially vedic aryan god and so is Varuna. Even Thirumal is
>Vishnu . Even at popular level, vedic  deities held sway.

The ascription of Gods like Indra and VaruNa to tiNai landscapes
seem to emanate from later layers of TolkAppiyam. For example,
Tol. talks of puLLi, a "negative alphabet" (= -a), an invention
that led to the non-samyuktaaksharam orthography of Tamil.
However, the occurence of puLLi is later than the earliest Tamil
inscriptions.

The Sanskrit culture in sangam texts cannot be gotten
from Tolkappiyam because Tol. has layers that are much later
than sangam times.

Sangam texts themselves give us descriptions of local
priests whose rituals were to increase auspiciousness.

Regards,
N. Ganesan


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