In search of the ‘AY’ lands of South Asia through archaeology of kinship

Keeladi was just another sleepy hamlet in Sivaganga district of Tamil Nadu until a team from the Archaeological Survey of India started excavations there in 2015. A series of excavations revealed that a highly sophisticated urban settlement dating back to the Sangam period existed in Keeladi, which lies along the banks of river Vaigai. It was a turning point in the history of Tamil Nadu as the objects collected from the site helped archaeologists rewrite the history of the region.

Archaeological excavations will definitely bring in surprises if conducted with detailed survey and proper analysis. India had to wait until the middle of the 19th century to realise that not all Indian languages are derived from Sanskrit and that there was a major family of Dravidian languages spoken across the country. Again, the world had to wait until 1924 for Sir John Marshall to make a dramatic announcement about the Indus Valley Civilization that pre-existed Vedic period and to say that the pre-Aryan people of Indian subcontinent were not waiting to be reformed and that they had well established agriculture, wheeled transport technology, metal working, maritime trade expertise and a sophisticated urban life.

Since publishing his book titled Journey of a Civilization: Indus to Vaigai, in 2019, R Balakrishnan has been working on “Ay” lands of south Asia.

What do ‘Ay’ lands mean?

According to Balakrishnan, a bureaucrat-turned-researcher, these are lands in which kinship terms like ‘Ay’, ‘Amma’ are used to denote mother and particularly with the kinship system that gives preference to cross-cousin marriage.

In his new research paper, Balakrishnan takes a deep anthropological and historical look at the kinship systems and kinship terms of South Asia with particular reference to the mother word ‘Ay’ and places an argument that the people who lived in the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) were indeed Dravidian in language.

To prove his point, Balakrishnan said the most important source of the foreign element in the Sanskrit vocabulary is to be found in the Dravidian languages. “Majority of the loanwords are post-Vedic. A small nucleus of Dravidian loanwords already found in Rig Veda (ulukhala-mortar, pestle, kunda-hole in the ground, pit, mayura-peacock, bala-strength). Vast majority of Dravidian loanwords appear in early classical language being first recorded in Mahabharata and Srautasutra. Many also appear in Pali literature (500 BC-300 BC). This shows active borrowing took place between the late Vedic period and the formation of classical language,” he said.

Where did it happen?

“If the influence took place in the central Gangetic plains and the classical Madhya desa the assumption that the pre-Aryan population of this area contained a considerable element of Dravidian speakers would best account for the Dravidian words in Sanskrit. The Dravidian words in the Rig Veda attest the presence of Dravidian in north western India at that period,” he said.

Brahui in Balochistan (Pakistan) remains the modern representative of north western Dravidian. The Dravidian languages like Kurukh and Malto are preserved even now in northern India as the remnants of the past. The conservatism of the Dravidian kinship system, according to Balakrishnan, is so great that one even finds marginal survivals of it among Indian people who do not (or probably, we should say, who no longer) speak Dravidian languages, such as the Mer community of Saurashtra in Western India. “These people lie within the orbit of the ancient Indus Civilization, which has often been linked with the Dravidian languages. The language of the Mer is of the Indo-Aryan family but the semantics of their kinship terminology is decidedly Dravidian,” he added.

Kinship terminology as an anthropological object is located deep in the heart of language. Kinship terms and words for body parts are equally primitive.

“Scholars like Francis W Ellis and Alexander D Campbell pointed out the similarity in core vocabulary among the south Indian languages but different from that of Sanskrit, establishing the existence of what is now called the Dravidian language family,” he said.

Campbell listed words for kinship in Telugu that identify Dravidian equations. Morgan believed kinship could show historical relationships between languages whose vocabularies had changed over time, that they were no longer recognisably alike. “India has been the site of important breakthroughs in the field of linguistic ethnology. Discoveries of the Indo-European language family and the Dravidian language family are important achievements. And, in the process of these discoveries, vocabulary of kinship played a role as part of the larger vocabulary. The Dravidian system has occupied a place of special importance in the study of kinship,” he said.

Balakrishnan said Brahui has long been surrounded by Iranian and Indo-Aryan language. Persian and particularly the neighbouring Balochi language, both of the Iranian group and Punjabi and Sindhi of the Indo-Aryan one. “The contacts with these ethnic groups have influenced the Brahui kinship system. Many kinship terms in Brahui, such as those for father, grandfather or aunt, are borrowings; but, remarkably, the majority of other terms appear to be of Dravidian origin, including those for mother, brother, grandmother, uncle etc,” he said.

Balakrishnan’s paper shows that this methodology can be used as an argument for identifying an anthropological type of kinship system reflected in modern Brahui and the bifurcate-merging “Dravidian” kinship type of which only some semantic traces are found in the language.

The Bhil, an ethic group scattered across the western part of India, is considered the largest tribal population in India and Pakistan. Some scholars suggest that the term Bhil is derived from the word ‘Vil’, ‘Villu’, which means ‘bow’ in the Dravidian lexis. “The term Bhil is used to refer to ‘various ethnic communities’ living in the forests and hills of Rajasthan’s southern parts and surrounding regions of western India, highlighting the popularity of the bow and arrow as a weapon among these groups. The language of the Bhil is known as Bhili. It is an Indo-Aryan language,” said Balakrishnan.

The Bhils do not have a temple, shrine or any ornate sacred place in most of their villages. Instead, they rely on a ‘marhi’ or ‘marh’ which consists of a demarcated space or raised platform hatched with shrubs in a deserted area of the village, with a totemic figure made of wood, rock or brick. “A ‘marhi’ is considered the permanent resting place of an ancestor, whereas a ‘marh’ is the place where a deity, holy person, or spirit is thought to have once temporarily sojourned. Cross-cousin marriage is preferred in the Bhil kinship system,” he said. Mother’s brother has an important role to play in Bhil society during the marriage ceremonies and he is offered liquor first. His rights and duties are structured around his position of ‘wife-giver’ since preferential cross-cousin marriage is practised by the Bhils.

For the people in the Charan community of Gujarat and Rajasthan, the living mother goddesses are called ‘Aai’ who after death are regarded as goddesses. The Charan community label themselves as Devi Putra (son of mother goddess). Prime mother goddess of Charan is Pithori mata. “The shrine of Pithori mata is two objects of identity. Vermillion and stick. One of the goddesses’ names is Lakshmi Aai. Aai wears a pink or red sari.

The Banyan tree is sacred to them. Cross-cousin marriage is a prescribed system of the Charan society. Females have a special place in society. The Charans prefer girl children the most. There is a special cordial relationship with mother’s brother,” said Balakrishnan.

The Charans love forests. They have special feelings for hills, rivers, animals, particularly for the buffaloes. Balakrishann produced the portrait of an ‘Aai’ woman called Bhanu Ben Veera Bhai Dhangjog (Charan Gadhvi), who lives in Lilapani Ness deep inside Gir national park in Gujarat. People say she is 108 years old. She is the most respected woman among the Charan community.

Balakrishnan said Kol, Bhil and Gond are some of the ancient tribal populations known from the Ramayana, one of the great epics of India. Though there have been studies about their affinity based on classical and haploid genetic markers, the molecular insights of their relationship with other tribal and caste populations of extant India are expected to give more clarity about the question of continuity versus discontinuity.

“In this study, we scanned 97,000 of single nucleotide polymorphisms among three major ancient tribes mentioned in Ramayana, namely Bhil, Kol and Gond. The results obtained were then compared at inter and intra population levels with neighbouring and other world populations. Using various statistical methods, our analysis suggested that the genetic architecture of these tribes (Kols and Gonds) was largely similar to their surrounding tribal and caste populations, while Bhil showed closer affinity with Dravidian and Austroasiatic (Munda) speaking tribes,” he said.

The haplotype based analysis, according to Balakrishnan, revealed a massive amount of genome sharing among Bhil, Kol, Gond and with other ethnic groups of South Asian descent. “On the basis of genetic component sharing among different populations, we anticipate their primary founding over the indigenous Ancestral South Indian (ASI) component that has prevailed in the gene pool over the last several thousand years,” he added. “Mother terms are not easily borrowed or lost in a casual manner. And the spread of ‘Ay’ terms in the orbit of IVC notwithstanding the current linguistic affiliations of the specific locations and communities with particular reference to the system of cross cousin marriage, the type case of Dravidian cannot be set aside as a coincidence. A deeper investigation of kinship terms and the kinship systems will throw remarkable new lights,” said Balakrishnan.