Literature is in other countries the bed-rock of history, in India it is often a snare. - K. A. Nilakanta Sastri

There does not exist a single line of Tamil literature written before the Tamils came into contact with, and let us add accepted with genuine appreciation, the Indo-Aryan culture of North Indian origin.

The oldest works now available in Dravidian languages were obviously written long after their contact with Aryan culture , and can afford no clear guidance to the pre- Aryan state of Dravidian culture.

However it might be ... [regarding the original homeland], both those who advocate the theory that the Aryans came from outside India . . . and those who dispute the foreign theory and believe the Aryans to be autochthons are of the same opinion [that Punjab was the abode of the Rgveda" (Sastri and Srinivasat Chari 1971, 2; )