Indian acculturation : agastya and skanda

It is a remarkable feature of Dr. Ghurye's scho larship that he can write with equal ease on the Vedic period or modern India. Dr. Ghurye is perhaps the first to put a bold hyphen between Indology and Sociology and give us such original treatises as Indian Sadhus, Gods and Men, Reli gious Consciousness and Two Brahmanical Insti tutions-Gotra and Charana. The present work on Agastya and Skanda continues the same high tradition of gathering Indological material and casting them into an intelligible ethno-sociological mould.

Agastya, a Rigvedic sage, is perhaps the ear liest Indo-Aryan visitor and settler in the south of India during a period ante-dating 600 B.C. He carried Vedic Aryanism into South India and came to be deified and worshipped by the Tamils. He and his lineage are believed to have been associated with some of the Pandyan kings of Tamil Nadu. The Tamils by worshipping Agastya, have added, in course of time, a new chapter to Brahmanic mythology and theology. Even outside India, such as in parts of Indo nesia, Agastya was deified and worshipped during medieval times. The role of Agastya and his lineage as culture-bearers outside India is unique, says Dr. Ghurye. Skanda, whose birth-story is immortalized by the national poct Kalidasa in his Kumarasam bhava, must have gone to the south as part of Agastya's complex of house-hold deities. Like Agastya, Skanda attained supremacy as Subrah manya in the south. It is striking, the author points out, that during the last millenium the Skanda cult has almost entirely been confined to the south. In recent times the devotees of Skanda have carried him to the north to the capital of the country. Thus his career, says Dr. Ghurye, is "an epitome of the process of Indian acculturation".

With his study of these two Vedic personages. as agents in the process of acculturation, Dr. Ghurye presents a brilliant chapter in the history of Indian acculturation. Besides, Dr. Ghurye sees contemporary relevance in his study of the past. The discerning reader will agree that this book holds a key to the understanding of north-south relations in contemporary India.