Ancient Races of the Deccan

Ancient Races of the Deccan is the last book from the pen of late Dr. S.S. Sarkar, who dominated the field of the study of ancient races of India for the last two decades or more. On one of his earlier books he identified the builders of the Harappa culture as Indo-Caspians. In the present volume he has marshalled strong evidence, on the basis of the examinations of the human skeletal remains from Langhnaj, Lothal, Nevasa, Chandoli, Hyderabad megaliths, Yeleswaram, Piklihal, Tekkalakota, Maski, Brahmagiri, Sanur and Adittanallur that the Dravidian-speaking people evolved from the autochthonous element of India, the Veddids or Australoids. Environmental changes and hybridization have no doubt brought complexities in them but they basically belong to Australo-Dravidian ethnic strain. It is futile, therefore, according to Dr. Sarkar, to assign the original habitat of the Dravidians outside India. Dr. Sarkar considers the skeletal remains from Lothal as a landmark in the ethnic history of India as it provides an indubitable proof of the entry of the brachycranial people into India. He has clearly shown the presence of the Australoid element in the Stone-Age Culture of Brahmagiri and also in some of the megalithic complexes, the latter yielding another racial strain, a mesocephalic people of robust constitution, belonging probably to the Scytho-Iranian stock. The book contains the original reports on the skeletal remains from Brahmagiri, Maski and Yeleswaram, besides the summary of the unpublished report of the human skeletal remains from Lothal, the most important Harappan site in Gujarat.