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of the mouth, as against t, d, th, dh and n, where the tongue touches the back of the front teeth. So paati, ‘splits’, is a different word from patati, ’falls’, and maa, ‘foam, cream’, from manda, ‘dull’. These sounds are also characteristic of the Dravidian languages now spoken to the south of the Aryan languages in India, as well as other neighbours, such as the Munda languages dotted around the north-east of India. Whereas no other Indo-European language has them (making them unlikely as a feature of whatever language they all originate from), they are so systematic in Dravidian that they are probably as old as the family. It would appear, then, that they have established themselves in Sanskrit and Aryan as a ‘substrate’, a residual feature of the languages that the earliest adopters of Sanskrit were speaking, and could not lose when they learned the new language.

There is also some cultural evidence in the Rig Veda which suggests how the invading Aryans felt they differed from the peoples, the dāsa and dasyu,* their language came to dominate, for they saw them as having darker skins, ‘of black origin’, kayonī.24 This fits with the Sanskrit word used traditionally for the four-fold division into social castes, Brahman~Kshatriya~Vaiśya~Śudra, namely vaa, ‘colour’. The dasyu are represented in the epic Mahabharata by the two younger sons of Pandu (’the Pale’), Nakula and Sahadeva, born to his second wife Madri, who is said to be black eyed and dusky complexioned. Throughout the epic, they act as faithful, but unimaginative, supporters of their apparently nobler Aryan elder half-brothers, Yuddhishthira (’Firm in Fight’), Bhīma (’terrible’) and Arjuna (’Resplendent’).

We have seen that the process of assimilation with various local groups continued well into the second millennium AD, and seems to have involved a kaleidoscopic succession of languages in some parts of north and central India. One of the most memorable moments, at least politically, in this long series of shifting patterns occurred about 260 BC, when Aśoka conquered the eastern kingdom of Kalinga (approximately the area of modern Orissa). This conquest was a high-water mark for imperial unity in India, one not to be exceeded for two thousand years. Aśoka wrote this of the experience all over the rest of his empire (in Magadhi, Aramaic and Greek): ‘In the eighth year of his reign, Piyadasi conquered Kalinga. 150,000 people were captured there and deported, 100,000 others were killed and almost as many perished. Since that time, pity and compassion gripped him, and he was overwhelmed by that…’

This compassion put an end to his wars of conquest, and made him turn instead to the propagation of dhamma (Sanskrit dharmā), variously translated as ‘virtue’, ‘duty’ or ‘the Law’. It is said that he stood on the hill at Dhauli, and saw the Daya river flow red with blood. Writing specifically to the Kalinga population on a rock inscription at that spot, he says, instead of recounting the campaign: ‘All men are my children. Just as, in regard to my own children, I desire that they may be provided with all kinds of welfare and happiness in this world and in the next, the same I desire also in regard to all men. But you do not understand how far my intention goes in this respect. A few among you perchance understand it but even such of you understand it partly and not fully…’

In fact, it remains obscure what, if any, linguistic effect Aśoka’s conquest had on Kalinga. It is just too long ago, and too much has happened since.

Orissa is now a mainly Aryan-speaking area (with a strong sprinkling of unrelated ādivāsi, i.e. ‘aboriginal’, languages): the earliest inscriptions in its language date from the tenth century AD. The language is Oriya, closely related to the Bengali spoken farther north; but little is known of its earlier history, and it has been suggested that Orissa was still non-Aryan even in the seventh century AD.25 Xuan-Zang recognised at least three distinct countries in this region: Ura (the origin of the name Orissa), which he said had ‘words and language different