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and Bhandarkar refer the grammarian Pāṇini to this period, and if this be correct it brings the history of South India into touch with that of the North.

Taking a fresh starting point, therefore, somewhere in the sixth century B.C., we find ourselves upon somewhat firmer ground as outside light begins to beat in upon us. In the centuries on either side of 750 B.C. the Aryans begin penetrating into the Mahākāntāra round about the Vindhyas, the memory of which is preserved in the tradition regarding Agustia's advent into the south. If the Rāmāyana could be trusted to be correct regarding its geographical details, the great forest extends up to the Pampa Saras, which is on the north bank of the Tungabhadra near modern Hampe, though the Saras (or tank) must have been forgotten under the name, as the author of the Tamil Rāmāyana makes it, Pampānadi. The advent of Agustia introduces reclamation of the jungle into arable land, and he is the reputed author of the first Tamil grammar. Whoever this Agustia was, Rishi or some one else by that name, he does for Tamil what Pāṇini did for Sanskrit. That he criticizes Pāṇini appears to be in evidence in one of the very few quotations that have come down to us. It would thus appear that the Aryan migration into south India has to be referred to this period of the Sūtras.

When the whole of India, north and south, is getting organized, the overgrowth of ritualism, and perhaps of religion becoming too much of a mystery, sets thoughtful people thinking about this very subject. There appear in the sixth century B.C. two great men who have contributed very much to bring about a mighty transformation. It is certainly in the fitness of things that these should have flourished in the spots favoured by nature, where before their time the daring flights of speculation into the mystery of the Unknown reached its grand climacteric under the Indian Pisistratus as he