Enter Agastya. Agastya lived long ago- so long ago, in fact, that by the time the Veda was composed he was already a legendary figure. Agastya decided it was time for his fellow Aryans in the north and those mysterious Dravidian's in the south to get it together. So he crossed the Vindhya mountain range in central India to meet the Tamil speaking neighbors on the other side.
There's a story about this. The Vindhyas were extremely jealous of the Himalayas because the Himalayan mountains were much higher and kept getting even taller century by century. (Centuries seem like an eyeblink to a mountain). So the Vindhyas started working out, increasing their own size, too. This disturbed the balance of the Earth, and Agastya decided somebody had better do something about it.
So When he arrived at the Vindhyas on his journey South, Agastya said to them, "you're getting so tall these days it will take weeks for a short guy like me to climb across you. Would you mind bowing down so I can make the trip a little faster?''
Now, the Vidhayas were very spiritually advanced mounatins. They knew how to treat a sage with respect.So they bowed low and Agatsya quickly scrambled over. If you visit central India today, you'll see the Vidhays are not that imposing-they're kind of puny. That's because Agatsya never went back north. The vidhyas are still lying low so Agastya can cross easily when he finally decides to return home.
Agastya established the Vedic religion in South India teaching the people there the outdoor fire sacrifice and the beautiful hymns of the Aryan people. Over thousands of years, the southerners were profoundly influenced by Aryan religion, while the Aryans were deeply affected by Dravidian religious concepts and practices, too. The two cultures jumbled together-along with the beliefs of a number of other minority races, like the Austro-Asiatic people who also inhabit India-creating the rich and complex religion we call Hinduism today.
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