SOCIAL SCIENTIST Aryan race can be traced back through linguistic streams to the common habitat of the Aryan people. These assumptions have been seriously challenged subsequently. The abrupt decoupling of race and language was a reaction against the assertion that Indians were akin to Europeans. It is really hard to see how one could judge intelligently the formation of Indian civilisation to-day without giving a large role to the major language families as clues to the originating constituents of the civilisation. R.S. Sharma cuts new grounds. To quote him "The spread of Aryan speech is suggested by the existing recension of the Rg Veda, which contains twenty five Dravidian loans. Several linguists including Burrow and Deshpande point out phonetic changes in proto-Aryan letters under Dravidian influence........ The Rg Veda seems to have been composed by a Sanskritist who was familiar with the Dravidian language", (p.58). This is meant to serve as a satisfactory explanation to the doubt expressed by B.B. Lal (India 1947-1997, New light on Indian Civilisation). Lal demands for Harappan material remains in the areas associated with Dravidian language. Incidentally, it is to be recalled that eminent linguists who specialised in Tamil language have expressed similar views as those of Sharma. Some critics however point out that "Dravidians reached the south relatively late in the second millennium B.C." (MC. Alpin: Linguistic Prehistory, The Dravidian Situation}. Tamil linguists do not seem to admit the proposition of late arrival of Dravidians to the south. Language is a crucial component of identity. "It is better to investigate the periodwise territorial and cultural connections of the Indo-Aryans than to get entangled in the issue of ethnic identity" (p.69). Europeans like Max Mueller were thrilled to discover Sanskrit and its linkages with European languages. The term "Indo-European" thence forward symbolised a new found identity and Mueller's Sacred books of the East represented its divine claims. But the "Aryan myth" also won widespread acceptance in India itself. (Ref: Romila Thapar: Theory of Aryan Race in India, pp.4-10). The Indian elite in the 19th century used this "myth". Golwalkar who took charge of the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak after Hegedwar argued in the thirties that in fact the Aryans had originated in India!! It is this revised form of "Aryan myth' that forms the basis for much of the Hindutva thinking to-day. Stories in the Rg Veda of Indra destroying demon Vrtra testify to a momentous historical conflict between a patriarchal pastoral people and a matrilineal urban based people. (Ref: Romila Thapar: Theory