Here is a column that Devdutt Pattnaik wrote in The Deccan Herald :
Were there Brahmins in South India 2,000 years ago?:
Here below are a few “nuggets” from the above article;
QUOTE: We normally assume that Brahmins have been present in every corner of India for the last 5,000 years. But this is not true. The Vedic people lived mainly in the Ganga-Yamuna Doab about 3,000 years ago. Roughly 2,500 years ago, the Vedic practices began to be challenged by new monastic traditions that arose in the lands we now associate with Bihar and Jharkhand. This led to migrations of Brahmins to the south less than 2,000 years ago.
About 1,500 years ago, there is no doubt that Brahmin settlements were firmly established across South India. But can we say the same for 2,000 years ago? The evidence is thin. We must be careful not to project the later ubiquity of Brahmins back into the earlier centuries. UNQUOTE .
Devadutt Pattanaik is dead wrong and he writes more like a charlatan than a historian. This column of his is clear evidence of that. Personal bias and intellectual dishonesty are written all over this piece of contorted/ distorted speculative narrative which he is trying to pass off to the public as historiography .
There is ample inscriptional and textual evidence for the presence of Brahmins in South India much earlier than 1,500 years ago:
Brahmins are referenced in Sangam literature, including texts such as the Purananuru and Akananuru, conventionally dated by historians and Tamil scholars between the 1st century BCE and 3rd century CE.
The Tolkappiyam, potentially pre-dating the Common Era in its earliest strata, refers to Brahmins and their role in ritual and scholarship. Even conservative readings place it well before 500 CE.
Ashokan inscriptions (3rd century BCE) mention the presence of Brahmans across the subcontinent—a geographic scope consistent with pan-Indian networks.
Early Chola copper plates (e.g., Uraiyur and others, between 3rd and 6th century CE) mention Brahmin settlements and grants to Brahmins, though these become more common in later periods.
South Indian Buddhist and Jain sites occasionally reference Brahmin patrons or converts within their early inscriptions, suggesting a broader timeline for Brahminical presence.
Even Roman historians such as Pliny and Ptolemy make indirect references to Brahminical rituals and customs observed in South Indian ports.
The Pattanaik piece potentially overstates the “thinness” of evidence by focusing on settled, land-holding Brahmin “agraharas” alone, rather than all available evidence for Brahminical presence or influence. Archaeological data and literary evidence must all be read together, considering the mobility and multi-role functioning of Brahmin communities before their later village-settlement-focused form in “agrahaaram”. His assertions risk false dichotomy: lack of explicitly “Brahmin settlement” or “Agraharam” records does not equate to absence of Brahmins, especially given the nature of early documentation in South India.
Pattanaik’s caution against projecting later structures onto early times is sound; however, his ignoring early references or minimizing multi-source evidence reflects a bias toward the physical (settlement) over the intellectual (ritual-literary-epigraphic) presence.
Pattanaik fails to grasp a basic fact: that the cradle of Brahminical culture is not the “agrahaaram”. Instead it is rooted in a distinctive way of life … One that since the dawn of time was conceived as dedicated to human spiritual inquiry into truth and pursuit of knowledge.
A more balanced approach of a genuine historiographer would have acknowledged the transformation of Brahmin roles and visibility, from the times when they were itinerant scholars/priests to the time when they settled into village communities, a process which happened over centuries. Pattanaik the scholar has paid no attention at all the fact of fluidity within historical categories. Mr. Pattanaik ought to know better … He should not lose sight of History being less about geography and more about process .
Sudarshan Madabushi