Excerpt from Dravidian Gods in Modern Hinduism, Vol. 15: A Study of the Local and Village Deities of Southern India The reasons for this apparent neglect are not difficult to discover. There is no systematized teaching connected with village cults or worship. No interesting systems of philosophy lie behind them. The Dravidians are not a literary people, and their religion has no literature. There are no Vedas or other writings telling of their gods. Their history is contained in the somewhat confused legends recited by wandering Singers who attend the festivals and assist in the worship. These legends and stories are always recited from memory; and as usually the singers cannot read, written stories would be of no value to them. Many of the legends, however, are written on books made from the leaves of the palmyra palm,3 but such books are jealously guarded, and any suggestion as to translating or printing them meets with strong objections. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.