In The Epic Land

But one conclusion that we can safely draw at this point is : the kshatriya inhabited the entire Indo-Gangetic plain when the ārya (those who would eventually set themselves apart as brāmhaṇa) arrived there looking for fresher pastures and later driven by the drought in their homeland. What resulted was an unique cultural amalgam; of course, there was a second stage to that process : the fusion of the kshatriya-brāmhaṇa culture with the culture of the vaḍukar and the tāmiḷ - which produced the sanātana heritage of contemporary India.