Dravidian peoples

Dravidian
Total population
approx. 250 million (2006)[citation needed]
Regions with significant populations
India  Andra Pradesh  Tamil Nadu  Karnataka  Kerala  Pakistan   Balochistan  Sri Lanka
Languages
Dravidian languages
Religions
Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Jainism, Buddhism
Related ethnic groups
Brahui people · Gondi people · Kannadigas · Kodava · Malayalis · Tamils · Telugus · Tuluvas

Dravidian peoples refers to the peoples that natively speak languages belonging to the Dravidian language family. Populations of speakers are found mostly in southern India. Other Dravidian peoples are found in parts of central India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan. A number of earlier anthropologists held the view that the Dravidian peoples were a distinct race. Genetic studies however, conclude otherwise.

Origins of the word Dravidian

{{#invoke:Message box|ambox}} The English word Dravidian was first employed by Robert Caldwell in his book of comparative Dravidian grammar based on the usage of the Sanskrit word drāvida in the work Tantravārttika by Kumārila Bhaṭṭa (Zvelebil 1990:xx). Caldwell coined the term "Dravidian" from the Sanskrit drāvida, which was used in a 7th century text to refer to the Tamil language of the south of India. The publication of the Dravidian etymological dictionary by T. Burrow and M. B. Emeneau was a landmark event in Dravidian linguistics.

As for the origin of the Sanskrit word drāviḍa itself there have been various theories proposed. Basically the theories are about the direction of derivation between tamiẓ and drāviḍa. That is to say, while linguists such as Zvelebil assert that the direction is tamiẓ >drāviḍa (ibid. page xxi), others state that the name Dravida also forms the root of the word Tamil (Dravida -> Dramila -> Tamizha or Tamil).

There is no definite philological and linguistic basis for asserting unilaterally that the name Dravida also forms the origin of the word Tamil (Dravida -> Dramila -> Tamizha or Tamil). Zvelebil cites the forms such as dramila (in Daṇḍin's Sanskrit work Avanisundarīkathā) damiḷa (found in Ceylonese chronicle Mahavamsa) and then goes on to say (ibid. page xxi): "The forms damiḷa/damila almost certainly provide a connection of dr(a/ā)viḍa " and "... tamiḷ < tamiẓ ...whereby the further development might have been *tamiẓ > *damiḷ > damiḷa- / damila- and further, with the intrusive, 'hypercorrect' (or perhaps analogical) -r-, into dr(a/ā)viḍa. The -m-/-v- alternation is a common enough phenomenon in Dravidian phonology" (Zvelebil 1990:xxi) Zvelebil in his earlier treatise (Zvelebil 1975: p53) states: "It is obvious that the Sanskrit dr(a/ā)viḍa, Pali damila, damiḷo and Prakrit d(a/ā)viḍa are all etymologically connected with tamiẓ" and further remarks "The r in tamiẓ > dr(a/ā)viḍa is a hypercorrect insertion, cf. an analogical case of DED 1033 Ta. kamuku, Tu.kangu "areca nut": Skt. kramu(ka).."

Further another eminent Dravidian linguist Bhadriraju Krishnamurti in his book Dravidian Languages (Krishnamurti 2003:p2, footnote 2) states: "Joseph (1989: IJDL 18.2:134-42) gives extensive references to the use of the term draviḍa, dramila first as the name of a people, then of a country. Sinhala inscriptions of BCE [Before Christian Era] cite dameḍa-, damela- denoting Tamil merchants. Early Buddhist and Jaina sources used damiḷa- to refer to a people of in south India (presumably Tamil); damilaraṭṭha- was a southern non-Aryan country; dramiḷa-, dramiḍa, and draviḍa- were used as variants to designate a country in the south (Bṛhatsamhita-, Kādambarī, Daśakumāracarita-, fourth to seventh centuries CE) (1989: 134-8). It appears that damiḷa- was older than draviḍa- which could be its Sanskritization."

Based on what Krishnamurti states referring to a scholarly paper published in the International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics the Sanskrit word draviḍa itself is later than damiḷa since the dates for the forms with -r- are centuries later than the dates for the forms without -r- (damiḷa, dameḍa-, damela- etc.). So it is clear that it is difficult to maintain Dravida -> Dramila -> Tamizha or Tamil.

The Monier-Williams Sanskrit Dictionary lists for the Sanskrit word draviḍa a meaning of "collective Name for 5 peoples, viz. the Āndhras, Karṇāṭakas, Gurjaras, Tailaṅgas, and Mahārāṣṭras."

Dravidian languages are spoken by more than 200 million people. They appear to be unrelated to languages of other known families like Indo-European, specifically Indo-Aryan, which is the other common language family on the Asian subcontinent. Some linguistic scholars incorporate the Dravidian languages into a larger Elamo-Dravidian language family, which includes the ancient Elamite language (Haltami) of what is now south-western Iran. Dravidian is one of the primary linguistic groups in the proposed Nostratic language system, linking almost all languages in North Africa, Europe and Western Asia into a common family with its origins in the Fertile Crescent sometime between the last Ice Age and the emergence of proto-Indo-European 4-6 thousand years B.C.E.

Dravidian grammatical impact on the structure and syntax of Indo-Aryan languages is considered far greater than the Indo-Aryan grammatical impact on Dravidian. Some linguists explain this anomaly by arguing that Middle Indo-Aryan and New Indo-Aryan were built on a Dravidian substratum.

As an aside, mention must be made of a fact that does not lie in the realm of what could be considered Conventional History. Dravidian is an English word which comes from Dravida just as Aryan comes from Arya. Now pre-historic traditions from both Dravida and Arya make mention of Dravida being the original homeland of both the Dravidians and the Aryans of India. Here, however Dravidians are a people on the basis of region and not race, and similarly Aryans are a people on the basis of practiced customs and not race. Both the Dravidian legends and Aryan legends attribute their origins to this sunken continent, possibly Kumari Kandam.^{[citation needed]}

Concept of the Dravidian people

The term Dravidian is taken from the Sanskrit term Dravida, historically referring to Tamil. It was adopted following the publication of Robert Caldwell's Comparative grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian family of languages (1856); a publication that established the language grouping as one of the major language groups of the world. Over seventy-three languages are presently listed as Dravidian. Further, the languages are spread out and cover parts of India, South Western Iran, South Afghanistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka..Robert Caldwell was a Catholic missionary and used the term Dravidian to refer to the people of South India.

Although in modern times speakers of the various Dravidian languages have mainly occupied the southern portion of India, nothing definite is known about the ancient domain of the Dravidian parent speech. It is, however, a well-established and well-supported hypothesis that Dravidian speakers must have been widespread throughout India, including the northwest region.

The circumstances of the advent of Dravidian speakers in India are shrouded in mystery. There are vague linguistic and cultural ties with the Urals, with the Mediterranean area, and with Iran. It is possible that a Dravidian-speaking people that can be described as dolichocephalic (longheaded from front to back) Mediterraneans mixed with brachycephalic (short-headed from front to back) Armenoids and established themselves in northwestern India during the 4th millennium B.C.E. Along their route, these immigrants may have possibly come into an intimate, prolonged contact with the Ural-Altaic speakers, thus explaining the striking affinities between the Dravidian and Ural-Altaic language groups. Between 2000 and 1500 B.C.E., there was a fairly constant movement of Dravidian speakers from the northwest to the southeast of India, and about 1500 B.C.E. three distinct dialect groups probably existed: Proto-North Dravidian, Proto-Central Dravidian, and Proto-South Dravidian.

When Hiouen Tsang traveled in India he described two kingdoms, one Dravida (with its capital as Kanchipura) and the other Malakuta. Scholars believe that Dravida country was of the Pallavas although are confused of Malakuta. Some believe it was of the Cholas, others that it was a Malaya kingdom.

Linguistic classification

The best-known Dravidian languages are Tamil (தமிழ்),Kannada (ಕನ್ನಡ), Malayalam (മലയാളം), Telugu (తెలుగు), and Tulu (ತುಳು).

There are three subgroups within the Dravidian linguistic family: North Dravidian, Central Dravidian, and South Dravidian, matching for the most part the corresponding regions in the Indian subcontinent.

Dravidian peoples:

• Brahui people: People belonging to the north-Dravidian subgroup, mostly found in the Balochistan province of Pakistan. They now culturally and ethnically largely resemble the Balochi people around them, with whom they have mixed with substantially.
• Kurukh: People belonging to the north-Dravidian subgroup. Found in India and Bangladesh. It is the only Dravidian language indigenous in Bangladesh.
• Khonds: Tribal people who speak the Dravidian Kui language. Mostly found in the eastern Indian states of Orissa and Andhra Pradesh.
• Gond people: A prominent group of Dravidian-speaking tribal people inhabiting the central region of India.
• Kannadiga: People belonging to the south-Dravidian subgroup. Mostly found in Karnataka and parts of northern Kerala.
• Kodava: People belonging to the south-Dravidian subgroup. Mostly found in the Kodagu (Coorg) region of Karnataka.
• Malayali: People belonging to the south-Dravidian subgroup found primarily in Kerala.
• Tamil: These people belong to south-Dravidian linguistic subgroup. Mostly found in Tamil Nadu, parts of Kerala, parts of Sri Lanka, South Africa, Singapore and Malaysia.
• Telugu: These people belong to south-Dravidian subgroup (formerly classified with the Central Dravidian but now more specifically in the South Dravidian II or South Central Dravidian inner branch of the South Dravidian (Krishnamurti 2003:p19)). Mostly found in Andhra Pradesh also in Orissa and Tamil Nadu.
• Tuluva: People belonging to the south Dravidian subgroup, found in southern Karnataka and northern Kerala, alternatively named Tulu Nadu.

Origins

Areas in South Asia populated by Dravidian peoples

Kamil V. Zvelebil has suggested that proto-Dravidian was part of a larger Elamo-Dravidian language family. However, S.A. Starostin has disputed the existence of an Elamo-Dravidian language family.

According to a view put forward by geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza in the book The History and Geography of Human Genes, the Dravidians were preceded in the subcontinent by an Austro-Asiatic people, and followed by Indo-European-speaking migrants sometime later. The original inhabitants may be identified with the speakers of the Munda languages, which are unrelated to either Indo-Aryan or Dravidian languages. However, the Munda languages, as a subgroup of the larger Austro-Asiatic language family, are presumed to have arrived in the Indian subcontinent from the east, possibly from the area that is now southwestern China, so any genetic similarity between the present-day speakers of the Munda languages and the "original inhabitants" of India is likely to be due to assimilation of the natives by Southeast Asian immigrants speaking a proto-Munda language.

Some linguists believe that Dravidian-speaking people were spread throughout the Indian subcontinent before a series of Indo-Aryan migrations. In this view, the early Indus Valley civilization (Harappa and Mohenjo Daro) is often identified as having been Dravidian. . Cultural and linguistic similarities have been cited by researches such as Finnish Indologist Asko Parpola as being strong evidence for a proto-Dravidian origin of the ancient Indus Valley civilization.

Some scholars like J. Bloch and M. Witzel believe that the Dravidians moved into an already Indo-Aryan speaking area after the oldest parts of the Rig Veda were already composed (see Bryant 2001: chapter 5)}

This theory might be supported if a higher antiquity of the Indo-Aryan languages could be established. However, since this theory is mainly a linguistic hypothesis, the Dravidian influence on Aryan languages need not necessarily be equated to a movement of populations.^{[citation needed]}

The Brahui population of Balochistan has been taken by some as the linguistic equivalent of a relict population, perhaps indicating that Dravidian languages were formerly much more widespread and were supplanted by the incoming Indo-Aryan languages.

Thomason & Kaufman (1988) state that there is strong evidence that Dravidian influenced Indic through "shift," that is, native Dravidian speakers learning and adopting Indic languages. Elst (1999) claims that the presence of the Brahui language, similarities between Elamite and Harappan script as well as similarities between Indo-Aryan and Dravidian indicate that these languages may have interacted prior to the spread of Indo-Aryans southwards and the resultant intermixing of languages. Erdosy (1995:18) states that the most plausible explanation for the presence of Dravidian structural features in Old Indo-Aryan is that the majority of early Old Indo-Aryan speakers had a Dravidian mother tongue which they gradually abandoned. Even though the innovative traits in Indic could be explained by multiple internal explanations, early Dravidian influence is the only explanation that can account for all of the innovations at once – it becomes a question of explanatory parsimony; moreover, early Dravidian influence accounts for the several of the innovative traits in Indic better than any internal explanation that has been proposed.

Zvelebil remarks that "Several scholars have demonstrated that pre-Indo-Aryan and pre-Dravidian bilingualism in India provided conditions for the far-reaching influence of Dravidian on the Indo-Aryan tongues in the spheres of phonology, syntax and vocabulary."

Genetic classifications

The genetic views on race differ in their classification of Dravidians. According to population geneticist L.L. Cavalli-Sforza of Stanford, based on work done in the 1980s, Indians are genetically Caucasian, but Lewontin rejects the label Caucasian. Cavalli-Sforza found that Indians are about three times closer to West Europeans than to East Asians. Dr. Eduardas Valaitis, in 2006, found that India is genetically closest to East and Southeast Asians with about 15% more genetic similarity than to Europeans; he also found that India could be considered very distinct from other regions. Genetic anthropologist Stanley Marion Garn considered in the 1960s that the entirety of the Indian Subcontinent to be a "race" genetically distinct from other populations. Others, such as Lynn B. Jorde and Stephen P. Wooding, claim South Indians are genetic intermediaries between Europeans and East Asians.

Studies of the distribution of alleles on the Y chromosome, microsatellite DNA, and mitochondrial DNA in India have cast overwhelming doubt for a biological Dravidian "race" distinct from non-Dravidians in the Indian subcontinent. This doubtfulness applies to both paternal and maternal descent; however, it does not preclude the possibility of distinctive South Indian ancestries associated with Dravidian languages.

Political ramification

India

Some Indians believe that the British Raj exaggerated differences between northern and southern Indians beyond linguistic differences to help sustain their control of India. The British Raj ended in 1947, yet all discussion of Aryan or Dravidian "races" remains highly controversial in India. It is now widely believed that the British used this only as their "Divide and rule" blueprint for taking over the region. The British also used this "theory" of perceived differences between so-called "Aryans" and "Dravidians" to propagate racist beliefs concerning the inherent "inferiority" of the Dravidians when compared to the "Aryans," thus justifying their colonization of South Asia (since the British identified themselves as "Aryans"). Recent genetic studies have since disproved the theory of distinct races on the Indian subcontinent.

Sri Lanka

In Sri Lanka, the current ethnic conflict and the civil war are further complicated by the view that the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils belong to two different ethnic and linguistic families. Sinhalese (like Dhivehi) is an Indo-Aryan language that exists in the southern part of South Asia.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Burrow, T., and M. B. Emeneau. A Dravidian Etymological Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961. OCLC 479859
• Indian Genome Variation Consortium. "Genetic landscape of the people of India: a canvas for disease gene exploration," Journal of Genetics 87(1) (2008): 3-20. [4]
• Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju. The Dravidian Languages. Cambridge language surveys. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN 0521771110

External links

• Dolmens, Hero Stones and the Dravidian People .Retrieved July 5, 2008.
• Harappa.com Glimpses of South Asia before 1947 .Retrieved July 5, 2008.
• Peoples and Languages in pre-Islamic Indus valley .Retrieved July 5, 2008.
• India and Egypt .Retrieved July 5, 2008.

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