Concept of the Dravidian people
The term Dravidian is taken from the
Sanskrit term "
Dravida". It was adopted following the publication of
Robert Caldwell's ''Comparative grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian family of languages'' (1856); a publication which established the language grouping as one of the major language groups of the world. Robert Caldwell was a Catholic missionary and used the term Dravidian to refer to the people of South India.
[ P. 678 ''Dancing With Siva: Hinduism's Contemporary Catechism'', By Himalayan Academy, Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, Master Subramuniya. ]
However over seventy three languages are presently listed as Dravidian in the
study . Further the languages are spread out and cover parts of India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka as is indicated in the
study .
The
Vedic legends speak of battle between
Asuras and
Devas. It is generally assumed that this was a reflection of actual battle for supremacy that took place when Aryans started entering the Indian sub-continent. However the Asuras are actually the Iranians and the Devas are the Indo-Aryans. The
Dasarajna war has been completely misunderstood as some racial violence from Aryans to non-Aryans. It was the Indo-Aryans who declared that they are the true Aryans while the Iranians were not. This battles eventually ended with Aryans, led by King
Sudas (a Sudra king) establishing supremacy all over India and the Iranians moving onto what today is the
Iranian Subcontinent.
Historical evidence does not point to the fact that Dravidians were the race who had created the Indus Valley Civilization. It remained unanswered why there were Aryan symbols that appear on the Indus Valley seals (e.g.
swastika.) However, even though the Aryan languages are said to belong to the Indo-European family and not of the
Dravidian family, the root words are almost all the same. For example, 'land' is ''des'', 'language' is ''basa'' and 'bread' is ''chapaati''.
Legends
According to the
Puranas, the
Dravida people are descendants of the
Vedic Turvasha people. According to the
Matsya Purana,
Manu is considered as a
south Indian king.
[also e.g. Bhagavata Purana (VIII.24.13)] Ikshvaku is also the son of Manu in legend and the
Andhra Ikshvakus or the
Ikshvaku dynasty were a Telugu dynasty. In
Hindu tradition the creation of the
Tamil language is credited to the
Rig Vedic sage Rishi
Agastya[http://micheldanino.voiceofdharma.com/tamilculture.html].
The proponents of the now-obsolete theory identifying
Kumari Kandam with
Lemuria used the term "Dravidian civilization" to describe the civilization of the hypothetical "Lemuria" continent.
[{{cite book]
| last = Ramaswamy
| first = Sumathi
| title = Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories: The Lost Land of Lemuria
| publisher = Orient Longman
| origyear = 2004
| year = 2005
| isbn = 8178241102
| page = 120
}} According to ancient Tamil legends, Kumari Kandam was a landmass that became submerged by the successive floods. Some Tamil writers, such as
Devaneya Pavanar and T. R. Sesha Iyengar, identified Kumari Kandam with the hypothetical Lemuria continent, and claimed that in ancient times, there was a highly developed Tamil civilization in Lemuria, which was the
cradle of civilization.
[{{cite book]
| last = Iyengar
| first = T. R. Sesha
| title = Dravidian India
| publisher = Orient Longman
| year = 1995
| isbn = 978-8120601352
| page = 60
| chapter = The Ancient Dravidians
| quote = "Hence we shall not be far wrong if we infer that South India gave a refuge to the survivors of the deluge, that the culture developed in Lemuria was carried to South India after its submergence, and that South India was probably the cradle of the post-diluvian human race."
}} In ''When the Sky Fell: In Search of Atlantis''
http://www.flem-ath.com/ by Rand Flem-Ath and Rose Flem-Ath, the authors argue that Kumari Kandam is Lumeria and is at the same time
Airyanem Vaejah.
Linguistic classifications
The best known Dravidian languages are:
Tamil (தமிழ்),
Kannada (ಕನ್ನಡ),
Malayalam (മലയാളം),
Telugu (తెలుగు), and
Tulu (ತುಳು). Notably one Dravidian language,
Brahui (بروہی), is spoken in Pakistan and minor
tribal languages are used in Nepal and Bangladesh, perhaps hinting at the language family's wider distribution prior to the spread of the
Indo-Aryan languages, though relatively recent migrations of populations have also been proposed.
Prominent Dravidian linguistic subgroups
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.
''Brahui'' : Brahuis belong to North-Dravidian subgroup. They are found in Balochistan province of Pakistan.
''Gonds'': A prominent group of Dravidian speaking Tribal people the Central region of India.
''Kannadiga'' : These people belong to South-Dravidian subgroup. Mostly found in Karnataka , Tamil nadu and Maharashtra.
''Kurukh'' : These people belong to North-Dravidian subgroup. Found in India and Bangladesh. It is the only Dravidian language indigenous in Bangladesh.
''Malayali'' : The people of Kerala belong to South-Dravidian linguistic subgroup.
''Tamil'' : These people belong to South-Dravidian linguistic subgroup. Mostly found in Tamil Nadu, Sri Lanka, 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.
Geographic distribution
Political ramifications
The concept of a Dravidian race has affected thinking in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh about racial and regional differences.
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 only used this 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")
It has also informed aspects of radical politics (e.g.
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, DK, VC,etc.) in the Indian state of
Tamil Nadu atheistic
nationalistic politics, which has at times appropriated the claim that Dravidians are the earliest inhabitants of India in order to argue that other populations such as the locally
ritually dominant were oppressive interlopers from which Dravidians should liberate themselves. The discovery of the
Indus Valley Civilization in the 1920s, which is sometimes attributed to displaced or assimilated Dravidians of the north, further fuelled such atheistic Dravidianist ideas since it implied that the
Indo-Aryans were ''uncivilised barbarians'' rather than a ''superior race''.
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.
"''Enthusiastic supporters of the
LTTE like Tamil Nadu political leader Vaiko was quoted in the Indian media as having told Home Minister LK Advani 'the second Hindu Rashtra is emerging in the region'.''"
[ ''Tamil Canadian'' article ] Also, "''Since the Sinhala Buddhist Government in Sri Lanka took control of the island after Britain left, said the statement, it has systematically destroyed Hinduism and its culture in the island,''" the LTTE release stated.
[ LTTE gives ethnic strife a saffron tinge , Thursday, March 26, 1998 ]
Early arrival theory
Kamil V. Zvelebil has suggested that the
proto-Dravidians of the
Indian subcontinent arrived from the
Middle East, and may have been related to the
Elamites,
[Zvelebil, Kamil V. 1974. "Dravidian and Elamite - A Real Break-Through?", Journal of the American Oriental Society 94.3 (July-Sept.): 384-5.] whose language some propose be categorized along with the Dravidian languages as 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 known 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 the
Aryans settled there. In this view the early
Indus Valley civilization (
Harappa and
Mohenjo Daro) is often identified as having been Dravidian
http://www.harappa.com/arrow/stone_celt_indus_signs.html.
According to them it is now considered likely that the collapse of Indus Valley civilization was caused by environmental change (drought) which then encouraged the migration of the nomadic Indo-Aryans into the area. In that perspective it is therefore more likely that the Dravidian speakers of South India were already living in the region and were merely one of the groups little affected by the initial
Indo-Aryan migration.
Late arrival theory
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 must not necessarily be equated to a movement of populations.
Genetic classifications
The
genetic views on race differ in their classification of Dravidians. Most modern anthropologists, however, reject the genetic existence of race,
[Bindon, Jim . University of Alabama. Department of Anthropology. August 23, 2006.] like
Richard Lewontin who states that "every human genome differs from every other", showing the impossibility of using genetics to define races. (Biology as Ideology, page 68).
[Lewontin, R.C. Biology as Ideology The Doctrine of DNA. Ontario: HarperPerennial, 1991.] According to population geneticist L.L.
Cavalli-Sforza of
Stanford, whose work was done in the 1980s almost all 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.
[Robert Jurmain, Lynn Kilgore, Wenda Trevathan, and Harry Nelson. Introduction to Physical Anthropology. 9th ed. (Canada: Thompson Learning, 2003)] Dr. Eduardas Valaitis, in 2006, found that India is genetically closest to East and Southeast Asians with little genetic similarity to Europeans; that said he also found that India could be considered very distinct from other regions.
[Valaitis, E., Martin, L. DNA Tribes. 2006. January 22, 2007. http://dnatribes.com/sample-results/dnatribes-global-survey-regional-affinities.pdf] 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.
[Garn SM. Coon. On the Number of Races of Mankind. In Garn S, editor. Readings on race. Springfield C.C. Thomas.][Robert Jurmain, Lynn Kilgore, Wenda Trevathan, and Harry Nelson. Introduction to Physical Anthropology. 9th ed. (Canada: Thompson Learning, 2003) ] Others, such as Lynn B. Jorde and Stephen P. Wooding, claim South Indians are genetic intermediaries between Europeans and East Asians.
[Jorde, Lynn B Wooding, Stephen P. Nature Genetics. Department of Human Genetics. 2004. . ][Bamshad, M.J. et al. Human population genetic structure and inference of group membership. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 72, 578−589 (2003).][Rosenberg, N.A. et al. Genetic structure of human populations. Science 298, 2381−2385 (2002).]
Recent studies of the distribution of
alleles on the
Y chromosome,
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=16415161&query_hl=1&itool=pubmed_docsumEntrex PubMed: A prehistory of Indian Y chromosomes: evaluating demic diffusion scenarios ] microsatellite DNA,
[Entrez PubMed: Polarity and temporality of high-resolution y-chromosome distributions in India identify both indigenous and exogenous expansions and reveal minor genetic influence of central asian pastoralists ] and
mitochondrial DNA
[Entrez PubMed: Human mtDNA hypervariable regions, HVR I and II, hint at deep common maternal founder and subsequent maternal gene flow in Indian population groups ] in India have cast overwhelmingly strong 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.
[Sitalaximi, T "Microsatellite Diversity among Three Endogamous Tamil Populations Suggests Their Origin from a Separate Dravidian Genetic Pool"]
''Human Biology'' - Volume 75, Number 5, October 2003, pp. 673-685
Historical racial classifications
Race is now generally agreed to by the scientific community as a social construct. Often citing the
Aryan Invasion Theory, historical anthropologists have largely regarded Dravidians to be formed by one or more of the Caucasoid, Veddoid, Malay, Negroid, Negrito or Australoid races with the addition of Mongoloid and later Aryan admixture.