Dravidian people
The terms
Dravidians and
Dravidian Race are sometimes given to the peoples of southern and central
India and
Sri Lanka who speak
Dravidian languages, the best known of which are
Kannada (ಕನ್ನಡ),
Malayalam (മലയാളം),
Tamil (தமிழ்),
Telugu (తెలుగు), and
Tulu (ತುಳು). Notably one Dravidian language,
Brahui, is spoken in Pakistan, perhaps hinting at the language family's wider distribution prior to the spread of the
Indo-Aryan languages.
The identification of the Dravidian people as a separate race arose from the realization by 19th-century Western scholars that there existed a group of languages spoken by people in the south of India, which were completely unrelated to the
Indo-Aryan languages prevalent in the north of the country. Because of this, it was supposed that the generally darker-skinned Dravidian speakers constituted a genetically distinct
race. This notion corresponded to European belief of the time, according to which darker-skinned peoples were more "primitive" than the light-skinned
whites. Accordingly, Dravidians were envisaged as primitive early inhabitants of India who had been partially displaced and subordinated by
Aryans. The term Dravidian is taken from the
Sanskrit "drāvida", meaning "Southern". 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.
Classical anthropology viewed them as a distinct race, one of about the 40 human races in their system ("Weddid race"). Indeed, southern Indians differ from northern Indians in many respects, one of which is often darker skin. Most modern historians, however, reject the conception of a distinct Dravidian race, asserting that the high degree of admixture between distinct genetic populations during prehistory is far more significant than the somewhat superficial overlay of language distribution, as language frequently spreads between groups of genetically disparate people as cultures meet and clash. Some believe that the darker skins of the Dravidian-speaking people would be explained by their adaptation to the hotter and sunnier climate of South India.
Genetic studies
Recent studies of the distribution of
alleles on the
Y chromosome[
1][
2],
microsatellite DNA[
3], and
mitochondrial DNA[
4] in India have cast overwhelmingly strong doubt upon any biological Dravidian "race" as distinct from non-Dravidians in the Indian subcontinant. This doubtfulness applies to both paternal and maternal descent.
Since skin color is subject to strong
selective pressure, similar skin colors can result from convergent adaptation rather than from genetic relatedness. Sub-Saharan Africans, tribal populations from southern India, and Indigenous Australians have similar skin pigmentation, but genetically they are no more similar than are other widely separated groups.
[World Haplogroup Maps] Furthermore, in some parts of the world in which people from different regions have mixed extensively, the connection between skin color and ancestry has been substantially weakened (Parra et al. 2004). In Brazil, for example, skin color is not closely associated with the percentage of recent African ancestors a person has, as estimated from an analysis of genetic variants differing in frequency among continent groups (Parra et al. 2003).
Tamil politics
The concept of a Dravidian race has affected thinking in India about racial and regional differences. It has informed aspects of
Tamil nationalism, which has at times appropriated the claim that Dravidians are the earliest inhabitants of India in order to argue that other populations 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 Dravidianist ideas since it implied that the Indo-Aryans were "uncivilised barbarians" rather than a "superior race".
Modern views
It has been suggested that the proto-Dravidians of the
Indian subcontinent were a
Caucasoid people who arrived from the
Middle East, and may have been related to the
Elamites, whose language some propose be categorized along with the Dravidian languages as part of a larger
Elamo-Dravidian language family. The Dravidians were preceded in the subcontinent by an
Australoid-type 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. This view is put forward in
geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza's book
The History and Geography of Human Genes.
However, the term
Caucasoid is controversial, and linguists dispute the existence of an
Elamo-Dravidian language family.
Story of origin
According to Tamil lore, the Dravidians originally came from a submerged island
Kumari Kandam in the south of India.
Kumari Kandam has also been linked to
Lemuria.
According to the
Puranas, the Dravidians 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)] In
Hindu tradition the creation of the
Tamil language is credited to the
Rig Vedic sage Rishi Agastya
[[5]], a view that secular linguists would interpret as a story designed to link Dravidians to Vedic Indo-Aryan culture .
The Dravidian languages are grouped into Northern, Central, South-Central, and Southern categories. The Northern consists of Malto and
Kurukh, spoken in northeast India, Nepal, and Bangladesh, as well as
Brahui which is primarily spoken in southwestern
Pakistan. South-Central consists mainly of
Telugu. The southern branch has the most languages, with
Kannada,
Malayalam,
Tamil and
Tulu.
Dravidan languages are influenced by
Sanskrit, both in vocabulary and in grammar. This may be attributable to the adaptation of Sanskrit as the principal language of Buddhism, Jainism and Saivism in those societies.
Some believe that Dravidian-speaking peoples 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 identifed as having been Dravidian. A subsequent theory, which is controversial now, suggests that its peoples were then forced southwards by the
invasion of the Aryans, which caused the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilization. However it is now considered more likely that the collapse was caused by environmental change (drought). It was then this collapse that encouraged the migration of the nomadic Indo-Aryans into the area; a situation comparable with the decline of the
Roman Empire and the incursions of
North European tribes that followed during the
Migrations Period. It is therefore more likely that the Dravidian speakers of South India were already living in the region, and were merely the only group unaffected by the initial
Indo-Aryan migration.
Some scholars like J. Bloch and
M. Witzel believe that the Dravidians intruded upon an 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 necessarly be equated to a movement of populations. A small number of individuals, rather than populations, could have influenced the
Sanskrit language. The influence of Sanskrit itself on the Dravidian languages was the result of individual Sanksrit speakers (and not of whole populations) migrating to South India.
Into the 21st century, Indians, with possible justification, continue to accuse the
British Raj of exaggerating 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.
The South Indian Dravidians have been in some respects the best preservers of ancient
Vedic culture and traditions, especially when the north of India was dominated by
Buddhism and later was affected by
Islam. Some modern theories of the origins of both
Hinduism and
Buddhism focus on the resultant mixture of the "Aryan" and "Dravidian" cultures.
Tamil literature and Tamil epics and classics have many references to Vedic gods and culture. The
Tolkaappiyam, 1st century BCE grammer book, mentions non-Vedic, early-Vedic (
Indra,
Varuna) and Puranic (
Vishnu) gods. The Paripadal (8; 3; 9 etc.), one of the "Eight Anthologies" of poetry (or ettuttokai), has homages to
Vishnu,
Lakshmi,
Brahma, the twelve
Adityas, the
Ashwins, the
Rudras, the
Saptarishis,
Indra, the
Devas etc. The
Kural, written by
Tiruvalluvar, mentions gods like
Indra (25) and
Lakshmi (e.g. 167).
The Fifth century BCE Tamil epic
Silappathikaram, begins with invocations to
Chandra,
Surya, and
Indra, and has homages to
Agni,
Varuna,
Shiva, Subrahmanya, Vishnu-Krishna, Uma, etc. The epic states that "Vedic sacrifices [are] being faultlessly performed" and has many references to Vedic culture and Vedic texts. In the Buddhist work
Manimekhalai, the submersion of the city Puhar in
Kumari Kandam is attributed to the neglect of the worship to
Indra.
Herodotus,
Homer and other Greek authors called the Dravidians the
Eastern Ethiopians. Greek writers sometimes identified the "Western Aethiopians" of East Africa with the "Eastern Aethiopians" of South India. Also the African and Indian geography were sometimes compared or identified with each other:
Arrian (vi. i.) mentions that the
Indus River was thought by some ancient
Greeks to be the source of the
Nile. It is usually assumed that by 'Aethiopian' Herodotus simply means 'black person', so that the term really only functions to characterise southern Indians as Eastern black people.
Herodotus wrote about the Dravidians:
They differed in nothing from the other Ethiopians, save in their language, and the character of their hair. For the Eastern Ethiopians have straight hair, while they of Libya are more woolly-haired than any other people in the world. (Herodotus: from The History of the Persian Wars, VII.70., c.430 BCE)Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, however, took up this connection between Dravidians and Ethiopians in order to claim a direct racial and cultural link between the two peoples. She was attempting to show that Indian culture influenced Ancient
Egypt via Ethiopia. She described many parallels between
Egypt and
India in her works. After the discovery of the Indus Valley Civilisation
Gottfried de Purucker remarked (referring to
Secret Doctrine, vol.2, p.417):
A highly advanced urban civilization of Mohenjo Daro has been discovered on the Indus "between Attock and Sind," exactly the location mentioned in The Secret Doctrine as the abode of the Aethiopians.(Encyclopedic Theosophical Glossary).
However, modern genetic studies show any connection between Dravidian and African can only be attributed to
common journey of
Homo Sapiens. Even the darkest Dravidian with curly hair shared a common ancestor with Africans around 50,000 to 70,000 years ago just like his light skinned, straight haired compatriot. The male lineages, defined by
Y-chromosome Haplogroups are exclusive between Indian and African populations
.
Interestingly, the original Indo-Aryan gods like
Indra,
Agni,
Vayu etc. are not the principal gods of present day Hindus. Those Indo-Aryan gods have equivalents in other
Indo-European gods worshipped by other Indo-European speaking peoples. Those gods occupied the highest position until the advent of Christianity in those societies, with little discernable trace remaining of the Pre-Indo-European deities and traditions. However in India the traditions of native groups such as the Dravidians seem to have mingled more fluently with those of the migrants. One view is that this unique mingling is what resulted in modern Hinduism.
One scenario would place the migration of the Indo-Aryans in a specifically Indian context requiring the merging of Dravidian priestly classes with Indo-Aryan priestly classes, creating a proto-caste system somewhere in the North-West of the Indian subcontinent.
*
Brahuis : Brahuis belong to North-Dravidian linguistic family. They are found in
Balochistan province of
Pakistan. Brahuis are exclusively Muslims.
*
Gonds: A prominent group of Dravidian speaking
Tribal people of Central and North India.
*
Kannadigas : These people belong to South-Dravidian language family. Mostly found in
Karnataka. Majority of them belong to Hinduism. There are Muslims, and small populations of Christians and Jains.
*
Malayalis : The people of
Kerala belong to South-Dravidian linguistic family. Except for a small percentage of Muslims all religious groups be it, Hindus, Christians or Muslims speak Malayalam as their mother tongue.
*
Tamils : These people belong to South-Dravidian linguistic family. Mostly found in
Tamil Nadu and in
Sri Lanka. The major religions are Hinduism, and Islam. Christianity is also practiced.
*
Telugus : These people belong to Central-Dravidian linguistic family. Mostly found in
Andra Pradesh. Hinduism is the main religion. There is a substantial Muslim population, and small population of Christians.
A large proportion of the Muslim population of
Karnataka and
Andhra Pradesh speak
Urdu or other Indo-Aryan languages as their mother tongue.
*
*
The Aryan-Dravidian Controversy Article by David Frawley
*
Vedic roots of early Tamil culture by Michel Danino*
Aryan or Dravidian?*
An Atlantis in the Indian Ocean - Tamil Kumarikhandam 
