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The terms Dravidians and Dravidian Race are sometimes given to the peoples of southern and central India and northern Sri Lanka who speak Dravidian languages, the best known of which are Tamil (தமிழ்), Telugu (తెలుగు), Kannada (ಕನ್ನಡ),Malayalam(മലയാളം) and Tulu(ತುಳು).

Ethnology

The term arose from nineteenth century Western scholars assumptions that Dravidian speakers were a distinct group within India, seperate from the speakers of the Indo-Aryan languages in the north of the country. It was supposed that the generally darker-skinned Dravidians constituted a distinct race. This notion corresponded to racial hierarchies of the time according to which darker skinned peoples were more primitive than light-skinned whites. Accordingly, Dravidians were envisaged as primitive early inhabitants of India who had been partially displaced and subordinated by more advanced Aryans. The term Dravidian is taken from the Sanskrit "drāvida", meaning "Southern". Thus the name itself is Indo-Aryan, and is not derived from any Dravidian language. 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 an own race of the about 40 human races ("Weddid race"). Indeed they differ from northern Indians in many respects, one of which is often darker skin. Most modern historians, however, reject this conception of a distinct Dravidian race, asserting that the high degree of admixture between the two in prehistory negates any meaningful distinction outside of linguistics, although some geneticists do assert that southern Indians have a distinctive genetic history that differentiates them from the Mediterranean Indo-Aryans. Those who advocate an Indian origin for the Indo-Aryans may also claim that the somewhat darker skins of the Dravidians would be explained by their adaptation to the hotter and sunnier climate of South India.

The concept 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 was attributed to the displaced Dravidians of the north, further fuelled such Dravidianist ideas since it implied that the Indo-Aryans were "uncivilised barbarians" rather than a "superior race".

There is evidence to suggest 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, who's language some propose be categorized along with the Dravidian languages as part of a larger Elamo-Dravidian language family. The Dravidians where 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. According to Tamil tradition, however, the Tamils came from a submerged island to the South East of the subcontinent.

Dravidian languages and Dravidian peoples

The Dravidian languages are grouped into Northern, Central and Southern categories. The Northern is mainly Brahui which is spoken in Southern or Southwestern Pakistan. The southern is the most active and mainly consists of the languages Tamil, Kannada, Telugu and Malayalam. It should be noted that Malayalam, Telugu and Kannada are highly influenced by Sanskrit both in vocabulary and grammar. This could be attributed to the dominance of Brahmins in the past and also to the adaptation of Sanskrit as the principal language of Buddhism, Jainism and Saivism in those societies. These languages are called Dravidian for purely linguistic reasons; the peoples who use them are of varying racial types.

Some believe that Dravidian-speaking peoples where spread throughout the Indian subcontinent before the Aryans settled there. In this view he 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 where already living in the region, and where 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.

Dravidian and Vedic culture

The Dravidians and South Indians 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.

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. In Hindu tradition the creation of the Tamil language is credited to the Rig Vedic sage Rishi Agastya, a view that secular linguists would interpret as a myth designed to link Dravidians to Vedic Indo-Aryan culture.

Tamil literature and Tamil epics and classics have many references to Vedic gods and culture. The Tolkaappiyam 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 Tamil epic Shilappadikaram, 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 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.

Kumari Kandam

According to Tamil Tradition, the Dravidians originally came from a submerged island Kumari Kandam in the south of India. The Epics Shilappadikaram and Manimekhalai describe the submerged city of Pumbuhar. Kumari Kandam has also been linked to Lemuria.

At Mahabalipuram, near Chennai, submerged ruins have been found in the ocean.

The Eastern Ethiopians

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 eachother: 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).

Dravidian tradition and Hinduism

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. This would also explain the ability for Dravidians in South India to later adopt the caste distinction; as it was partly based on Dravidian societal distinctions in the first place.

References

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External links

• The Aryan-Dravidian Controversy Article by David Frawley
• Vedic roots of early Tamil culture by Michel Danino
• An Atlantis in the Indian Ocean - Tamil Kumarikhandam

• Ancient peoples
• Dravidian people