Dravidian peoples: Difference between revisions
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==Etymology== |
==Etymology== |
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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 ''{{IAST|drāviḍa}}'' in the work ''Tantravārttika'' by {{IAST|Kumārila Bhaṭṭa}}.<ref>{{harvnb|Zvelebil|1990|p=xx}}</ref> For the origin of the Sanskrit word ''{{IAST|drāviḍa}}'', various theories have been proposed. These theories concern the direction of derivation between ''{{IAST|tamiẓ}}'' and ''{{IAST|drāviḍa}}''; such linguists as Zvelebil assert that the direction is from ''{{IAST|tamiẓ}}'' to ''{{IAST|drāviḍa}}''.<ref>{{harvnb|Zvelebil|1990|p=xxi}}</ref> |
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 ''{{IAST|drāviḍa}}'' in the work ''Tantravārttika'' by {{IAST|Kumārila Bhaṭṭa}}.<ref>{{harvnb|Zvelebil|1990|p=xx}}</ref> For the origin of the Sanskrit word ''{{IAST|drāviḍa}}'', various theories have been proposed. These theories concern the direction of derivation between ''{{IAST|tamiẓ}}'' and ''{{IAST|drāviḍa}}''; such linguists as Zvelebil assert that the direction is from ''{{IAST|tamiẓ}}'' to ''{{IAST|drāviḍa}}''.<ref>{{harvnb|Zvelebil|1990|p=xxi}}</ref> |
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==Origins== |
==Origins== |
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Revision as of 10:46, 4 March 2014
 Areas in South India where Dravidian languages are currently spoken | |
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| approx. 217 million speakers | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Languages | |
| Dravidian languages | |
| Religion | |
| Hinduism, Islam, traditional religion, Buddhism, Jainism, Christianity, Judaism | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Brahuis · Cholanaikkan · Gondis · Irulas · Kannadigas · Khonds · Kodavas · Malayalis · Paniyas · Soliga · Telugus · Tamils · Tuluvas |
Dravidian is the general physical type of some or all of the people of South Asia. The term was used in biological anthropology for many people from this region, without regard necessarily to skin tone. Although Dravidian people mostly speak Indo-Aryan languages, there are still around 220 million speakers of the native Dravidian languages. Dravidian people are mostly found in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Maldives and Nepal.
Classification
There are two definitions for Dravidian ethnicity which are generally divided between proposing that Dravidian people are an ethnic group in their own right, or Dravidian peoples are a collective group of ethnolinguistic ethnicities. The World Book encyclopaedia, Volume 10 says: "Most southern Indians belong to the Dravidian ethnic group;" referring to them as one ethnic group,[1] while the The New Encyclopaedia Britannica: Volume 8; Volume 21 refers to 'Dravidian ethnic groups', suggesting the latter definition.[2] Hence, depending on the definition and context, both 'Dravidian people' and 'Dravidian peoples' may be used.
Etymology
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 drāviḍa in the work Tantravārttika by Kumārila Bhaṭṭa.[3] For the origin of the Sanskrit word drāviḍa, various theories have been proposed. These theories concern the direction of derivation between tamiẓ and drāviḍa; such linguists as Zvelebil assert that the direction is from tamiẓ to drāviḍa.[4]
Origins
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.[5] Origins of Dravidian people are informed by various theories proposed by linguists, anthropologists, geneticist and historians. According to geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza in the book The History and Geography of Human Genes, the Dravidians were preceded in the subcontinent by Austroasiatic speakers, and were followed by Indo-European-speaking migrants sometime later.
Some linguists hypothesized that Dravidian-speaking people were spread throughout the Indian subcontinent before a series of Indo-Aryan migrations. In this view, the early Indus Valley civilisation (Harappa and Mohenjo Daro) is often identified as having been Dravidian.[6] Cultural and linguistic similarities have been cited by researchers such as Finnish Indologist Asko Parpola as being strong evidence for a proto-Dravidian origin of the ancient Indus Valley civilisation.
Some scholars like J. Bloch and M. Witzel believe that the Indo-Aryan moved into an already Dravidian speaking area after the oldest parts of the Rig Veda were already composed.[7] 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.[8]
Thomason and Kaufman state that there is strong evidence that Dravidian influenced Indo-Aryan through "shift", that is, native Dravidian speakers learning and adopting Indo-Aryan languages.[9] Erdosy 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.[10] Even though the innovative traits in Indo-Aryan languages 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 several of the innovative traits in Indo-Aryan languages better than any internal explanation that has been proposed.[11] 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".[12]
Genetic anthropology
Genetic views on race differ in their classification of Dravidians. Classical anthropologists, such as Carleton S. Coon in his 1939 work The Races of Europe, argued that Ethiopia in Northeast Africa and India in South Asia represented the outermost peripheries of the Caucasoid race. In the 1960s, genetic anthropologist Stanley Marion Garn considered the entirety of the Indian subcontinent to be a "race" genetically distinct from other populations.[13][14] The geneticist L.L. Cavalli-Sforza of Stanford, based on work done in the 1980s, classified Indians as being genetically Caucasian. Cavalli-Sforza theorised that Indians are about three times closer to West Europeans than to East Asians.[13] More recently, other geneticists, such as Lynn B. Jorde and Stephen P. Wooding, demonstrated that Southern Indians were most closely related to East Asians.[15][16][17]
While a number of earlier anthropologists held the view that the Dravidian people together were a distinct race, a small number of genetic studies based on uniparental markers have challenged this view. Some researchers have indicated that both Dravidian and Indo-Aryan speakers are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent; however, this point of view is rejected by many researchers in favour of Indo-Aryan migration, with racial stratification among Indian populations being distributed along caste lines.[18][19][20][21]
Because of admixture between Australoid, Caucasoid, and Mongoloid racial groups, one cannot speak of a biologically separate "Dravidian race" distinct from non-Dravidians on the Indian subcontinent. In a 2009 study of 132 individuals, 560,000 single-nucleotide polymorphisms in 25 different Indian groups were analysed, providing strong evidence in support of the notion that modern Indians (both Indo-Aryan and Dravidian groups) are a hybrid population descending from two post-Neolithic, genetically divergent populations referred to as the 'Ancestral North Indians' and the 'Ancestral South Indians'. According to the study, Andamanese are an ASI-related group without ANI ancestry, showing that the peopling of the islands must have occurred before ANI-ASI gene flow on the mainland.[22]
Language
The best-known Dravidian languages are Tamil (தமிழ்), Telugu (తెలుగు), Malayalam (മലയാളം), and Kannada (ಕನ್ನಡ). There are three subgroups within the Dravidian language family: North Dravidian, Central Dravidian, and South Dravidian, matching for the most part the corresponding regions in the Indian subcontinent.
Dravidian languages are spoken by more than 200 million people. They appear to be unrelated to languages of other known families like Indo-European.
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.[23] There are also hundreds of Dravidian loanwords in Indo-Aryan languages, and vice versa.
List of Dravidian peoples
| Name | Country | Population | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brahuis |  Pakistan |
2,528,000 | Brahuis are an ethnic group of about 2.5 million people with the majority found in Sindh and Baluchistan, Pakistan. |
| Cholanaikkan |  India |
191 | The Cholanaikkan primarily inhabit the southern Kerala State, especially Silent Valley National Park, and are one of the last remaining hunter-gatherer tribes of the region. They speak the Dravidian Cholanaikkan language. |
| Giraavarus |  Maldives |
? | The Giraavarus or Tivaru people are the indigenous people of Giraavaru Island, part of the Maldives. |
| Gonds | India |
9,319,000 (1991) | A prominent group of Dravidian-speaking tribal people inhabiting the central region of India. |
| Irulas | India |
1,000-2,000 | Irulas inhabit various parts of the southern half of the country, but mainly reside in the Thiruvallur district of Tamil Nadu. They speak Irula, a Dravidian language most closely related to Tamil, Yerukala, Sholaga and other Tamil languages. |
| Kannadigas | India |
45,000,000 (2001 only India) | Kannadigas: People belonging to the south-Dravidian subgroup. Mostly found in Karnataka and parts of northern Kerala and parts of southern Maharashtra, northwest region of Tamil Nadu, India. A minority group is found in Arab states of the Persian Gulf, United States, United Kingdom, Canada. |
| Khonds/Kondha | India |
? | They inhabit Odisha and the Srikakulam and Visakhapatnam districts of Andhra Pradesh. Their main divisions are the Kutia, or hill Khonds and plain-dwelling Khonds; the landowners among them are known as Raj Khonds. The Khonds speak Kui, a Dravidian language most closely related to Gondi, Konda and Kuvi. |
| Kodavas | India |
160,000 (approx) | People belonging to the south-Dravidian subgroup, found in Karnataka and parts of northern Kerala who speak the Kodava language. |
| Kurukhs | India,  Bangladesh |
? | People belonging to the north-Dravidian subgroup. Found in India and Bangladesh. It is the only Dravidian language indigenous in Bangladesh. |
| Malayalis | India |
35,757,100 (1997) | These people belong to south-Dravidian linguistic subgroup. Mostly found in Kerala, Lakshadweep, Puducherry, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Andaman and Nicobar Islands in India. A minority group is found in Arab states of the Persian Gulf, United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Malaysia and Australia. |
| Malto | India |
? | Malto/Malar mostly live in the northern end of the subcontinent, such as in West Bengal, Bangladesh, Bihar and Jharkhand. |
| Paniyas | India |
94,000 (2003) | They primarily inhabit Kerala, and the Wayanad, Kozhikode, Kannur and Malappuram districts. They Paniya speak the Paniya language, which belongs to the Malayalam group of Dravidian languages. |
| Soligas | India |
20,000 | They primarily inhabit the Biligirirangan Hills and associated ranges in southern Karnataka, mostly in the Chamarajanagar and Erode districts of Tamil Nadu. Many are also concentrated in and around the BR Hills in Yelandur and Kollegal Taluks of Chamarajanagar District, Karnataka. The Soliga speak Sholaga, a Dravidian language most closely to Kannada. |
| Tamils | India,  Sri Lanka |
77,000,000 | These people belong to south-Dravidian linguistic subgroup. Mostly found in Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, parts of Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, southern Karnataka, Maharashtra and Delhi.There is also a significant presence in Sri Lanka, Singapore, Andaman and Nicobar, Maldives, Mauritius, Philippines, Bali, Sumatra and Malaysia. A minority group is found in Arab states of the Persian Gulf, United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. |
| Telugus | India |
80,000,000 | These people belong to south-Dravidian subgroup (formerly classified with the Central Dravidian but now more specifically in the South Dravidian or South Central Dravidian inner branch of the South Dravidian). Mostly found in Andhra Pradesh also in Orissa, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka and also in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Singapore and United States. |
| Tuluvas | India |
10,000,000 (approx) | People belonging to the south Dravidian subgroup, found in coastal Karnataka and northern Kerala, alternatively named Tulu Nadu. |
See also
- Dravidian languages
- Historical definitions of races in India
- Dravidian University (dedicated to research and learning of Dravidian languages)
- South India
References
- ^ The World Book encyclopedia: Volume 10. World Book Inc. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-71664-7.
{{cite book}}: Check|isbn=value: checksum (help) - ^ The New Encyclopaedia Britannica: Volume 8; Volume 21. 1998. p. 13.
- ^ Zvelebil 1990, p. xx
- ^ Zvelebil 1990, p. xxi
- ^ "Dravidian languages." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2008. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 5 June 2008
- ^ Stone celts in Harappa
- ^ Bryant, Edwin (2001). "Linguistic Substrata in Sanskrit Texts". The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 76–107. ISBN 978-0-19-513777-4.
{{cite book}}: External link in|chapterurl=|chapterurl=ignored (|chapter-url=suggested) (help) - ^ Mallory 1989[page needed]
- ^ Thomason & Kaufman 1988[page needed]
- ^ Erdosy 1995, p. 18
- ^ Thomason & Kaufman 1988, pp. 141–4
- ^ Dravidian languages – Britannica Online Encyclopedia[full citation needed]
- ^ a b Robert Jurmain, Lynn Kilgore, Wenda Trevathan, and Harry Nelson. Introduction to Physical Anthropology. 9th ed. (Canada: Thompson Learning, 2003)[page needed]
- ^ Garn SM. Coon. On the Number of Races of Mankind. In Garn S, editor. Readings on race. Springfield C.C. Thomas.[page needed]
- ^ Jorde, Lynn B; Wooding, Stephen P (2004). "Genetic variation, classification and 'race'". Nature Genetics. 36 (11s): S28. doi:10.1038/ng1435. PMID 15508000.
{{cite journal}}: Invalid|ref=harv(help) - ^ Bamshad, Michael J.; Wooding, Stephen; Watkins, W. Scott; Ostler, Christopher T.; Batzer, Mark A.; Jorde, Lynn B. (2003). "Human Population Genetic Structure and Inference of Group Membership". The American Journal of Human Genetics. 72 (3): 578–89. doi:10.1086/368061. PMC 1180234. PMID 12557124.
{{cite journal}}: Invalid|ref=harv(help) - ^ Rosenberg, Noah A.; Pritchard, Jonathan K.; Weber, James L.; Cann, Howard M.; Kidd, Kenneth K.; Zhivotovsky, Lev A.; Feldman, Marcus W. (2002). "Genetic Structureof Human Populations". Science. 298 (5602): 2381–5. Bibcode:2002Sci...298.2381R. doi:10.1126/science.1078311. PMID 12493913.
{{cite journal}}: Invalid|ref=harv(help) - ^ Cordaux, Richard; Aunger, Robert; Bentley, Gillian; Nasidze, Ivane; Sirajuddin, S.M.; Stoneking, Mark (2004). "Independent Origins of Indian Caste and Tribal Paternal Lineages". Current Biology. 14 (3): 231–5. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2004.01.024. PMID 14761656.
{{cite journal}}: Invalid|ref=harv(help) - ^ Watkins, W.s.; Thara, R.; Mowry, B.j.; Zhang, Y.; Witherspoon, D.j.; Tolpinrud, W.; Bamshad, M.j.; Tiripati, S.; Padmavati, R. (2008). "Genetic variation in South Indian castes: Evidence from Y-chromosome, mitochondrial, and autosomal polymorphisms". BMC Genetics. 9: 86. doi:10.1186/1471-2156-9-86. PMC 2621241. PMID 19077280.
{{cite journal}}: Invalid|ref=harv(help)CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link) - ^ Zhao, Z; Khan, F; Borkar, M; Herrera, R; Agrawal, S (2009). "Presence of three different paternal lineages among North Indians: A study of 560 Y chromosomes". Annals of Human Biology. 36 (1): 46–59. doi:10.1080/03014460802558522. PMC 2755252. PMID 19058044.
{{cite journal}}: Invalid|ref=harv(help) - ^ Majumder, Partha P. (2010). "The Human Genetic History of South Asia". Current Biology. 20 (4): R184–7. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2009.11.053. PMID 20178765.
…Historical and anthropological studies suggest that in the establishment of the caste system in India there have been varying levels of admixture between the tribal people of India and the later immigrants bringing along with them agriculture, pottery and metals from central and west Asia. In other words, castes of different ranks in the contemporary Hindu society putatively have had different degrees of admixture with immigrants into India from central and west Asia. The immigrants from central and west Asia who likely entered India through the north-western corridor, spread to most areas of northern India, but not to southern India. In other words, southern and northern India had differential inputs of genes from central and west Asia. This differential admixture is expected to have differential impacts on the genetic structures of castes of different ranks.
{{cite journal}}: Invalid|ref=harv(help) - ^ Reich, David; Thangaraj, Kumarasamy; Patterson, Nick; Price, Alkes L.; Singh, Lalji (2009). "Reconstructing Indian population history". Nature. 461 (7263): 489–94. Bibcode:2009Natur.461..489R. doi:10.1038/nature08365. PMC 2842210. PMID 19779445.
{{cite journal}}: Invalid|ref=harv(help) - ^ Krishnamurti 2003, pp. 40–1
- Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju (2003). The Dravidian Languages. Cambridge Language Surveys. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-77111-5.
{{cite book}}: Invalid|ref=harv(help) - Indian Genome Variation Consortium (2008). "Genetic landscape of the people of India: A canvas for disease gene exploration". Journal of Genetics. 87 (1): 3–20. doi:10.1007/s12041-008-0002-x. PMID 18560169.
{{cite journal}}: Invalid|ref=harv(help) - Mallory, J. P. (1989). In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-05052-1.
{{cite book}}: Invalid|ref=harv(help) - Thomason, Sarah Grey; Kaufman, Terrence (1988). Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-05789-0.
{{cite book}}: Invalid|ref=harv(help) - Zvelebil, Kamil (1990). Dravidian Linguistics: An Introduction. Pondicherry: Pondicherry Institute of Linguistics and Culture. ISBN 978-81-85452-01-2.
{{cite book}}: Invalid|ref=harv(help) - Erdosy, George (1995). The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia: Language, Material Culture and Ethnicity. Berlin: de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-014447-5.
{{cite book}}: Invalid|ref=harv(help)
External links
