The people of the coasts of Ceylon are Dravi dian of the Tamil stock. Those of Kandy, with their habits of polyandry, would seem to be allied to the people of Coorg, and Ceylon has a few wild races, the Galialeya, Rhodia, and Veddah, in the forests and unfrequented parts.
In the Peninsula of India, where the Tamil is spoken in the extreme south-east by about ten millions of souls, the Tamil - speaking people are, generally speaking, a dark - coloured and short- statured race, energetic, fiery, quarrel some, but not vindictive. Most of them have embraced Brahmanism, but largely mixed with a devil and hero worship, and the worship of the local deities called Amman. Where the Telugu is spoken by about 15 millions of people, on the eastern side of the Peninsula, the people are a, taller and fairer race than the Tamil, many of the more northern of them being equal in stature to the Aryan Hindus of the north. They are more Brahnianical than the Tamilians, and are as energetic as the latter, though less restless. The people who speak Canarese are about five millions in number, chiefly in the centre of the Peninsula ; they are a tall and singularly graceful, dark, almost black race, with whom, something akin to polyandry is very prevalent. The Malealarn language in the south-west of the Peninsula is spoken by about 2i aud the Tulu, on the seaboard somewhat to the north, by about 150,000. The people of Coorg and Mysore speak a Canarese dialect ; and on the Neilgherry Hills are the Kota, the Toda, the Budaga, the Irular, and other small tribes. In the interior of the Peninsula are Gond ttibes, and the Khand, Kund, or Ku, also Dravidian, who are estimated at half a million of souls, and the Bhils are of Kaudesh and the Nerbadda, and Rajputana.
Dravidian aborigines deal in demonology, fetishism, frantic dances, bloody and even human sacrifices. They are, however, superior to the Aryan Hindus in freedom from disqualifying prejudices, but inferior to them in learning, and all its train of appliances.
Of the broken tribes, the Mhar, Dher, Madera, Holaru, Toty, aud Paiiah are labourers aad village servants ; the Mang, Chakili, and Madaga are leather-workers ; the homeless Korawa, Yerkala, Bhatu, Domar, are mat-makers, fowlers, and athletes ; the hillmen, Kotah, Toda, Irular, Kurumbar, Kadar, Chenchwar, Male-Arisar, Saora, Khand, Gond, Juanga, are in the moun tains and forests aud hilly country from the western and southern borders of Bengal, Behar, and Benares, to Cape Comorin, and from the Western Ghats inland to the Bay of Bengal.
Of all the Dravidian tongues, no two are so nearly related to each other as to be mutually intelligible to the people who speak them, except in the simplest and most direct manner. In the cultivated Dravidian tongues, Sanskrit words are not at all, or but very rarely, employed. Tamil WaS the earliest developed of all the Dravidian idioms, is the most copious, and contains the largest portion of indubitably ancient forms. It includes two dialects, the classical and colloquial, the ancient and the modern, called respectively the Shen Tamil and the Kodun Tamil, which so widely differ, that they may almost be regarded as different languages. The Tamil race is the least scrupulous or superstitious, and the most enterprising and persevering of Hindus. They swarm wherever money is to be made, or wher ever a more apathetic or a inore aristocratic people is waiting to be pushed aside. The majority of the Hindus found in Pegu, Penang, Singapore, , and other places in the east, where they are known as Klings, are Tamilar. All throughout Ceylon, the coolies in the coffee plantations are Tamilar ; the majority of the money-making classes even in Colombo are Tarnilians ; and ere long the Tamilians will have excluded the Sin ghalese from almost every office of profit and trust in their own island. The majority of the domestic servants and of the camp followers in the Madras Presidency are Tamilians ;. and the coolies who emigrate to the Mauritius and the West India Islands were largely Tamil. Includ ing the Tamil people who are residing in the military cantonments and distant colonies, and those in Mysore, south Travancore, northern Ceylon, and excluding all Mahomedan, Teling-, and Brahman residents of the Tamil country, who amount to at least ten per cent. of the who!e population, the people who speak the Tamil language were estimated by Dr..Caldwell at about 10 millions.