The Irular people of ignorance or darkness,' speak a rude'Tamil.
The Curb, or Curubar, or Kurumbar, are nomade shepherds, who occupy the denser, deeper jungle, where they are occasionally stumbled upon by adventurous sportsmen, and the smoke of whose fires may occasionally be seen rising from the ' lower gorges of the hills.
The Gond is the language of the indigenous inhabitants of the northern parts of the extensive hilly country of Gondwana, of the northern portion of Berar, and which includes the greater part of the Central Provinces. Mr. Driberg compiled a very complete grammar and vocabulary of the Mahadeo dialect of the Gond language ; and the dialect of the Saonee Gonds was noticed in a paper by Mr. Manger. The Uraon and the Male or Rajmahali dialects are close to the Gond and South Dravidian.
Khand is the language of a primitives race, who are supposed to be allied to the Gond. They inhabit the upper parts of Gondwana, Gumsur, and the hilly ranges of Orissa, and their horrid rites of offering young people in sacrifice (see Meriah) is generally known. The two people by whom the Gond and. Ku languages are spoken are supposed to amount to 500,000 souls. 30,000,000 of Dravidians are British subjects, and the remainder arc under the Native States of Mysore, Hyderabad, Travancore, and Cochin, and in this enumeration there has not been included the idioms of the Ramusi, the Yerkala, the Korawar, the Binjara, the Beder, the Male - Arisar, and other wandering, predatory, or forest tribes. The Binjara speak a dialect of the Hindi ; the Ramusi, and the majority of the Korawa, a patois of the Telugu. The tribes inhabiting the hills and forests speak corrupted dialects of the languactes of the contiguous plains. The Male-Arisar, Fdll kings,' the hill tribes inhabiting the Southern Ghats, speal: corrupt Malealam in the northern part of the range, where the Malealatn is the prevailing language, and corrupt Tamil in the southern, in the vicinity of Tamil-speakino- districts.
Kol and Saora dwell towardse'the north of the Gond and Khand, in Central India ; their languages contain Dravidian words but they belong to a totally different family of 'languages.
Uraon, the language of the Urya people, is an uncultivated idiom, and contains many roots and forms belongina to the Kol dialects, but so many Dravidian roots%f primary importance, that it is considered by Dr. Caldwell as having originally been a member of the Dravidian family of lan guages.
The Mal, Paharia, or 1?ajmahali, contains so many Dravidian roots of primary importance, though it also contains a large admixture of roots and forms belonging to the Kol dialects, that Dr. Caldwell considers it also had originally belonged to the Dravidian family of languages. It is spoken by the Malei, or inhabitants of the hills. A brief vocabulary of the words of the tribe inhabiting the Rajrnahal Hills, in Central India, as contained in vol. v. of the Asiatic Researches, and Air. Hodg son's more complete collections, prove the idiom of this tribe to be in the main Dravidian.
The Brahtti language, spoken by the 'noun ! taineers in the klianship of Kelat in Baluchistan, contains some Dravidian words, and a considerable infusion of unquestionable Dravidian forms and idioms. Considered us a whole, this language is supposed to be derived from the same source as tho Panjabi and Sindi; but it unquestionably contains a Dravidian elenient, derived from a remnant of the ancient Dravidian race having been incorporated with tho Brahui. The discovery of this element beyond the Indus has been thought to prove that some of the Dravidians, like the Aryans, the GrEeco - Scythians, and the Turco- Mongolians, entered India by the north-west route. The 13rallui language extends front Shawl in the north to Jhalawan in the south, and from Koltak in the west to lIarrand in the east. —Professor Huxley in Jo. Ethu. So. ;• Bunsen in Rep. Brit. Assoc.; The Rev. Dr. Caltheell's Comparative Grammar ; Sir Erskine Perry's Bird's-eye View.