DRAVIDZANS (Skt. Dr4vifIn). The name given to a large group of non-Aryan races of Southern India, including those speaking Tamil, Tel Kanarese, Malayalam, Tulu, Kildagn. and six or eight dialects of the ruder tribes, like Tnda, Knta, Khond, and Gond. together with Oraon and IZajinalial. Geo graphically the Dravidian population occupies almost the entire peninsular lent of India, or that portion to the south of the Vindliya forest and the Nerbuffila River, as a glance at the lin guistic and racial maps of Cost and Constable will show. (See. also, INDIA.) The Oraons and the Ft:Omaha] hill tribes are sporadic represen tatives of Dravidian: in the Province of Bengal tc the north. Like the main body to the south, they are remnants left over from an I.:tidier time when the Dravidians occupied a much larger part of India than at present as a whole the Dravidian stork ha, been pushed forward or overrun by the advance of the Aryan ineomers from the north. Ethnologically the Dravidians are interesting. especially such a tribe as the Tndas. in the Nilgiri bills, who represent one of the lowest stages of civilization. In some dis tri•ts the Dravidians are by language rather than by physical characteristics from the neighboring Hindu ( Aryan) peoples, while in others they are so dark-skinned and so constituted in hair, features, eta. as to lead many ethnologists to consider them related to the Australians and to group the latter and the former as one rare. The anthropological kinship is maintained by Hale (1)011 and Brinton (1S90), the former holding, that the Australians are Dravidian: degraded by their environment. Keane (1896) sees a large Caucasian (white) element in the Dravidians, who, like the Mag yars in Europe, been assimilated to the Caucasian type. and have accepted Aryan cul ture, while preserving intact their non-Aryan speech." Dale thinks that the influence of the Dravidians upon the intruding Aryans has been much underestimated. Some authorities con sider the so-called •Kola•ian' peoples to be re lated to the Dravidians, while others look upon them as pre-Dravidian aborigines. The religion of the Dravidians embraces all phase: from the rude nature-worship of the bill tribes to the bor rowed Buddhism. Hinduism. and Islamism of the more civilized peoples. The Dravidians (Tamils) have even developed a style of architecture. The folklore and mythology of some of these peo ples is rich and varied, of the Tamils in par ticular.
The Dravidian languages belong to a group quite independent of the Aryan cu. Indo-Germanic (q.v.): the affinities which these tongues with Sanskrit are due to geographical contact. and not to lingvistie kinship. owing to certain characteristics or peculiar features of these languages, some scholars, especially the best authority, Caldwell. have sought to establish an alliliation between the Dravidian and what is sometimes called the Scythian or Turanian fam ily of tongues. Hardly any two of the dozen Dravidian languages are intelligible to those who speak the other, except in a general way. The two whidi stand highest in cultivation and im portance are the Tamil and the Telugu. :More than half the number of Dravidhm-,peaking peo ples employ the one or the other of these two vtrnaeulars. The Tamil covers the lower eastern side of the Indian peninsula from .Madras to ('ape Comorin and over into Ceylon. It is spoken by some 16.000.000 people. The Telugu, which is spoken by fully as large a number. ad joins this language to the north and extends from Madras upward beyond the dominions of the Nizam of Hyderabad. The Kanarese, or Canare-e, spreads westvard from the Telugu dis trict to the sea, and is current anitmg scone Ill, W111.111111 person-. The Malayalam, spoken by -;.tioti„otal indiciluals, Inns ill :t narrow strip
otool the lower sontintestern part of the penin sula. alit ost from Mangalore to the Cape.
\\ ith regard to Dravidian literature. such Wit rks a- exist in the several lallgttages are com paratively modern, despite the antiquity of the Drav idian /it tlization. Hardly one call be said to be inure than a thousand years old. The tamil and the Telugu, in fact, are the only two Dra ithan language, that can be said to have any real literature. Tamil claims to have com positions a- old as the legendary sage Agastya; but the treatises and grammatical writings at tribtited to him eau hardly he dated prior to the tenth century .k.u. Probably not far returned front the same date is the Kura, of comprising poetical aphorisms in 1330 distichs trans. by Ch. (Irani, Leipzig, B.:(15), and like wise ;he a romantie poem of some 15.010 verses. 'written by an unknown author, or again the ethical poem which has been rendered into English by Pope (Oxford, Two centuries later the Tamil poet Ixambar made a version. or adaptation, of the Sansl:rit epic "Itilmayana," and again in the sixteenth •entlir• there Was a literary revival connected with the name of the poet-king Ati Vira•ltfona l'antlya. At the opening of the eighteenth century we find. besides the na tive Tamil poet Tnytimanavar. the name of a foreigner, the celebrated Italian Jesuit missionary Beset'', who wrote poetry and prose of so excellent a quality as to win him a place in Tamil literature. In more recent times, it may be added, the educational influences of the Madras College have done much for Tamil through translating into it the English Bible and various religions works, and Tamil may be said to possess a future as a vernacular literature, ;sect and conies Telugu, in which the oldest ex tant poetical work is a Version made from the great Sanskrit epic if (1110)11d ra , by _Nan nappa. or Nannaya Bhatta, presumably in the tvelith eentitry may also claim the minnb of a poetical writer. Kes'ava, who probably belonged to the same century, in the .Malayalam language, moreover, there is a po•tic al account of Intim, the heroic l'rinee of India, bo:ed upon the Sanskrit, and there are likewise vt r-ion- of both the greater Sanskrit epics. The other Drat idian languages possess either no literature at all or none worth mentioning.
DIM lontivellY. The standard book on Dravid ian is the large work by Caldwell, Coin ra I i re Grammar of the f ira viol ia n, or .tioufh Italian rn tut I y of Lnnquqqe.c (2d ed.. London. 1S7 ; If n mix of Cent nil I London, 1•7 1 . I iesrri pi i re noloay of Bengal it alentta. 1s7•) : l'olk INet• ork. : Eingscote. of Southern / ad a London. 1'390): Opperl, Oriuinal In habitants of 1 mliu (London, Iti9:11. There is also •, considerable special literature for each of the eivili/ed Dravidian peonies. On the Dravidian languages, eonstilt: Caldwell. Com poroirt inniar of the I ira rid in n ni lig of Languagrx (London. 1s75) ; rn.t. Modern 1,au of the rust 1rtli..s I Loudon, 187°0 ; M pit ra I Metionary of the on-.1 r ya n Laaguayes of India (London, 186s). For Tamil, consult: rope, ssons in Tamil (I 1S91 , and other works by the saline author, in cluding his English translation of the "„Nala (Oxford, ; ."'oath /adiqa /ascriptions, Tamil and ,•unskrit, translated (2\ladras and Leipzig, 18:1)-9:0 ; I drain, ltrara/ /art is t 1 Leipzig, 1 ; on Telugu : Arden, Proyr, re ; ra mar of the /Ilya Language t \lad ra -, s7:0 ; Brown, Tt /0ga-it:ay/L.:it and nyl yu htllonrry (Madras, 1S.i2-54) : Carr, collection of Te/uya i'ror(rbs (31adras, lit Kanarese or l'anarese and .N1:flay:dam there are several Works publisliet1 in :Mangalore, ;southern India.