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Read Ebook: Castes and Tribes of Southern India. Vol. 1 of 7 by Thurston Edgar Rangachari K Contributor

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y notes show that the hyperdolichocephalic type survives in the dolichocephalic inhabitants of the Tamil country at the present day:--

Class Number Cephalic index below 70. examined.

Palli 40 64.4; 66.9; 67; 68.2; 68.9; 69.6. Paraiyan 40 64.8; 69.2; 69.3; 69.5. Vellala 40 67.9; 69.6.

In describing the "Hindu type," Topinard divides the population of the Indian peninsula into three strata, viz., the Black, Mongolian, and the Aryan. "The remnants of the first," he says, "are at the present time shut up in the mountains of Central India under the name of Bhils, Mahairs, Ghonds, and Khonds; and in the south under that of Yenadis, Kurumbas, etc. Its primitive characters, apart from its black colour and low stature, are difficult to discover, but it is to be noticed that travellers do not speak of woolly hair in India. The second has spread over the plateaux of Central India by two lines of way, one to the north-east, the other to the north-west. The remnants of the first invasion are seen in the Dravidian or Tamil tribes, and those of the second in the Jhats. The third more recent, and more important as to quality than as to number, was the Aryan." In speaking further of the Australian type, characterised by a combination of smooth hair with Negroid features, Topinard states that "it is clear that the Australians might very well be the result of the cross between one race with smooth hair from some other place, and a really Negro and autochthonous race. The opinions held by Huxley are in harmony with this hypothesis. He says the Australians are identical with the ancient inhabitants of the Deccan. The features of the present blacks in India, and the characters which the Dravidian and Australian languages have in common, tend to assimilate them. The existence of the boomerang in the two countries, and some remnants of caste in Australia, help to support the opinion."

Of the so-called boomerangs of Southern India, the Madras Museum possesses three from the Tanjore armoury . Concerning them, the Dewan of Pudukkottai writes to me as follows. "The valari or valai tadi is a short weapon, generally made of some hard-grained wood. It is also sometimes made of iron. It is crescent-shaped, one end being heavier than the other, and the outer end is sharpened. Men trained in the use of the weapon hold it by the lighter end, whirl it a few times over their shoulders to give it impetus, and then hurl it with great force against the object aimed at. It is said that there were experts in the art of throwing the valari, who could at one stroke despatch small game, and even man. No such experts are now forthcoming in the Pudukkottai State, though the instrument is reported to be occasionally used in hunting hares, jungle fowl, etc. Its days, however, must be counted as past. Tradition states that the instrument played a considerable part in the Poligar wars of the last century. But it now reposes peacefully in the households of the descendants of the rude Kallan and Maravan warriors, preserved as a sacred relic of a chivalric past, along with other old family weapons in their puja room, brought out and scraped and cleaned on occasions like the Ayudha puja day , and restored to its place of rest immediately afterwards." At a Kallan marriage, the bride and bridegroom go to the house of the latter, where boomerangs are exchanged, and a feast is held. This custom appears to be fast becoming a tradition. But there is a common saying still current "Send the valai tadi, and bring the bride."

It is pointed out by Topinard, as a somewhat important piece of evidence, that, in the West, about Madagascar and the point of Aden in Africa, there are black tribes with smooth hair, or, at all events, large numbers of individuals who have it, mingled particularly among the Somalis and the Gallas, in the region where M. Broca has an idea that some dark, and not Negro, race, now extinct, once existed. At the meeting of the British Association, 1898, Mr. W. Crooke gave expression to the view that the Dravidians represent an emigration from the African continent, and discounted the theory that the Aryans drove the aboriginal inhabitants into the jungles with the suggestion that the Aryan invasion was more social than racial, viz., that what India borrowed from the Aryans was manners and customs. According to this view, it must have been reforming aborigines who gained the ascendancy in India, rather than new-comers; and those of the aborigines who clung to their old ways got left behind in the struggle for existence.

In an article devoted to the Australians, Professor R. Semon writes as follows. "We must, without hesitation, presume that the ancestors of the Australians stood, at the time of their immigration to the continent, on a lower rung of culture than their living representatives of to-day. Whence, and in what manner, the immigration took place, it is difficult to determine. In the neighbouring quarter of the globe there lives no race, which is closely related to the Australians. Their nearest neighbours, the Papuans of New Guinea, the Malays of the Sunda Islands, and the Macris of New Zealand, stand in no close relationship to them. On the other hand, we find further away, among the Dravidian aborigines of India, types which remind us forcibly of the Australians in their anthropological characters. In drawing attention to the resemblance of the hill-tribes of the Deccan to the Australians, Huxley says: 'An ordinary cooly, such as one can see among the sailors of any newly-arrived East India vessel, would, if stripped, pass very well for an Australian, although the skull and lower jaw are generally less coarse.' Huxley here goes a little too far in his accentuation of the similarity of type. We are, however, undoubtedly confronted with a number of characters--skull formation, features, wavy curled hair--in common between the Australians and Dravidians, which gain in importance from the fact that, by the researches of Norris, Bleek, and Caldwell, a number of points of resemblance between the Australian and Dravidian languages have been discovered, and this despite the fact that the homes of the two races are so far apart, and that a number of races are wedged in between them, whose languages have no relationship whatever to either the Dravidian or Australian. There is much that speaks in favour of the view that the Australians and Dravidians sprang from a common main branch of the human race. According to the laborious researches of Paul and Fritz Sarasin, the Veddas of Ceylon, whom one might call pre-Dravidians, would represent an off-shoot from this main stem. When they branched off, they stood on a very low rung of development, and seem to have made hardly any progress worth mentioning."

In dealing with the Australian problem, Mr. A. H. Keane refers to the time when Australia formed almost continuous land with the African continent, and to its accessibility on the north and north-west to primitive migration both from India and Papuasia. "That such migrations," he writes, "took place, scarcely admits of a doubt, and the Rev. John Mathew concludes that the continent was first occupied by a homogeneous branch of the Papuan race either from New Guinea or Malaysia, and that these first arrivals, to be regarded as true aborigines, passed into Tasmania, which at that time probably formed continuous land with Australia. Thus the now extinct Tasmanians would represent the primitive type, which, in Australia, became modified, but not effaced, by crossing with later immigrants, chiefly from India. These are identified, as they have been by other ethnologists, with the Dravidians, and the writer remarks that 'although the Australians are still in a state of savagery, and the Dravidians of India have been for many ages a people civilized in a great measure, and possessed of literature, the two peoples are affiliated by deeply-marked characteristics in their social system as shown by the boomerang, which, unless locally evolved, must have been introduced from India.' But the variations in the physical characters of the natives appear to be too great to be accounted for by a single graft; hence Malays also are introduced from the Eastern Archipelago, which would explain both the straight hair in many districts, and a number of pure Malay words in several of the native languages." Dealing later with the ethnical relations of the Dravidas, Mr. Keane says that "although they preceded the Aryan-speaking Hindus, they are not the true aborigines of the Deccan, for they were themselves preceded by dark peoples, probably of aberrant Negrite type."

In the 'Manual of Administration of the Madras Presidency,' Dr. C. Macleane writes as follows. "The history proper of the south of India may be held to begin with the Hindu dynasties formed by a more or less intimate admixture of the Aryan and Dravidian systems of government. But, prior to that, three stages of historical knowledge are recognisable; first, as to such aboriginal period as there may have been prior to the Dravidian; secondly, as to the period when the Aryans had begun to impose their religion and customs upon the Dravidians, but the time indicated by the early dynasties had not yet been reached. Geology and natural history alike make it certain that, at a time within the bounds of human knowledge, Southern India did not form part of Asia. A large southern continent, of which this country once formed part, has ever been assumed as necessary to account for the different circumstances. The Sanscrit Pooranic writers, the Ceylon Boodhists, and the local traditions of the west coast, all indicate a great disturbance of the point of the Peninsula and Ceylon within recent times. Investigations in relation to race show it to be by no means impossible that Southern India was once the passage-ground, by which the ancient progenitors of Northern and Mediterranean races proceeded to the parts of the globe which they now inhabit. In this part of the world, as in others, antiquarian remains show the existence of peoples who used successively implements of unwrought stone, of wrought stone, and of metal fashioned in the most primitive manner. These tribes have also left cairns and stone circles indicating burial places. It has been usual to set these down as earlier than Dravidian. But the hill Coorumbar of the Palmanair plateau, who are only a detached portion of the oldest known Tamulian population, erect dolmens to this day. The sepulchral urns of Tinnevelly may be earlier than Dravidian, or they may be Dravidian.... The evidence of the grammatical structure of language is to be relied on as a clearly distinctive mark of a population, but, from this point of view, it appears that there are more signs of the great lapse of time than of previous populations. The grammar of the South of India is exclusively Dravidian, and bears no trace of ever having been anything else. The hill, forest, and Pariah tribes use the Dravidian forms of grammar and inflection.... The Dravidians, a very primeval race, take a by no means low place in the conjectural history of humanity. They have affinities with the Australian aborigines, which would probably connect their earliest origin with that people." Adopting a novel classification, Dr. Macleane, in assuming that there are no living representatives in Southern India of any race of a wholly pre-Dravidian character, sub-divides the Dravidians into pre-Tamulian and Tamulian, to designate two branches of the same family, one older or less civilised than the other.

The importance, which has been attached by many authorities to the theory of the connection between the Dravidians and Australians, is made very clear from the passages in their writings, which I have quoted. Before leaving this subject, I may appropriately cite as an important witness Sir William Turner, who has studied the Dravidians and Australians from the standpoint of craniology. "Many ethnologists of great eminence," he writes, "have regarded the aborigines of Australia as closely associated with the Dravidians of India. Some also consider the Dravidians to be a branch of the great Caucasian stock, and affiliated therefore to Europeans. If these two hypotheses are to be regarded as sound, a relationship between the aboriginal Australians and the European would be established through the Dravidian people of India. The affinities between the Dravidians and Australians have been based upon the employment of certain words by both people, apparently derived from common roots; by the use of the boomerang, similar to the well-known Australian weapon, by some Dravidian tribes; by the Indian peninsula having possibly had in a previous geologic epoch a land connection with the Austro-Malayan Archipelago, and by certain correspondences in the physical type of the two people. Both Dravidians and Australians have dark skins approximating to black; dark eyes; black hair, either straight, wavy or curly, but not woolly or frizzly; thick lips; low nose with wide nostrils; usually short stature, though the Australians are somewhat taller than the Dravidians. When the skulls are compared with each other, whilst they correspond in some particulars, they differ in others. In both races, the general form and proportions are dolichocephalic, but in the Australians the crania are absolutely longer than in the Dravidians, owing in part to the prominence of the glabella. The Australian skull is heavier, and the outer table is coarser and rougher than in the Dravidian; the forehead also is much more receding; the sagittal region is frequently ridged, and the slope outwards to the parietal eminence is steeper. The Australians in the norma facialis have the glabella and supra-orbital ridges much more projecting; the nasion more depressed; the jaws heavier; the upper jaw usually prognathous, sometimes remarkably so." Of twelve Dravidian skulls measured by Sir William Turner, in seven the jaw was orthognathous, in four, in the lower term of the mesognathous series; one specimen only was prognathic. The customary type of jaw, therefore, was orthognathic. The conclusion at which Sir William Turner arrives is that "by a careful comparison of Australian and Dravidian crania, there ought not to be much difficulty in distinguishing one from the other. The comparative study of the characters of the two series of crania has not led me to the conclusion that they can be adduced in support of the theory of the unity of the two people."

The Dravidians of Southern India are divided by Sir Herbert Risley into two main groups, the Scytho-Dravidian and the Dravidian, which he sums up as follows:--

"The Scytho-Dravidian type of Western India, comprising the Maratha Braahmans, the Kunbis and the Coorgs; probably formed by a mixture of Scythian and Dravidian elements, the former predominating in the higher groups, the latter in the lower. The head is broad; complexion fair; hair on face rather scanty; stature medium; nose moderately fine, and not conspicuously long.

"The Dravidian type extending from Ceylon to the valley of the Ganges, and pervading the whole of Madras, Hyderabad, the Central Provinces, most of Central India, and Chutia Nagpur. Its most characteristic representatives are the Paniyans of the South Indian Hills and the Santals of Chutia Nagpur. Probably the original type of the population of India, now modified to a varying extent by the admixture of Aryan, Scythian, and Mongoloid elements. In typical specimens, the stature is short or below mean; the complexion very dark, approaching black; hair plentiful with an occasional tendency to curl; eyes dark; head long; nose very broad, sometimes depressed at the root, but not so as to make the face appear flat."

It is, it will be noted, observed by Risley that the head of the Scytho-Dravidian is broad, and that of the Dravidian long. Writing some years ago concerning the Dravidian head with reference to a statement in Taylor's "Origin of the Aryans," that "the Todas are fully dolichocephalic, differing in this respect from the Dravidians, who are brachycephalic," I published certain statistics based on the measurements of a number of subjects in the southern districts of the Madras Presidency. These figures showed that "the average cephalic index of 639 members of 19 different castes and tribes was 74.1; and that, in only 19 out of the 639 individuals, did the index exceed 80. So far then from the Dravidian being separated from the Todas by reason of their higher cephalic index, this index is, in the Todas, actually higher than in some of the Dravidian peoples." Accustomed as I was, in my wanderings among the Tamil and Malayalam folk, to deal with heads in which the dolichocephalic or sub-dolichocephalic type preponderates, I was amazed to find, in the course of an expedition in the Bellary district , that the question of the type of the Dravidian head was not nearly so simple and straightforward as I had imagined. My records of head measurements now include a very large series taken in the plains in the Tulu, Canarese, Telugu, Malayalam, and Tamil areas, and the measurements of a few Maratha classes settled in the Canarese country. In the following tabular statement, I have brought together, for the purpose of comparison, the records of the head-measurements of representative classes in each of these areas:--

The difference in the character of the cranium is further brought out by the following tables, in which the details of the cephalic indices of typical classes in the five linguistic areas under consideration are recorded:--

Tulu. Billava.

Canarese. Vakkaliga.

Telugu. Kapu.

Vellala. Tamil.

Malayalam. Nayar.

These tables not only bring out the difference in the cephalic index of the classes selected as representative of the different areas, but further show that there is a greater constancy in the Tamil and Malayalam classes than in the Tulus, Canarese and Telugus. The number of individuals clustering round the average is conspicuously greater in the two former than in the three latter. I am not prepared to hazard any new theory to account for the marked difference in the type of cranium in the various areas under consideration, and must content myself with the observation that, whatever may have been the influence which has brought about the existing sub-brachycephalic or mesaticephalic type in the northern areas, this influence has not extended southward into the Tamil and Malayalam countries, where Dravidian man remains dolicho- or sub-dolichocephalic.

As an excellent example of constancy of type in the cephalic index, I may cite, en passant, the following results of measurement of the Todas, who inhabit the plateau of the Nilgiri hills:--

I pass on to the consideration of the type of cranium among various Brahman classes. In the following tables, the results of measurement of representatives of Tulu, Canarese, Marathi, Tamil and Malayalam Brahmans are recorded:--

Tulu. Shivalli.

Canarese. Karnataka Smarta.

Tamil. Madras City.

Tamil. Pattar.

Taking the evidence of the figures, they demonstrate that, like the other classes which have been analysed, the Brahmans have a higher cephalic index, with a wider range, in the northern than in the southern area.

There is a tradition that the Shivalli Brahmans of the Tulu country came from Ahikshetra. As only males migrated from their home, they were compelled to take women from non-Brahman castes as wives. The ranks are said to have been swelled by conversions from these castes during the time of Sri Madhvacharya. The Shivalli Brahmans are said to be referred to by the Bants as Mathumaglu or Mathmalu in allusion to the fact of their wives being taken from the Bant caste. Besides the Shivallis, there are other Tulu Brahmans, who are said to be recent converts. The Matti Brahmans were formerly considered low by the Shivallis, and were not allowed to sit in the same line with the Shivallis at meal time. They were only permitted to sit in a cross line, separated from the Shivallis, though in the same room. This was because the Matti Brahmans were supposed to be Mogers raised to Brahmanism by one Vathiraja Swami, a Sanyasi. Having become Brahmans, they could not carry on their hereditary occupation, and, to enable them to earn a livelihood, the Sanyasi gave them some brinjal seeds, and advised them to cultivate the plant. From this fact, the variety of brinjal, which is cultivated at Matti, is called Vathiraja gulla. At the present day, the Matti Brahmans are on a par with the Shivalli Brahmans, and have become disciples of the Sodhe mutt at Udipi. In some of the popular accounts of Brahmans, which have been reduced to writing, it is stated that, during the time of Mayura Varma of the Kadamba dynasty, some Andhra Brahmans were brought into South Canara. As a sufficient number of Brahmans were not available for the purpose of yagams , these Andhra Brahmans selected a number of families from the non-Brahman caste, made them Brahmans, and chose exogamous sept names for them. Of these names, Manoli , Perala , Kudire , and Ane are examples.

In discussing racial admixture, Quatrefages writes as follows. "Parfois on trouve encore quelques tribus qui ont conserv? plus on moins intacts tous les caract?res de leur race. Les Coorumbas du Malwar et du Coorg paraissent former un noyau plus consid?rable encore, et avoir conserv? dans les jungles de Wynaad une ind?pendence ? peu pr?s compl?te, et tous leurs caract?res ethnologiques." The purity of blood and ethnological characters of various jungle tribes are unhappily becoming lost as the result of contact metamorphosis from the opening up of the jungles for planter's estates, and contact with more civilised tribes and races, both brown and white. In illustration, I may cite the Kanikars of Travancore, who till recently were in the habit of sending all their women into the seclusion of the jungle on the arrival of a stranger near their settlements. This is now seldom done, and some Kanikars have in modern times settled in the vicinity of towns, and become domesticated. The primitive short, dark-skinned and platyrhine type, though surviving, has become changed, and many leptorhine or mesorhine individuals above middle height are to be met with. The following are the results of measurements of Kanikars in the jungle, and at a village some miles from Trivandrum, the capital of Travancore:--

Some jungle Chenchus, who inhabit the Nallamalai hills in the Kurnool district, still exhibit the primitive short stature and high nasal index, which are characteristic of the unadulterated jungle tribes. But there is a very conspicuous want of uniformity in their physical characters, and many individuals are to be met with, above middle height, or tall, with long narrow noses. A case is recorded, in which a brick-maker married a Chenchu girl. And I was told of a Boya man who had married into the tribe, and was living in a gudem .

In a note on the jungle tribes, M. Louis Lapicque, who carried out anthropometric observations in Southern India a few years ago, writes as follows. "Dans les montagnes des Nilghirris et d'An?mal?, situ?es au coeur de la contr?e dravidienne, on a signal? depuis longtemps des petits sauvages cr?pus, qu'on a m?me pens? pouvoir, sur des documents insuffisants, identifier avec les negritos. En r?alit?, it n'existe pas dans ces montagnes, ni probablement nulle part dans l'Inde, un t?moin de la race primitive comparable, comme puret?, aux Andamanais ni m?me aux autres Negritos. Ce que l'on trouve l?, c'est simplement, mais c'est fort pr?cieux, une population m?tisse qui continue au del? du Paria la s?rie g?n?rale de l'Inde. Au bord de la for?t vierge ou dans les collines partiellement d?frich?es, il y a des castes demi-Parias, demi-sauvages. La hi?rachie sociale les classe au-dessous du Paria: on peut m?me trouver des groupes ou le facies n?gre, nettement dessin?, est tout ? fait pr?dominant. Ehbien, dans ces groupes, les chevelures sont en g?n?ral fris?es, et on en observe quelques-unes qu'on peut m?me appeler cr?pues. On a donc le moyen de prolonger par l'imagination la s?rie des castes indiennes jusq'au type primitif qui ?tait , un N?gre.... Nous sommes arrives ? reconstituer les traits n?gres d'un type disparu en prolongeant une s?rie gradu?e de m?tis. Par la m?me m?thode nous pouvons d?terminer th?oriquement la forme du cr?ne de ce type. Avec une assez grande certitude, je crois pouvoir affirmer, apr?s de nombreuses mesures syst?matiques, que le n?gre primitif de l'Inde ?tait sousdolichoc?phale avec un indice voisin de 75 ou 76. Sa taille, plus difficile ? pr?ciser, car les conditions de vie modifient ce caract?re, devait ?tre petite, plus haute pourtant que celle des Andamanais. Quant au nom qu'il convient de lui attribuer, la discussion des faits sociaux et linguistiques sur lesquels est fond?e la notion de dravidien permet d'?tablir que ce n?gre ?tait ant?rieur aux dravidiens; il faut done l'appeller Pr?dravidien, ou, si nous voulons lui donner un nom qui ne soit pas relatif ? une autre population, on peut l'appeler N?gre Paria."

In support of M. Lapicque's statement that the primitive inhabitant was dolichocephalic or sub-dolichocephalic, I may produce the evidence of the cephalic indices of the various jungle tribes which I have examined in the Tamil, Malayalam, and Telugu countries:--

It is worthy of note that Haeckel defines the nose of the Dravidian as a prominent and narrow organ. For Risley has laid down that, in the Dravidian type, the nose is thick and broad, and the formula expressing the proportionate dimension is higher than in any known race, except the Negro; and that the typical Dravidian, as represented by the Male Paharia, has a nose as broad in proportion to its length as the Negro, while this feature in the Aryan group can fairly bear comparison with the noses of sixty-eight Parisians, measured by Topinard, which gave an average of 69.4. In this connection, I may record the statistics relating to the nasal indices of various South Indian jungle tribes:--

In the following table, I have brought together, for the purpose of comparison, the average stature and nasal index of various Dravidian classes inhabiting the plains of the Telugu, Tamil, Canarese, and Malayalam countries, and jungle tribes:--

This table demonstrates very clearly an unbroken series ranging from the jungle men, short of stature and platyrhine, to the leptorhine Nayars and other classes.

In plate V are figured a series of triangles representing the maxima, minima, and average nasal indices of Brahmans of Madras city , Tamil Paraiyans, and Paniyans. There is obviously far less connection between the Brahman minimum and the Paraiyan maximum than between the Brahman and Paraiyan maxima and the Paniyan average; and the frequent occurrence of high nasal indices, resulting from short, broad noses, in many classes has to be accounted for. Sir Alfred Lyall somewhere refers to the gradual Brahmanising of the aboriginal non-Arayan, or casteless tribes. "They pass," he writes, "into Brahmanists by a natural upward transition, which leads them to adopt the religion of the castes immediately above them in the social scale of the composite population, among which they settle down; and we may reasonably guess that this process has been working for centuries." In the Madras Census Report, 1891, Mr. H. A. Stuart states that "it has often been asserted, and is now the general belief, that the Brahmans of the South are not pure Aryans, but are a mixed Aryan and Dravidian race. In the earliest times, the caste division was much less rigid than now, and a person of another caste could become a Brahman by attaining the Brahmanical standard of knowledge, and assuming Brahmanical functions; and, when we see the Nambudiri Brahmans, even at the present day, contracting alliances, informal though they be, with the women of the country, it is not difficult to believe that, on their first arrival, such unions were even more common, and that the children born of them would be recognised as Brahmans, though perhaps regarded as an inferior class. However, those Brahmans, in whose veins mixed blood is supposed to run, are even to this day regarded as lower in the social scale, and are not allowed to mix freely with the pure Brahman community."

Popular traditions allude to wholesale conversions of non-Brahmans into Brahmans. According to such traditions, Rajas used to feed very large numbers of Brahmans in expiation of some sin, or to gain religious merit. To make up this large number, non-Brahmans are said to have been made Brahmans at the bidding of the Rajas. Here and there are found a few sections of Brahmans, whom the more orthodox Brahmans do not recognise as such, though the ordinary members of the community regard them as an inferior class of Brahmans. As an instance may be cited the Marakas of the Mysore Province. Though it is difficult to disprove the claim put forward by these people, some demur to their being regarded as Brahmans.

Between a Brahman of high culture, with fair complexion, and long, narrow nose on the one hand, and a less highly civilised Brahman with dark skin and short broad nose on the other, there is a vast difference, which can only be reasonably explained on the assumption of racial admixture; and it is no insult to the higher members of the Brahman community to trace, in their more lowly brethren, the result of crossing with a dark-skinned, and broad-nosed race of short stature. Whether the jungle tribe are, as I believe, the microscopic remnant of a pre-Dravidian people, or, as some hold, of Dravidians driven by a conquering race to the seclusion of the jungles, it is to the lasting influence of some such broad-nosed ancestor that the high nasal index of many of the inhabitants of Southern India must, it seems to me, be attributed. Viewed in the light of this remark, the connection between the following mixed collection of individuals, all of very dark colour, short of stature, and with nasal index exceeding 90, calls for no explanation:--

I pass on to a brief consideration of the languages of Southern India. According to Mr. G. A. Grierson "the Dravidian family comprises all the principal languages of Southern India. The name Dravidian is a conventional one. It is derived from the Sanskrit Dravida, a word which is again probably derived from an older Dramila, Damila, and is identical with the name of Tamil. The name Dravidian is, accordingly, identical with Tamulian, which name has formerly been used by European writers as a common designation of the languages in question. The word Dravida forms part of the denomination Andhra-Dravida-bhasha, the language of the Andhras , and Dravidas , which Kumarila Bhatta employed to denote the Dravidian family. In India Dravida has been used in more than one sense. Thus the so-called five Dravidas are Telugu, Kanarese, Marathi, Gujarati, and Tamil. In Europe, on the other hand, Dravidian has long been the common denomination of the whole family of languages to which Bishop Caldwell applied it in his Comparative Grammar, and there is no reason for abandoning the name which the founder of Dravidian philology applied to this group of speeches."

The five principal languages are Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Canarese, and Oriya. Of these, Oriya belongs to the eastern group of the Indo-Aryan family, and is spoken in Ganjam, and a portion of the Vizagapatam district. The population speaking each of these languages, as recorded at the census, 1901, was as follows:--

Tamil 15,543,383 Telugu 14,315,304 Malayalam 2,854,145 Oriya 1,809,336 Canarese 1,530,688

In the preparation of the following brief summary of the other vernacular languages and dialects, I have indented mainly on the Linguistic Survey of India, and the Madras Census Report, 1901.

Savara.--The language of the Savaras of Ganjam and Vizagapatam. One of the Munda languages. Concerning the Munda, linguistic family, Mr. Grierson writes as follows. "The denomination Munda was not long allowed to stand unchallenged. Sir George Campbell in 1866 proposed to call the family Kolarian. He was of opinion that Kol had an older form Kolar, which he thought to be identical with Kanarese Kallar, thieves. There is absolutely no foundation for this supposition. Moreover, the name Kolarian is objectionable, as seeming to suggest a connexion with Aryan which does not exist. The principal home of the Munda languages at the present day is the Chota Nagpur plateau. The Munda race is much more widely spread than the Munda languages. It has already been remarked that it is identical with the Dravidian race, which forms the bulk of the population of Southern India."

Gadaba.--Spoken by the Gadabas of Vizagapatam and Ganjam. One of the Munda languages.

Kond, Kandhi, or Kui.--The language of the Kondhs of Ganjam and Vizagapatam.

Gondi.--The language of the Gonds, a tribe which belongs to the Central Provinces, but has overflowed into Ganjam and Vizagapatam.

Gattu.--A dialect of Gondi, spoken by some of the Gonds in Vizagapatam.

Koya or Koi.--A dialect of Gondi, spoken by the Koyis in the Vizagapatam and Godavari districts.

Poroja, Parja, or Parji.--A dialect of Gondi.

Tulu.--The language largely spoken in South Canara . It is described by Bishop Caldwell as one of the most highly developed languages of the Dravidian family.

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