Dravidian languages
The Dravidian languages are a language family spoken by more than 215 million people, mainly in southern India and northern Sri Lanka, with pockets elsewhere in South Asia.[2] Since the colonial era, there have been small but significant immigrant communities outside South Asia in Mauritius, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Britain, Australia, France, Canada, Germany and the United States.
| Dravidian | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution | South Asia and Southeast Asia, mainly South India and northern Sri Lanka |
| Linguistic classification | One of the world's primary language families |
| Proto-language | Proto-Dravidian |
| Subdivisions |
|
| ISO 639-2 / 5 | dra |
| Linguasphere | 49= (phylozone) |
| Glottolog | drav1251[1] |
 Distribution of the Dravidian languages | |
| Part of a series on |
| Dravidian culture and history |
|---|
 |
|
Origins Dravidian People |
|
History
|
|
Culture
|
|
Language
|
|
Regions
|
|
People
|
|
Politics |
| Portal:Dravidian civilizations |
The Dravidian languages are first attested in the 2nd century BCE as Tamil-Brahmi script inscribed on the cave walls in the Madurai and Tirunelveli districts of Tamil Nadu.[3][lower-alpha 1] The Dravidian languages with the most speakers are (in descending order of number of speakers) Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam, all of which have long literary traditions. Smaller literary languages are Tulu and Kodava.[4] There are also small groups of Dravidian-speaking scheduled tribes, who live outside Dravidian-speaking areas, such as the Kurukh in Eastern India and Gondi in Central India.[5]
Only two Dravidian languages are spoken exclusively outside the post-1947 state of India: Brahui in the Balochistan region of Pakistan and Afghanistan; and Dhangar, a dialect of Kurukh, in parts of Nepal and Bhutan.[6] Dravidian place names along the Arabian Sea coasts and Dravidian grammatical influence such as clusivity in the Indo-Aryan languages, namely Marathi, Konkani, Gujarati, Marwari, and Sindhi, suggest that Dravidian languages were once spoken more widely across the Indian subcontinent.[7][8]
Though some scholars have argued that the Dravidian languages may have been brought to India by migrations from the Iranian plateau in the fourth or third millennium BCE[9][10] or even earlier,[11][12] the Dravidian languages cannot easily be connected to any other language family and could well be indigenous to India.[13][14][15][lower-alpha 2]
Etymology
The origin of the Sanskrit word drāviḍa is the word Tamiḷ.[17] Kamil Zvelebil cites the forms such as dramila (in Daṇḍin's Sanskrit work Avanisundarīkathā) damiḷa (found in the Sri Lankan (Ceylonese) chronicle Mahavamsa) and then goes on to say, "The forms damiḷa/damila almost certainly provide a connection of dr(a/ā)viḍa " with the indigenous name of the Tamil language, the likely derivation being "*tamiṟ > *damiḷ > damiḷa- / damila- and further, with the intrusive, 'hypercorrect' (or perhaps analogical) -r-, into dr(a/ā)viḍa. The -m-/-v- alternation is a common enough phenomenon in Dravidian phonology".[18]
Furthermore, another Dravidianist and linguist, Bhadriraju Krishnamurti, in his book Dravidian Languages states:[19]
Joseph (1989: IJDL 18.2:134-42) gives extensive references to the use of the term draviḍa, dramila first as the name of a people, then of a country. Sinhala BCE inscriptions cite dameḍa-, damela- denoting Tamil merchants. Early Buddhist and Jaina sources used damiḷa- to refer to a people of south India (presumably Tamil); damilaraṭṭha- was a southern non-Aryan country; dramiḷa-, dramiḍa, and draviḍa- were used as variants to designate a country in the south (Bṛhatsamhita-, Kādambarī, Daśakumāracarita-, fourth to seventh centuries CE) (1989: 134–138). It appears that damiḷa- was older than draviḍa- which could be its Sanskritization.
Based on what Krishnamurti states (referring to a scholarly paper published in the International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics), the Sanskrit word draviḍa itself is later than damiḷa since the dates for the forms with -r- are centuries later than the dates for the forms without -r- (damiḷa, dameḍa-, damela- etc.).
Discovery
The 14th century Sanskrit text Lilatilakam, which is a grammar of Manipravalam, states that the spoken languages of present-day Kerala and Tamil Nadu were similar, terming them as "Dramiḍa". The author doesn't consider the "Karṇṇāṭa" (Kannada) and the "Andhra" (Telugu) languages as "Dramiḍa", because they were very different from the language of the "Tamil Veda" (Tiruvaymoli), but states that some people would include them in the "Dramiḍa" category.[20]
In 1816, Alexander D. Campbell suggested the existence of a Dravidian language family in his Grammar of the Teloogoo Language,[21] in which he and Francis W. Ellis argued that Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Tulu and Kodava descended from a common, non-Indo-European ancestor.[22] In 1856 Robert Caldwell published his Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages,[23] which considerably expanded the Dravidian umbrella and established Dravidian as one of the major language groups of the world. Caldwell coined the term "Dravidian" for this family of languages, based on the usage of the Sanskrit word द्रविदा (Dravidā) in the work Tantravārttika by Kumārila Bhaṭṭa.[24] In his own words, Caldwell says,
The word I have chosen is 'Dravidian', from Drāviḍa, the adjectival form of Draviḍa. This term, it is true, has sometimes been used, and is still sometimes used, in almost as restricted a sense as that of Tamil itself, so that though on the whole it is the best term I can find, I admit it is not perfectly free from ambiguity. It is a term which has already been used more or less distinctively by Sanskrit philologists, as a generic appellation for the South Indian people and their languages, and it is the only single term they ever seem to have used in this manner. I have, therefore, no doubt of the propriety of adopting it.[25]
The 1961 publication of the Dravidian Etymological Dictionary by T. Burrow and M. B. Emeneau proved a notable event in the study of Dravidian linguistics.[26]
Classification
The Dravidian languages form a close-knit family. Most scholars agree on four groups: South (or South Dravidian I), South-Central (or South Dravidian II), Central, and North Dravidian, but there are different proposals regarding the relationship between these groups. Earlier classifications grouped Central and South-Central Dravidian in a single branch. On the other hand, Krishnamurti groups South-Central and South Dravidian together.[27]
- South Dravidian (or South Dravidian I)[27][28]
- Tamil–Kannada
-
-
-
- Tamil languages, including Tamil
- Malayalam languages, including Malayalam
- Irula
-
- Toda–Kota
-
- Kannada languages, including Kannada
-
- Tamil–Kannada
Some authors deny that North Dravidian forms a valid subgroup, splitting it into Northeast (Kurukh–Malto) and Northwest (Brahui).[31] Their affiliation has been proposed based primarily on a small number of common phonetic developments, including:
- In some words, *k is retracted or spirantized, shifting to /x/ in Kurukh and Brahui, /q/ in Malto.
- In some words, *c is retracted to /k/.
- Word-initial *v develops to /b/. This development is, however, also found in several other Dravidian languages, including Kannada, Kodagu and Tulu.
McAlpin (2003)[32] notes that no exact conditioning can be established for the first two changes, and proposes that distinct Proto-Dravidian *q and *kʲ should be reconstructed behind these correspondences, and that Brahui, Kurukh-Malto, and the rest of Dravidian may be three coordinate branches, possibly with Brahui being the earliest language to split off. A few morphological parallels between Brahui and Kurukh-Malto are also known, but according to McAlpin they are analyzable as shared archaisms rather than shared innovations.
In addition, Ethnologue lists several unclassified Dravidian languages: Allar, Bazigar, Bharia, Malankuravan (possibly a dialect of Malayalam), and Vishavan. Ethnologue also lists several unclassified Southern Dravidian languages: Mala Malasar, Malasar, Thachanadan, Ullatan, Kalanadi, Kumbaran, Kunduvadi, Kurichiya, Attapady Kurumba, Muduga, Pathiya, and Wayanad Chetti. Pattapu may also be Southern.
A computational phylogenetic study of the Dravidian language family was undertaken by Kolipakam, et al. (2018).[33] Kolipakam, et al. (2018) supports the internal coherence of the four Dravidian branches South (or South Dravidian I), South-Central (or South Dravidian II), Central, and North, but is uncertain about the precise relationships of these four branches to each other. The date of Dravidian is estimated to be 4,500 years old.[33]
Distribution
Since 1981, the Census of India has reported only languages with more than 10,000 speakers, including 17 Dravidian languages. In 1981, these accounted for approximately 24% of India's population.[34][35]
In the 2001 census, they included 214 million people, about 21% of India's total population of 1.02 billion.[36] In addition, the largest Dravidian-speaking group outside India, Tamil speakers in Sri Lanka, number around 4.7 million. The total number of speakers of Dravidian languages is around 227 million people, around 13% of the population of the Indian subcontinent.
The largest group of the Dravidian languages is South Dravidian, with almost 150 million speakers. Tamil, Malayalam, and Kannada make up around 98% of the speakers, with 75 million, 44 million and 37 million native speakers, respectively.
The next-largest is the South-Central branch, which has 78 million native speakers, the vast majority of whom speak Telugu. The total number of speakers of Telugu, including those whose first language is not Telugu, is around 84 million people. This branch also includes the tribal language Gondi spoken in central India.
The second-smallest branch is the Northern branch, with around 6.3 million speakers. This is the only sub-group to have a language spoken in Pakistan — Brahui.
The smallest branch is the Central branch, which has only around 200,000 speakers. These languages are mostly tribal, and spoken in central India.
Languages recognized as official languages of India appear here in boldface.
| Language | Number of speakers | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Brahui | 2,430,000 | Balochistan (Pakistan), Afghanistan |
| Kurukh | 2,280,000 | Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar |
| Malto | 234,000 | Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal |
| Kurambhag Paharia | 12,500 | Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha |
| Language | Number of speakers | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Kolami | 122,000 | Maharashtra, Telangana |
| Duruwa | 51,000 | Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh |
| Ollari | 15,000 | Odisha, Andhra Pradesh |
| Naiki | 10,000 | Maharashtra |
| Language | Number of speakers | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Telugu | 81,100,000 | Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and parts of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Puducherry, United States, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Mauritius, Australia, South Africa, Canada, UK, UAE, Myanmar, France, Singapore and Réunion. |
| Gondi | 2,980,000 | Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh |
| Kui | 942,000 | Odisha, Andhra Pradesh |
| Koya | 360,000 | Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Chhattisgarh |
| Madiya | 360,000 | Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Maharashtra |
| Kuvi | 155,000 | Odisha, Andhra Pradesh |
| Pengo | 350,000 | Odisha |
| Pardhan | 135,000 | Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh |
| Khirwar | 36,400 | Chhattisgarh (Surguja district) |
| Chenchu | 26,000 | Andhra Pradesh, Telangana |
| Konda | 20,000 | Andhra Pradesh, Odisha |
| Muria | 15,000 | Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Odisha |
| Manda | 4,040 | Odisha |
| Language | Number of speakers | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Pattapu | 200,000+ | Andhra Pradesh |
| Bharia | 197,000 | Chhattisgarh (Bilaspur district, Durg district, Surguja district), Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar |
| Allar | 350 | Kerala (Palakkad district, Malappuram district) |
| Vishavan | 150 | Kerala (Ernakulam district, Kottayam district, Thrissur district) |
Proposed relations with other families
The Dravidian family has defied all of the attempts to show a connection with other languages, including Indo-European, Hurrian, Basque, Sumerian, Korean and Japanese. Comparisons have been made not just with the other language families of the Indian subcontinent (Indo-European, Austroasiatic, Sino-Tibetan, and Nihali), but with all typologically similar language families of the Old World. Nonetheless, although there are no readily detectable genealogical connections, Dravidian shares strong areal features with the Indo-Aryan languages, which have been attributed to a substratum influence from Dravidian.[40]
Dravidian languages display typological similarities with the Uralic language group, suggesting to some a prolonged period of contact in the past.[41] This idea is popular amongst Dravidian linguists and has been supported by a number of scholars, including Robert Caldwell,[42] Thomas Burrow,[43] Kamil Zvelebil,[44] and Mikhail Andronov.[45] This hypothesis has, however, been rejected by some specialists in Uralic languages,[46] and has in recent times also been criticised by other Dravidian linguists such as Bhadriraju Krishnamurti.[47]
In the early 1970s, the linguist David McAlpin produced a detailed proposal of a genetic relationship between Dravidian and the extinct Elamite language of ancient Elam (present-day southwestern Iran).[48] The Elamo-Dravidian hypothesis was supported in the late 1980s by the archaeologist Colin Renfrew and the geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, who suggested that Proto-Dravidian was brought to India by farmers from the Iranian part of the Fertile Crescent.[49][50] (In his 2000 book, Cavalli-Sforza suggested western India, northern India and northern Iran as alternative starting points.[51]) However, linguists have found McAlpin's cognates unconvincing and criticized his proposed phonological rules as ad hoc.[52][53][54] Elamite is generally believed by scholars to be a language isolate, and the theory has had no effect on studies of the language.[55] In 2012, Southworth suggested a “Zagrosian family” of West Asian origin including Elamite, Brahui and Dravidian as its three branches.[56]
Dravidian is one of the primary language families in the Nostratic proposal, which would link most languages in North Africa, Europe and Western Asia into a family with its origins in the Fertile Crescent sometime between the Last Glacial Period and the emergence of Proto-Indo-European 4,000–6,000 BCE. However, the general consensus is that such deep connections are not, or not yet, demonstrable.[57]
Prehistory
The origins of the Dravidian languages, as well as their subsequent development and the period of their differentiation are unclear, partially due to the lack of comparative linguistic research into the Dravidian languages. Though some scholars have argued that the Dravidian languages may have been brought to India by migrations in the fourth or third millennium BCE[9][10] or even earlier,[11][12] the Dravidian languages cannot easily be connected to any other language, and they could well be indigenous to India.[13][lower-alpha 2] Proto-Dravidian was spoken in the 4th or 3rd millennium BCE,[58][59] and it is thought that the Dravidian languages were the most widespread indigenous languages in the Indian subcontinent before the advance of the Indo-Aryan languages.[14]
Proto-Dravidian and onset of diversification
As a proto-language, the Proto-Dravidian language is not itself attested in the historical record. Its modern conception is based solely on reconstruction. It was suggested in the 1980s that the language was spoken in the 4th millennium BCE, and started disintegrating into various branches around 3rd millennium BCE.[58] According to Krishnamurti, Proto-Dravidian may have been spoken in the Indus civilization, suggesting a "tentative date of Proto-Dravidian around the early part of the third millennium."[60] Krishnamurti further states that South Dravidian I (including pre-Tamil) and South Dravidian II (including Pre-Telugu) split around the eleventh century BCE, with the other major branches splitting off at around the same time.[61] Kolipakam et al. (2018) estimate the Dravidian language family to be approximately 4,500 years old.[59]
Several geneticists have noted a strong correlation between Dravidian and the Ancestral South Indian (ASI) component of South Asian genetic makeup. Narasimhan et al. (2018) argue that the ASI component itself resulted from a mixture of Iranian-related agriculturalists, moving southeast after the decline of the Indus Valley Civilization (early 2nd millennium BCE), and hunter-gatherers native to southern India. They conclude that one of these two groups may have been the source of proto-Dravidian.[62] Introduction from the northwest would be consistent with the location of Brahui and with attempts to interpret the Indus script as Dravidian.[63] On the other hand, reconstructed Proto-Dravidian terms for flora and fauna provide some support for a south Indian origin.[64]
Indus Valley Civilisation
The Indus Valley civilisation (3,300–1,900 BCE), located in Northwestern Indian subcontinent, is sometimes suggested to have been Dravidian.[65] Already in 1924, when announcing the discovery of the IVC, John Marshall stated that (one of) the language(s) may have been Dravidic.[66] Cultural and linguistic similarities have been cited by researchers Henry Heras, Kamil Zvelebil, Asko Parpola and Iravatham Mahadevan as being strong evidence for a proto-Dravidian origin of the ancient Indus Valley civilisation.[67][68] The discovery in Tamil Nadu of a late Neolithic (early 2nd millennium BCE, i.e. post-dating Harappan decline) stone celt allegedly marked with Indus signs has been considered by some to be significant for the Dravidian identification.[69][70]
Yuri Knorozov surmised that the symbols represent a logosyllabic script and suggested, based on computer analysis, an underlying agglutinative Dravidian language as the most likely candidate for the underlying language.[71] Knorozov's suggestion was preceded by the work of Henry Heras, who suggested several readings of signs based on a proto-Dravidian assumption.[72]
Linguist Asko Parpola writes that the Indus script and Harappan language are "most likely to have belonged to the Dravidian family".[73] Parpola led a Finnish team in investigating the inscriptions using computer analysis. Based on a proto-Dravidian assumption, they proposed readings of many signs, some agreeing with the suggested readings of Heras and Knorozov (such as equating the "fish" sign with the Dravidian word for fish, "min") but disagreeing on several other readings. A comprehensive description of Parpola's work until 1994 is given in his book Deciphering the Indus Script.[74]
Northern Dravidian pockets
Although in modern times speakers of the various Dravidian languages have mainly occupied the southern portion of India, in earlier times they probably were spoken in a larger area. After the Indo-Aryan migrations into north-western India, starting ca. 1500 BCE, and the establishment of the Kuru kingdom ca. 1100 BCE, a process of Sanskritisation of the masses started, which resulted in a language shift in northern India. Southern India has remained majority Dravidian, but pockets of Dravidian can be found in central India, Pakistan and Nepal.
The Kurukh and Malto are pockets of Dravidian languages in central India, spoken by people who may have migrated from south India. They do have myths about external origins.[75] The Kurukh have traditionally claimed to be from the Deccan Peninsula,[76] more specifically Karnataka. The same tradition has existed of the Brahui,[77][78] who call themselves immigrants.[79] Holding this same view of the Brahui are many scholars [80] such as L. H. Horace Perera and M. Ratnasabapathy.[81]
The Brahui population of Pakistan's Balochistan province 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.[82][83][84] However, it has been argued that the absence of any Old Iranian (Avestan) loanwords in Brahui suggests that the Brahui migrated to Balochistan from central India less than 1,000 years ago. The main Iranian contributor to Brahui vocabulary, Balochi, is a western Iranian language like Kurdish, and arrived in the area from the west only around 1000 CE.[85] Sound changes shared with Kurukh and Malto also suggest that Brahui was originally spoken near them in central India.[86]
Dravidian influence on Sanskrit
Dravidian languages show extensive lexical (vocabulary) borrowing, but only a few traits of structural (either phonological or grammatical) borrowing from Indo-Aryan, whereas Indo-Aryan shows more structural than lexical borrowings from the Dravidian languages.[87] Many of these features are already present in the oldest known Indo-Aryan language, the language of the Rigveda (c. 1500 BCE), which also includes over a dozen words borrowed from Dravidian.[88]
Vedic Sanskrit has retroflex consonants (ṭ/ḍ, ṇ) with about 88 words in the Rigveda having unconditioned retroflexes.[89][90] Some sample words are Iṭanta, Kaṇva, śakaṭī, kevaṭa, puṇya and maṇḍūka. Since other Indo-European languages, including other Indo-Iranian languages, lack retroflex consonants, their presence in Indo-Aryan is often cited as evidence of substrate influence from close contact of the Vedic speakers with speakers of a foreign language family rich in retroflex consonants.[89][90] The Dravidian family is a serious candidate since it is rich in retroflex phonemes reconstructible back to the Proto-Dravidian stage.[91][92][93]
In addition, a number of grammatical features of Vedic Sanskrit not found in its sister Avestan language appear to have been borrowed from Dravidian languages. These include the gerund, which has the same function as in Dravidian.[94] Some linguists explain this asymmetrical borrowing by arguing that Middle Indo-Aryan languages were built on a Dravidian substratum.[95] These scholars argue that the most plausible explanation for the presence of Dravidian structural features in Indic is language shift, that is, native Dravidian speakers learning and adopting Indic languages due to elite dominance.[96] Although each of the innovative traits in Indic could be accounted for by internal explanations, early Dravidian influence is the only explanation that can account for all of the innovations at once; moreover, it accounts for several of the innovative traits in Indic better than any internal explanation that has been proposed.[97]
Grammar
The most characteristic grammatical features of Dravidian languages are:[44]
- Dravidian languages are agglutinative.
- Word order is subject–object–verb (SOV).
- Most Dravidian languages have a clusivity distinction (notably, Kannada does not).
- The major word classes are nouns (substantives, numerals, pronouns), adjectives, verbs, and indeclinables (particles, enclitics, adverbs, interjections, onomatopoetic words, echo words).
- Proto-Dravidian used only suffixes, never prefixes or infixes, in the construction of inflected forms. Hence, the roots of words always occurred at the beginning. Nouns, verbs, and indeclinable words constituted the original word classes.
- There are two numbers and four different gender systems, the ancestral system probably having "male:non-male" in the singular and "person:non-person" in the plural.
- In a sentence, however complex, only one finite verb occurs, normally at the end, preceded if necessary by a number of gerunds.
- Word order follows certain basic rules but is relatively free.
- The main (and probably original) dichotomy in tense is past:non-past. Present tense developed later and independently in each language or subgroup.
- Verbs are intransitive, transitive, and causative; there are also active and passive forms.
- All of the positive verb forms have their corresponding negative counterparts, negative verbs.
Phonology
Dravidian languages are noted for the lack of distinction between aspirated and unaspirated stops. While some Dravidian languages have accepted large numbers of loan words from Sanskrit and other Indo-Iranian languages in addition to their already vast vocabulary, in which the orthography shows distinctions in voice and aspiration, the words are pronounced in Dravidian according to different rules of phonology and phonotactics: aspiration of plosives is generally absent, regardless of the spelling of the word. This is not a universal phenomenon and is generally avoided in formal or careful speech, especially when reciting. For instance, Tamil does not distinguish between voiced and voiceless stops. In fact, the Tamil alphabet lacks symbols for voiced and aspirated stops. Dravidian languages are also characterized by a three-way distinction between dental, alveolar, and retroflex places of articulation as well as large numbers of liquids.
Proto-Dravidian
Proto-Dravidian had five short and long vowels: *a, *ā, *i, *ī, *u, *ū, *e, *ē, *o, *ō. There were no diphthongs; ai and au are treated as *ay and *av (or *aw).[98][92][99] The five-vowel system is largely preserved in the descendent subgroups.[100]
The following consonantal phonemes are reconstructed:[91][92][101]
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosives | *p | *t | *ṯ | *ṭ | *c | *k | |
| Nasals | *m | *n | *ṉ (??) | *ṇ | *ñ | ||
| Fricatives | (*h) | ||||||
| Flap/rhotic | *r | *ẓ (ḻ, r̤) | |||||
| Lateral | *l | *ḷ | |||||
| Glides | *w [v] | *y |
Numerals
The numerals from 1 to 10 in various Dravidian and Indo-Aryan languages (here exemplified by Indo Aryan language Sanskrit and Iranian language Persian).[102]
| Number | Southern | South-Central | Central | Northern | Proto-Dravidian | Indo-Aryan | Iranian | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tamil | Kannada | Malayalam | Kodava | Tulu | Beary | Telugu | Gondi | Kolami | Kurukh | Brahui | Sanskrit | Persian | ||
| 1 | oṉṟu | ondu | onnu | ond | onji | onnu | okaṭi | undi | okkod | oṇṭa | asiṭ | *onṯu 1 | éka | yek |
| 2 | iraṇṭu | eraḍu | raṇḍu | danḍ | raḍḍ | jend | renḍu | raṇḍ | irāṭ | indiŋ | irāṭ | *iraṇṭu 2 | dvi | do |
| 3 | mūṉṟu | mūṟu | mūnnu | mūṉd | mūji | mūnnu | mūḍu | muṇḍ | mūndiŋ | mūnd | musiṭ | *muH- | tri | seh |
| 4 | nāṉku | nālku | nālu | nāl | nāl | nāl | nālugu | nāluṇg | nāliŋ | nāx | čār (II) | *nāl | catúr | cahār |
| 5 | aintu | aidu | añcu | añji | ayN | añji | ayidu | saiyuṇg | ayd 3 | pancē (II) | panč (II) | *cay-m- | pañca | panj |
| 6 | āru | āṟu | āṟu | ār | āji | ār | āṟu | sāruṇg | ār 3 | soyyē (II) | šaš (II) | *cāṯu | ṣáṣ | śeś |
| 7 | ēẓu | ēlu | ēẓu | ēḻ | yēl | ēl | ēḍu | yeḍuṇg | ēḍ 3 | sattē (II) | haft (II) | *ēẓ | saptá | haft |
| 8 | eṭṭu | eṇṭu | eṭṭu | eṭṭ | enma | ett | enimidi | armur | enumadī 3 | aṭṭhē (II) | hašt (II) | *eṇṭṭu | aṣṭá | haśt |
| 9 | oṉpatu 5 | ombattu | ompatu 5 | oiymbad | ormba | olimbō | tommidi | unmāk | tomdī 3 | naiṃyē (II) | nōh (II) | *toḷ/*toṇ | náva | noh |
| 10 | pattu | hattu | pattu | patt | patt | patt | padi | pad | padī 3 | dassē (II) | dah (II) | *paH(tu) | dáśa | dah |
- This is the same as the word for another form of the number one in Tamil and Malayalam, used as the indefinite article ("a") and when the number is an attribute preceding a noun (as in "one person"), as opposed to when it is a noun (as in "How many are there?" "One").
- The stem *īr is still found in compound words, and has taken on a meaning of "double" in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam. For example, irupatu (20, literally meaning "double-ten"), iravai (20 in Telugu), "iraṭṭi" ("double") or iruvar ("two people", in Tamil) and "ippatthu" (ipp-hatthu, double ten", in Kannada).
- The Kolami numbers 5 to 10 are borrowed from Telugu.
- The word tondu was also used to refer to the number nine in ancient Sangam texts but was later completely replaced by the word onpadu.
- These forms are derived from "one (less than) ten". Proto-Dravidian *toḷ is still used in Tamil and Malayalam as the basis of numbers such as 90, thonnooru as well as the Kannada tombattu.
- Words indicated (II) are borrowings from Indo-Iranian languages (in Brahui's case, from Balochi).
Literature
Four Dravidian languages, viz. Tamil, Kannada, Telugu and Malayalam, have lengthy literary traditions.[103] Literature in Tulu and Kodava is more recent.[103] Recently old literature in Gondi has been discovered as well.[104]
The earliest known Dravidian inscriptions are 76 Old Tamil inscriptions on cave walls in Madurai and Tirunelveli districts in Tamil Nadu, dating from the 2nd century BCE.[3] These inscriptions are written in a variant of the Brahmi script called Tamil Brahmi.[105] In 2019, the Tamil Nadu Archaeology Department released a report on excavations at Keeladi, near Madurai, Tamil Nadu, including a description of potsherds dated to the 6th century BCE inscribed with personal names in the Tamil-Brahmi script.[106] However, the report lacks the detail of a full archaeological study, and other archaeologists have disputed whether the oldest dates obtained for the site can be assigned to these potsherds.[107] The earliest long text in Old Tamil is the Tolkāppiyam, an early work on Tamil grammar and poetics, whose oldest layers could date from the 1st century BCE.[3]
Kannada is first known from the Halmidi inscription (450 CE). A 9th-century treatise on poetics, the Kavirajamarga, is the first literary work.[108] The earliest Telugu inscription, from Erragudipadu in Kadapa district, is dated 575. The first literary work is an 11th-century translation of part of the Mahābhārata.[108] The earliest Malayalam text is the Vazhappally copper plate (9th century). The first literary work is Rāmacaritam (12th century).[3]
See also
Notes
- Earlier fragmentary finds have been claimed, e.g. at Keezhadi near Madurai, Tamil Nadu, but have not been conclusively established (see § Literature).
- Renfrew and Bahn conclude that several scenarios are compatible with the data, and that "the linguistic jury is still very much out."[16]
References
- Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Dravidian". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
- "Overview of Dravidian languages". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 4 July 2018.
- Krishnamurti (2003), p. 22.
- Krishnamurti (2003), pp. 20–21.
- West, Barbara A. (1 January 2009). Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Asia and Oceania. Infobase Publishing. p. 713. ISBN 978-1-4381-1913-7.
- Phuntsho, Karma (23 April 2013). The History of Bhutan. Random House India. ISBN 9788184004113 – via Google Books.
- Erdosy (1995), p. 271.
- Edwin Bryant, Laurie L. Patton (2005), The Indo-Aryan controversy: evidence and inference in Indian history, p. 254
- Tamil Literature Society (1963), Tamil Culture, 10, Academy of Tamil Culture, retrieved 25 November 2008,
... together with the evidence of archaeology would seem to suggest that the original Dravidian-speakers entered India from Iran in the fourth millennium BC ...
- Andronov (2003), p. 299.
- Namita Mukherjee; Almut Nebel; Ariella Oppenheim; Partha P. Majumder (December 2001), "High-resolution analysis of Y-chromosomal polymorphisms reveals signatures of population movements from central Asia and West Asia into India", Journal of Genetics, Springer India, 80 (3): 125–35, doi:10.1007/BF02717908, PMID 11988631,
... More recently, about 15,000–10,000 years before present (ybp), when agriculture developed in the Fertile Crescent region that extends from Israel through northern Syria to western Iran, there was another eastward wave of human migration (Cavalli-Sforza et al., 1994; Renfrew 1987), a part of which also appears to have entered India. This wave has been postulated to have brought the Dravidian languages into India (Renfrew 1987). Subsequently, the Indo-European (Aryan) language family was introduced into India about 4,000 ybp ...
- Dhavendra Kumar (2004), Genetic Disorders of the Indian Subcontinent, Springer, ISBN 1-4020-1215-2, retrieved 25 November 2008,
... The analysis of two Y chromosome variants, Hgr9 and Hgr3 provides interesting data (Quintan-Murci et al., 2001). Microsatellite variation of Hgr9 among Iranians, Pakistanis and Indians indicate an expansion of populations to around 9000 YBP in Iran and then to 6,000 YBP in India. This migration originated in what was historically termed Elam in south-west Iran to the Indus valley, and may have been associated with the spread of Dravidian languages from south-west Iran (Quintan-Murci et al., 2001). ...
- Avari (2007).
- Steven Roger Fischer (3 October 2004). History of Language. Reaktion books. ISBN 9781861895943.
It is generally accepted that Dravidian - with no identifiable cognates among the world's languages - was India's most widely distributed, indigenous language family when Indo-European speakers first intruded from the north-west 3,000 years ago
- Amaresh Datta (1988). Encyclopaedia of Indian Literature: Devraj to Jyoti, Volume 2. Sahitya Akademi. p. 1118. ISBN 9788126011940.
- Heggarty, Paul; Renfrew, Collin (2014), "South and Island Southeast Asia; Languages", in Renfrew, Colin; Bahn, Paul (eds.), The Cambridge World Prehistory, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9781107647756
- Shulman, David (1992). Tamil. Harvard University Press. pp. 5.
- Zvelebil (1990), p. xxi.
- Krishnamurti (2003), p. 2, footnote 2.
- Shulman 2016, p. 6.
- Alexander Duncan Campbell (1816) A Grammar of the Teloogoo Language, commonly termed the Gentoo, peculiar to the Hindoos inhabiting the north eastern provinces of the Indian peninsula, College of Fort St. George Press, Madras OCLC 416559272
- Sreekumar (2009).
- Robert Caldwell (1856) A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages, Williams and Norgate, London OCLC 20216805
- Zvelebil (1990), p. xx.
- Caldwell (1856), p. 4.
- Burrow, T. (Thomas); Emeneau, M. B. ; 1904-; (Murray Barnson) (7 February 1984). "A Dravidian etymological dictionary". dsal.uchicago.edu.
- Krishnamurti (2003), p. 21.
- Zvelebil (1990), p. 56.
- Zvelebil (1990), p. 57.
- Zvelebil (1990), p. 58.
- Ruhlen (1991), pp. 138–141.
- McAlpin, David W. (2003). "Velars, Uvulars and the Northern Dravidian hypothesis". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 123 (3): 521–546. doi:10.2307/3217749. JSTOR 3217749.
- Kolipakam, Vishnupriya; Jordan, Fiona M.; Dunn, Michael; Greenhill, Simon J.; Bouckaert, Remco; Gray, Russell D.; Verkerk, Annemarie (21 March 2018). "A Bayesian phylogenetic study of the Dravidian language family". Royal Society Open Science. 5 (3): 171504. Bibcode:2018RSOS....571504K. doi:10.1098/rsos.171504. PMC 5882685. PMID 29657761.
- Steever (1998), p. 3.
- Ishtiaq, M. (1999). Language Shifts Among the Scheduled Tribes in India: A Geographical Study. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. pp. 26–27. ISBN 978-81-208-1617-6. Retrieved 7 September 2012.
- "Abstract of speakers' strength of languages and mother tongues –2001". Census 2001. Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India. Retrieved 14 October 2017.
- "Countries where Tamil is official language தமிழ் நாடுகள்". TᗩᗰIᒪᖴᑌᑎᗪᗩ. 1 February 2015.
- "History of the Tamil Diaspora". murugan.org.
- "Dr Veerendra Heggade in Dubai to Unite Tuluvas for Tulu Sammelan". Retrieved 12 November 2017.
- Krishnamurti (2003), pp. 38–42.
- Tyler, Stephen (1968). "Dravidian and Uralian: the lexical evidence". Language. 44 (4): 798–812. doi:10.2307/411899. JSTOR 411899.
- Webb, Edward (1860). "Evidences of the Scythian Affinities of the Dravidian Languages, Condensed and Arranged from Rev. R. Caldwell's Comparative Dravidian Grammar". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 7: 271–298. doi:10.2307/592159. JSTOR 592159.
- Burrow, T (1944). "Dravidian Studies IV: The Body in Dravidian and Uralian". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 11 (2): 328–356. doi:10.1017/s0041977x00072517.
- Zvelebil, Kamil (2006). Dravidian Languages. In Encyclopædia Britannica (DVD edition).
- Andronov, Mikhail S. (1971), "Comparative Studies on the Nature of Dravidian-Uralian Parallels: A Peep into the Prehistory of Language Families". Proceedings of the Second International Conference of Tamil Studies Madras. 267–277.
- Zvelebil, Kamil (1970), Comparative Dravidian Phonology Mouton, The Hauge. at p. 22 contains a bibliography of articles supporting and opposing the theory
- Krishnamurti (2003), p. 43.
- Zvelebil (1990), p. 105.
- Renfrew, Colin (October 1989). "The Origins of Indo-European Languages". Scientific American. 261 (4): 106–114. Bibcode:1989SciAm.261d.106R. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1089-106. JSTOR 24987446.
- Cavalli-Sforza (2000), pp. 157, 159.
- Cavalli-Sforza (2000), pp. 157, 160.
- Krishnamurti (2003), pp. 44–45.
- Steever (1998), p. 37.
- Campbell & Poser (2008), p. 286.
- Stolper, Matthew W. (2008). "Elamite". In Woodard, Roger D. (ed.). The Ancient Languages of Mesopotamia, Egypt and Aksum. Cambridge University Press. pp. 47–82. ISBN 978-0-521-68497-2. p. 48.
- Southworth (2011), p. 142.
- Krishnamurti (2003), pp. 45–47.
- History and Archaeology, Volume 1, Issues 1-2 p.234, Department of Ancient History, Culture, and Archaeology, University of Allahabad
- "Dravidian language family is approximately 4,500 years old, new linguistic analysis finds". ScienceDaily. Retrieved 17 May 2018.
- Krishnamurti 2003, p. 501.
- Krishnamurti 2003, pp. 501–502.
- Narasimhan, Vagheesh M.; Patterson, Nick; Moorjani, Priya; Rohland, Nadin; Bernardos, Rebecca; Mallick, Swapan; Lazaridis, Iosif; Nakatsuka, Nathan; Olalde, Iñigo; Lipson, Mark; Kim, Alexander M.; Olivieri, Luca M.; Coppa, Alfredo; Vidale, Massimo; Mallory, James; Moiseyev, Vyacheslav; Kitov, Egor; Monge, Janet; Adamski, Nicole; Alex, Neel; Broomandkhoshbacht, Nasreen; Candilio, Francesca; Callan, Kimberly; Cheronet, Olivia; Culleton, Brendan J.; Ferry, Matthew; Fernandes, Daniel; Gamarra, Beatriz; Gaudio, Daniel; et al. (6 September 2019). "The Formation of Human Populations in South and Central Asia". Science. 365 (6457): eaat7487. doi:10.1126/science.aat7487. PMC 6822619. PMID 31488661.
- Krishnamurti (2003), p. 5.
- Krishnamurti (2003), p. 15.
- Mahadevan, Iravatham (6 May 2006). "Stone celts in Harappa". Harappa. Archived from the original on 4 September 2006.
- M.T. Saju (October 5, 2018), Pot route could have linked Indus & Vaigai, Times of India
- Rahman, Tariq. "Peoples and languages in pre-Islamic Indus valley". Archived from the original on 9 May 2008. Retrieved 20 November 2008.
most scholars have taken the 'Dravidian hypothesis' seriously
- Cole, Jennifer (2006). "The Sindhi language" (PDF). In Brown, K. (ed.). Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd Edition. 11. Elsevier. Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 January 2007.
Harappan language...prevailing theory indicates Dravidian origins
- Subramanium 2006; see also A Note on the Muruku Sign of the Indus Script in light of the Mayiladuthurai Stone Axe Discovery Archived 4 September 2006 at the Wayback Machine by I. Mahadevan (2006)
- Subramanian, T.S. (1 May 2006). "Significance of Mayiladuthurai find". The Hindu. Archived from the original on 30 April 2008. Retrieved 27 August 2017.
- Knorozov 1965, p. 117
- Heras 1953, p. 138
- Edwin Bryant (2003). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate. Oxford. p. 183. ISBN 9780195169478.
- Parpola 1994
- P. 83 The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate by Edwin Bryant
- P. 18 The Orāons of Chōtā Nāgpur: their history, economic life, and social organization. by Sarat Chandra Roy, Rai Bahadur; Alfred C Haddon
- P. 12 Origin and Spread of the Tamils By V. R. Ramachandra Dikshitar
- P. 32 Ideology and status of Sanskrit : contributions to the history of the Sanskrit language by Jan E M Houben
- P. 45 The Brahui language, an old Dravidian language spoken in parts of Baluchistan and Sind by Sir Denys Bray
- Ancient India; Culture and Thought By M. L. Bhagi
- P. 23 Ceylon & Indian History from Early Times to 1505 A.D. By L. H. Horace Perera, M. Ratnasabapathy
- Mallory (1989), p. 44.
- Elst (1999), p. 146.
- Trask (2000), p. 97"It is widely suspected that the extinct and undeciphered Indus Valley language was a Dravidian language, but no confirmation is available. The existence of the isolated northern outlier Brahui is consistent with the hypothesis that Dravidian formerly occupied much of North India but was displaced by the invading Indo-Aryan languages, and the presence in the Indo-Aryan languages of certain linguistic features, such as retroflex consonants, is often attributed to Dravidian substrate influence."
- Elfenbein, Josef (1987). "A periplus of the 'Brahui problem'". Studia Iranica. 16 (2): 215–233. doi:10.2143/SI.16.2.2014604.
- Krishnamurti (2003), pp. 27, 142.
- "Dravidian languages." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2008. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 30 Jun. 2008
- Krishnamurti (2003), p. 6.
- Kuiper (1991).
- Witzel (1999).
- Subrahmanyam (1983), p. 40.
- Zvelebil (1990).
- Krishnamurti (2003), p. 36.
- Krishnamurti (2003), pp. 36–37.
- Krishnamurti (2003), pp. 40–41.
- Erdosy (1995), p. 18.
- Thomason & Kaufman (1988), pp. 141–144.
- Subrahmanyam (1983).
- Krishnamurti (2003), p. 90.
- Krishnamurti (2003), p. 48.
- Krishnamurti (2003), p. 91.
- Krishnamurti (2003), pp. 260–265.
- Krishnamurti (2003), p. 20.
- Singh, S. Harpal (20 January 2014). "Gondi manuscript translation to reveal Gondwana history". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 9 May 2020.
- Mahadevan (2003), pp. 90–95.
- Sivanantham, R.; Seran, M., eds. (2019). Keeladi: an Urban Settlement of Gangam Age on the Banks of the River Vigai (Report). Chennai: Department of Archaeology, Government of Tamil Nadu. pp. 8–9, 14.
- Charuchandra, Sukanya (17 October 2019). "Experts Question Dates of Script in Tamil Nadu's Keeladi Excavation Report". The Wire.
- Krishnamurti (2003), p. 23.
Bibliography
- Andronov, Mikhail Sergeevich (2003), A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages, Otto Harrassowitz, ISBN 978-3-447-04455-4.
- Avari, Burjor (2007), Ancient India: A History of the Indian Sub-Continent from C. 7000 BC to AD 1200, Routledge, ISBN 978-1-134-25162-9.
- Caldwell, Robert (1856), A comparative grammar of the Dravidian, or, South-Indian family of languages, London: Harrison; Reprinted London, K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & co., ltd., 1913; rev. ed. by J.L. Wyatt and T. Ramakrishna Pillai, Madras, University of Madras, 1961, reprint Asian Educational Services, 1998, ISBN 81-206-0117-3.
- Campbell, A. D. (1849), A grammar of the Teloogoo language, commonly termed the Gentoo, peculiar to the Hindoos inhabiting the northeastern provinces of the Indian peninsula (3d ed.), Madras: Hindu Press.
- Campbell, Lyle; Poser, William J. (2008), Language Classification: History and Method, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-88005-3.
- Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi Luca; Menozzi, Paolo; Piazza, Alberto (1994), The History and Geography of Human Genes, Princeton University Press, ISBN 978-0-691-18726-6.
- Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi Luca (2000), Genes, Peoples, and Languages, North Point Press, ISBN 978-0-86547-529-8.
- Elst, Koenraad (1999), Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate, New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, ISBN 81-86471-77-4.
- Erdosy, George, ed. (1995), The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia: Language, Material Culture and Ethnicity, Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, ISBN 3-11-014447-6.
- Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju (2003), The Dravidian Languages, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-77111-0.
- Kuiper, F.B.J. (1991), Aryans in the Rig Veda, Rodopi, ISBN 90-5183-307-5.
- Mallory, J. P. (1989), In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth, London: Thames and Hudson, ISBN 978-0-500-05052-1.
- Parpola, Asko (2010), A Dravidian solution to the Indus script problem (PDF), World Classical Tamil Conference.
- Ruhlen, Merritt (1991), A Guide to the World's Languages: Classification, Stanford University Press, ISBN 978-0-8047-1894-3.
- Shulman, David (2016), Tamil, Harvard University Press, ISBN 978-0-674-05992-4.
- Southworth, Franklin (2011), "Rice in Dravidian", Rice, 4: 142–148, doi:10.1007/s12284-011-9076-9.
- Sreekumar, P. (2009), "Francis Whyte Ellis and the Beginning of Comparative Dravidian Linguistics", Historiographia Linguistica, 36 (1): 75–95, doi:10.1075/hl.36.1.04sre.
- Steever, Sanford B. (1998), "Introduction to the Dravidian Languages", in Steever, Sanford B. (ed.), The Dravidian Languages, Routledge, pp. 1–39, ISBN 978-0-415-10023-6.
- Subrahmanyam, P. S. (1983), Dravidian Comparative Phonology, Annamalai University.
- Thomason, Sarah Grey; Kaufman, Terrence (1988), Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics, University of California Press (published 1991), ISBN 0-520-07893-4.
- Trask, Robert Lawrence (2000), The Dictionary of Historical and Comparative Linguistics, Routledge, ISBN 1-57958-218-4.
- Witzel, Michael (1999), "Early Sources for South Asian Substrate Languages" (PDF), Mother Tongue (extra number): 1–76.
- Zvelebil, Kamil (1975), Tamil Literature, Leiden: Brill, ISBN 90-04-04190-7.
- —— (1990), Dravidian Linguistics: An Introduction, Pondicherry Institute of Linguistics and Culture, ISBN 978-81-8545-201-2.
Further reading
- Vishnupriya Kolipakam et al. (2018), A Bayesian phylogenetic study of the Dravidian language family, Royal Society OPen Science. doi:10.1098/rsos.171504
External links
- Dravidian Etymological Dictionary. The complete Dravidian Etymological Dictionary in a searchable online form.
- Swadesh lists of Dravidian basic vocabulary words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)
