History of Indian and Eastern Architecture v1.c19.3

v1.c19.3

THE limits within which the Dravidian style of architecture prevailed in India are not difficult to define or understand. Practically they are those of the Madras Presidency, or, to speak more correctly, they are identical with the spread of the people speaking Tamil, or the cognate tongues. Dr. Caldwell, in his ‘Grammar,’ estimated these, in 1874, at forty-five or forty-six millions,¹ but he includes among them a number of tribes, such as the Tudas and Gonds, who, it is true, speak dialects closely allied to the Tamil tongues, but unless we know their history, language is only a poor test of race, and in this instance architecture does not come to our aid. And, so far as we at present know, these tribes are in too rude a state to have any architecture of their own in a sufficiently advanced state for our purposes. Putting them aside, therefore, for the present, we still have, according to the census of 1901, over fifty-two millions of people speaking Tamil, Telugu, Kanarese, and Malayâlam,² whom we have no reason for doubting are practically of the same race, and who, in so far as they are Hindûs—not Jains, but followers of Siva and Vishnu—practise one style of architecture, and that known as the Dravidian. On the east coast the boundaries of the