The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c31.s2: I. The Dravidian Peoples
The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c31.s2
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I. The Dravidian Peoples
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The great peninsula of India, from the Vindhya mountains southward to Comorin, is the home of the ‘Dravidian’ peoples. And here at the outset we are faced by a difficulty of terms.
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The word ‘Dravidian’ comes from an ethnic name *Draviḍa* or *Dramiḍa*, in Pali *Damiḷa*, which is apparently identical in origin with the adjective *Tamil*; and thus a title which is strictly applicable only to a single branch, the Tamils, is extended to a whole family. Again, not only is the term ‘Dravidian’ used sometimes to denote all the members of the one ethnic family, but it is also often employed to designate all the cognate languages spoken by that family—the Tamil, Malayālam, Telugu, Kannada (Kanarese), and various minor dialects—without regard to the possible differences of race among the groups speaking these tongues; and furthermore, by a still more deplorable looseness of terminology, it has been applied by anthropologists to a group of races characterised by common physical features¹, who are chiefly inhabitants of the peninsula, and for the most part, but by no means entirely, use languages which are variants of Dravidian speech. Lastly, we must note that an ancient Tamil tradition speaks of a *pañcha-draviḍam* or five Dravidian regions, understanding thereby the Tamil, Andhra or Telugu, and Kanarese countries, the Mahārāshṭra or Marāthā provinces, and Gujarāt. The conclusion which is suggested by a review of all the available data is as follows.
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¹ These features are very dark hue; long head; broad nose; abundant and sometimes curly hair; and dark eyes.
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At some very early date, several millennia before the Christian era, the greater part of India was inhabited by a dark negroid race of low culture characterised more or less by the physical features now known as ‘Dravidian.’ This early people however should more properly be termed *pre-Dravidian*. In course of time another race, higher in culture and speaking a language of ‘Scythian’ affinities, from which are derived the tongues now known as ‘Dravidian,’ gradually made its way from the north or north-west—probably through Baluchistān—into the plain of the Indus, and thence ultimately passed down into the regions south of the Vindhya. This race may be called the *proto-Dravidian*. Wherever it came, it mixed its blood to a greater or less degree with that of the earlier inhabitants. From this combination have arisen the Dravidians of history, who have preserved few traces of the physical characteristics of the proto-Dravidians, whatever those may have been¹. Most of the pre-Dravidian tribes in the countries south of the Vindhya adopted the speech of the proto-Dravidians, while they absorbed their blood, notably in the centre and south of the peninsula, the Tamil, Kannada, and Telugu regions. In Gujarāt the waves of Āryan immigration gradually submerged Dravidian blood and speech; in Mahārāshṭra the same influences obliterated the language, and the same has happened in Kaliṅga (now Orissa and part of the Circārs), where a Dravidian language, the Telugu, survives only in the southern districts.
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¹ It is possible that the ‘Scythian’ features that have been observed among the Marāṭhā Brāhmans, Kunbīs, Coorgs, and Telugus may be survivals of proto-Dravidian characteristics. For other views see Chapter II, pp. 40 ff.
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Long before the beginning of the Christian era the Dravidian South had developed a considerable culture of its own, and its inhabitants had consolidated themselves into powerful kingdoms, some of which carried on a thriving trade with Western Asia, Egypt, and later with the Greek and Roman empires². The chief of these were the three Tamil kingdoms, the Andhras, Kaliṅgas, and Mahārāshṭra.
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² The Tyrians apparently imported thence ivory, apes, and peacocks (Tamil *tōgai*, Greek ταώς), as we know from I Kings x, 22 and II Chronicles ix, 21. Somewhat later we find India—to a large extent Southern India—exporting pepper (πέπερι, Tamil *pippalī*), rice (ὄρυζα, Tamil *ariçi*), ginger (ζιγγίβερις, Tamil *iñji-vēr*) and cinnamon (κάρπιον, Tamil *karuppu* or *kārppu*), besides spices, precious stones, coral, pearls, cloth, muslin, silk, tortoise-shell, etc. See J. Kennedy, *The Early Commerce of India with Babylon, J.R.A.S.*, 1898, pp. 241 ff.
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