A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c8.34

c8.34

The languages of South India fall into three main groups—the Indo-Aryan represented by Marāthi, the Dravidian represented by Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayālam besides Gondi and other minor dialects, and the Austro-Asiatic by the Munda languages including Kharia, Juang, Savara and Gadaba of the north-eastern portions of the Deccan, the Kurku of the north-western districts of Madhya Pradesh. Though the Indo-Aryan vocabulary shows traces of Munda influence, the number of Dravidian loan-words in it is much larger and the conclusion seems inevitable that the Dravidian group of languages is more recent than the Austro-Asiatic which is usually recognized as pre-Dravidian. There is no doubt that at one time the Munda languages spread over the whole of North India, for they form the basis of a number of mixed languages along the Himalayan fringe from the Punjab to Bengal. But the Dravidian languages have also left survivals in north-western India, including the islet of Brahui in Baluchistan in an ocean of Indo-Aryan. Hence this group of languages may have prevailed in the north-west at the time the Indo-Aryans arrived. If this view is correct, throughout the bulk of India, Dravidian speech was preceded by Austro-Asiatic and followed by Indo-Aryan. Von Fuerer-Haimendorf, however, has, with good reason, questioned the correctness of this view, and held that the Dravidian speech never prevailed in India outside its present area. Brahui in Baluchistan, he thinks, can be explained by a migration of Dravidian speakers on land or by sea along the coast from more western lands.