Caste and Race in India c9.76

c9.76

Before dealing with the types we must make a note about the use of certain terms. The Malayalam and the Tamil regions seem to have been collectively referred to by Sanskrit writers as "Drāviḍa deśa", i.e. the Dravid country, as opposed to the "Āndhra deśa" or the Telugu country. The type that we propose to designate Dravida is predominant only in the Malayalam and the Tamil regions. Hence it should be deservedly called the Dravida type. "Dravidian" is only an anglicized form of the word "drāviḍa". But in philology it has been used to denote not only Tamil and Malayalam but Canarese, Telugu, and kindred languages. It is also employed to designate a culture different from the Aryan culture. We think that it was developed by the interaction between the peoples of the Dravida type and those of the Western type. It is convenient to retain this word to denote a culture which in its social organization was characterized at one end by such practices as cross-cousin marriage and at the other by dual organization and matrilineal descent.