Dravidian peoples

The Dravidian peoples, Dravidian-speakers or Dravidians, are a collection of ethnolinguistic groups native to South Asia who speak Dravidian languages. There are around 250 million native speakers of Dravidian languages. The two largest Dravidian groups are the Telugus and Tamils. The next three largest are the Kannadigas, Malayalis, and Gondis. India's 22 scheduled languages include these four Dravidian languages: Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam. Dravidian speakers form the majority of the population of South India and are native to India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka. Dravidian peoples are also present in Singapore, Mauritius, Malaysia, France, South Africa, Myanmar, East Africa, the Caribbean, and the United Arab Emirates through migration.
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 BCE", after which it branched into various Dravidian languages. South Dravidian I and South Dravidian II split around the eleventh century BCE, with the other major branches splitting off at around the same time.
The origins of the Dravidians are a "very complex subject of research and debate". They are regarded as indigenous to the Indian subcontinent, but may have deeper pre-Neolithic roots from Western Asia, specifically from the Iranian plateau. Their origins are often viewed as being connected with the Indus Valley Civilisation, hence people and language spread east and southwards after the demise of the Indus Valley Civilisation in the early second millennium BCE, some propose not long before the arrival of Indo-Aryan speakers, with whom they intensively interacted. 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 or even earlier. However, reconstructed proto-Dravidian vocabulary suggests that the family is indigenous to India.
Genetically, the ancient Indus Valley people were composed of a primarily Iranian hunter-gatherers ancestry, with varying degrees of ancestry from local hunter-gatherer groups. The modern-day Dravidian-speakers are primarily composed of Ancient South Indian hunter-gatherer ancestry and varying levels of Indus Valley Civilisation ancestry, but also carry a small portion of Western Steppe Herder ancestry and may also have additional contributions from local hunter-gatherer groups.
The third century BCE onwards saw the development of many great empires in South India like Pandya, Chola, Chera, Pallava, Satavahana, Chalukya, Kakatiya and Rashtrakuta. Medieval South Indian guilds and trading organisations like the "Ayyavole of Karnataka and Manigramam" played an important role in the Southeast Asia trade, and the cultural Indianisation of the region.
Dravidian visual art is dominated by stylised temple architecture in major centres, and the production of images on stone and bronze sculptures. The sculpture dating from the Chola period has become notable as a symbol of Hinduism. The Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple located in Indian state of Tamil Nadu is often considered as the largest functioning Hindu temple in the world. The temple is built in Dravidian style and occupies an area of 156 acres.

Etymology

The origin of the Sanskrit word ' is Tamil. In Prakrit, words such as "Damela", "Dameda", "Dhamila" and "Damila", which later evolved from "Tamila", could have been used to denote an ethnic identity. In the Sanskrit tradition, the word ' was also used to denote the geographical region of South India. Epigraphic evidence of an ethnic group termed as such is found in ancient India and Sri Lanka where a number of inscriptions have come to light datable from the 2nd century BCE mentioning Damela or Dameda persons. The Hathigumpha inscription of the Kalinga ruler Kharavela refers to a Tmira samghata dated to 150 BCE. It also mentions that the league of Tamil kingdoms had been in existence for 113 years by that time. In Amaravati in present-day Andhra Pradesh there is an inscription referring to a Dhamila-vaniya datable to the 3rd century CE. Another inscription of about the same time in Nagarjunakonda seems to refer to a Damila. A third inscription in Kanheri Caves refers to a Dhamila-gharini. In the Buddhist Jataka story known as Akiti Jataka there is a mention to Damila-rattha.
While the English word Dravidian was first employed by Robert Caldwell in his book of comparative Dravidian grammar based on the usage of the Sanskrit word ' in the work Tantravārttika by, the word ' in Sanskrit has been historically used to denote geographical regions of southern India as whole. Some theories concern the direction of derivation between ' and '; such linguists as Zvelebil assert that the direction is from ' to '.

Ethnic groups

The largest Dravidian ethnic groups are the Telugus from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, the Tamilians from Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka, the Kannadigas from Karnataka, and the Malayalis from Kerala.

Name	Subgroup	Population	Notes
Badagas	South Dravidian	133,500	Badagas are found in Tamil Nadu.
Brahuis	North Dravidian	700,000	Brahuis are mostly found in the Balochistan region of Pakistan, with smaller numbers in southwestern Afghanistan.
Chenchus	South-Central Dravidian	65,000	Chenchus are found in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Odisha.
Irula	South Dravidian	203,382	Irula are found in Tamil Nadu, Kerala
Giraavarus	South Dravidian	0 < 100	Giraavaru people were found in Maldives.
Gondis	Central Dravidian	13 million	Gondi belong to the central Dravidian subgroup. They are spread over the states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Odisha. A state named Gondwana was proposed to represent them in India.
Khonds	South-Central Dravidian	1,627,486	Khonds are found in Odisha.
Kannadigas	South Dravidian	43.7 million	Kannadigas are native to Karnataka in India but a considerable population is also found in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Kerala.
Kodavas	South Dravidian	160,000	Kodavas are native to the Kodagu district.
Koyas	Central Dravidian		found in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha
Kurukh	North Dravidian	3.6 million	Kurukh are spread over parts of the states of Chhatishgarh, Jharkhand and Odisha.
Kurumbar	South Dravidian	N/A	Kurumbar are found in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.
Malayalis	South Dravidian	45 million	Malayalis are native to Kerala and Lakshadweep, but are also found in Puducherry and parts of Tamil Nadu. They are also found in large numbers in Middle East countries, the Americas and Australia.
Paniya	South Dravidian	N/A	Paniya are found in Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
Tamils	South Dravidian	78 million	Tamils are native to Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and northern and eastern Sri Lanka, but are also found in parts of Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, although they have a large diaspora and are also widespread throughout many countries including South Africa, Singapore, the United States of America, Canada, Fiji, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Philippines, Mauritius, European countries, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana and Malaysia, as are the other three major Dravidian languages.
Telugus	Central Dravidian	85.1 million	Telugus are native to Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Yanam, but are also found in parts of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Orissa and Maharashtra. Further, they have a large diaspora and are also widespread throughout many countries including the United States of America, Canada, Australia and European countries. Telugu is the fastest growing language in the United States.
Todas	South Dravidian	2,002	Todas are found in Tamil Nadu.
Tuluvas	South Dravidian	2 million	Tuluvas are found in coastal Karnataka and Northern Kerala in India. A state named Tulu Nadu was proposed to represent them in India.

Language

The Dravidian language family is one of the oldest in the world. Six languages are currently recognized by India as Classical languages and four of them are Dravidian languages Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.
The most commonly spoken Dravidian languages are Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Brahui, Tulu, Gondi and Coorg. There are three subgroups within the Dravidian language family: North Dravidian, Central Dravidian, and South Dravidian, matching for the most part the corresponding regions in the Indian subcontinent.
Dravidian grammatical impact on the structure and syntax of Indo-Aryan languages is considered far greater than the Indo-Aryan grammatical impact on Dravidian. Some linguists explain this anomaly by arguing that Middle Indo-Aryan and New Indo-Aryan were built on a Dravidian substratum. There are also hundreds of Dravidian loanwords in Indo-Aryan languages, and vice versa.
According to David McAlpin and his Elamo-Dravidian hypothesis, the Dravidian languages were brought to India by immigration into India from Elam, located in present-day southwestern Iran. In the 1990s, Renfrew and Cavalli-Sforza have also argued that Proto-Dravidian was brought to India by farmers from the Iranian part of the Fertile Crescent, but more recently Heggerty and Renfrew noted that "McAlpin's analysis of the language data, and thus his claims, remain far from orthodoxy", adding that Fuller finds no relation of Dravidian language with other languages, and thus assumes it to be native to India. Renfrew and Bahn conclude that several scenarios are compatible with the data, and that "the linguistic jury is still very much out."
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 is suggested that the language was spoken in the 4th millennium BCE, and started disintegrating into various branches around 3rd millennium BCE. According to Krishnamurti, Proto-Dravidian may have been spoken in the Indus civilisation, suggesting a "tentative date of Proto-Dravidian around the early part of the third millennium." Krishnamurti further states that South Dravidian I and South Dravidian II split around the eleventh century BCE, with the other major branches splitting off at around the same time.