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Dravidians
A collective term for a number of ethnic groups comprising Telugu, Tamil, Malayali, Kannada, Tulu, Kurgi, Gond, and Brahui to name a few. They mainly inhabit India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and South-East Asia. They speak *Dravidian languages that belong to the Nostratic sub-family of languages. The more widespread of the Dravidian languages, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, and Kannada have independent well-developed scripts and a rich literary tradition. The languages of ethnic minorities, e.g., lrula, have no written versions and have thus far been little studied. Dravidians are one of the oldest races to inhabit South Asia, arriving even before the Aryans. Anthropologically, Dravidians are a blend of at least three different racial types: Dravidoid, South-Europeoid, and Veddoid. Their original birth place is not known, but they are certainly not indigenous to South Asia. The fact of Dravidian southward migration from the north-west has been deduced from the Dravidian origin of proto-Indian inscriptions on some archaeological finds in Mohenjo Daro and Harappa (3-2 millennia BC), and is also supported by the Regvada hymns. In all probability, they reached the south of the subcontinent by the middle of the first millennium BC. The study of the Dravidian ethnogenesis is made difficult by the lack of source material.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: (in Russian): M.F. Albedil, B.Ya. Volchok, Yu. V. Knoro::.ov, 'The Study of proto-Indian Inscriptions. Forgotten Scripts', Moscow, 1982; 'Types of Proto-Indian Inscriptions. Ethnic Semiotics, Ancient Scripts', Moscow, 1985; M.S. Andorran, 'Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages', Moscow, 1978; G.M. Bongard-Levin, N. V. Gurow, 'The Genesis of the Dravidian Culture', in: USSR Academy of Sciences Yestnik, No. 10, 1985; Yu. V. Knorozov, 'Proto-Indian Inscriptions: Problems of Decyphering', in:
Soviet Ethnography No.5, 1981; 'Ethnic Minorities of South Asia', Moscow, 1978. (In English): B. and R. Allchin, 'The Rise of Civilization in India and Pakistan', Cambridge, 1982; H.S. David, 'The Original Home of the Dravidians. Their Wanderings in Pre-historic Times (Be 4500-1500). Tamil Culture', 1954, Vol. 3, No.1; Y.v. Knorozov, M.F. Albedil, B.Y. Volchok, Proto-Indica, 1979, 'Report on the Investigation of the Proto-1ndian Texts', Moscow, 1981.

Dravidian Languages
The Dravidian family of languages includes approximately 26 languages that are mainly spoken in southern India and Sri Lanka, as well as certain areas in Pakistan, Nepal, and eastern and central India. Dravidian languages appear to be unrelated to languages of other known families. Some scholars include the Dravidian languages in a larger Elamo-Dravidian language family, which includes the ancient Elamite language of what is now southwestern Iran.
The existence of the Dravidian language family was first suggested in 1816 by Alexander D. Campbell in his Grammar of the Teloogoo Language, in which he and Francis W. Ellis argued that Tamil and Telugu were descended from a common, non-Indo-European ancestor. However, it was not until 1856 that Robert Caldwell published his comparative grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian. family of languages, which considerably expanded the Dravidian umbrella and established it as one of the major language groups of the world. Caldwell coined the term 'Dravidian' from the Sanskrit driivida, meaning 'south'.