North Dravidian Languages

Mains Syllabus: GS I - Indian culture will cover the salient aspects of Art Forms, literature and Architecture from ancient to modern times; Salient features of Indian Society, Diversity of India.

Why in the News?

Recent controversy between Tamil and Kannada language has led to discussions on Dravidian languages.

What are Dravidian languages?

British missionary Robert Caldwell was the first to use ‘Dravidian’ as a generic name for the major language family.

• Dravidian Languages – It is a family of some 70 languages spoken primarily in South Asia.
• Major Languages - The Dravidian language family’s four largest languages are Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu.

• Geographical Distribution - While its speakers in India are primarily concentrated in the southern and central belts, these languages are also spoken in other South Asian countries, including Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

• Differences - The North Dravidian language subgroup is distinguished from the other Dravidian languages by various phonological, morphological, and lexical features.
• Kurux shares 73% of its Dravidian-sourced words with Malto, but only 12% with Tamil and 14.5% with Telugu.
• Greatness - In the book The Dravidian Languages (2015), American linguist Sanford B Steever argues that the Dravidian language family is the fourth or fifth largest language family in the world.
• Historical Significance – This language family may have been spoken for millennia in different parts of South Asia and is believed by many scholars to have been spoken in the Indus Valley.
• Contribution to Other Languages – Dravidian system of languages have loaned generously to vocabularies of other families.

How have Dravidian languages evolved?

• Split from Proto Dravidian - According to Krishnamurti, the first branch to split off from the Proto Dravidian family was the North subgroup, comprising Kurux, Malto, and Brahui.
• The fact that Kurux, Malto and Brahui share past forms with the suffix -k/-g made scholars believe that these languages branched off first from the rest of Dravidian.

The 1981 Census, which required a language to have at least 10,000 speakers to be listed, mentioned Malto and Kurux as non-scheduled languages while omitting Brahui as it had no speakers living within the Indian Union.

• Emergence of Other Groups - Subsequently, Central Dravidian emerged with languages like Kolami, Parji, followed by Proto-South, which further split into South-Central, comprising Telugu, Kuwi, and Southern, which includes Tamil and Tulu.
• Branching Out - The main branches of Dravidian—South Dravidian I (including pre-Tamil), South Dravidian II (including pre-Telugu), and others—began to split around the 11th century BCE, with earlier splits likely occurring in the millennia prior
• Indigenous vs. Migratory Origins - While some theories propose that Dravidian languages were brought to India by migrations from the Iranian Plateau, the majority of linguistic and genetic evidence supports the view that the Dravidian language family is indigenous to the Indian subcontinent.
• Contact with Indo-Aryan Languages - Dravidian languages influenced early Sanskrit, especially through loanwords and the introduction of retroflex consonants.
• This indicates contact between Dravidian and Indo-Aryan speakers by at least the 2nd millennium BCE, well before Sanskrit had a significant impact on southern India.
• Indus Valley Linkage – Presence of Brahui speakers across the continent- Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, and Larkana led to the conjecture that Dravidian was the language of the Indus Valley Civilisation.
• The presence of Brahui in the highlands of southwestern Pakistan is also cited as a determining factor in associating the Indus Valley Civilisation with Dravidian.

References

The Indian Express | Dravidian Family