Question

The Dravidian races are mainly confined at which of the following parts of India?
1. South India
2. North-Western India
3. North-Eastern India
4. North India
5. None of the above/More than one of the above

Answer 1

Correct Answer - Option 1 : South India

The correct answer is South India.

• The Dravidian races are mainly confined to South India.
• Dravidian races:
  • The people of Dravidian type are distributed in the region from Ceylon to the valley of the Ganges covering the southern part of India.
  • These especially include Western Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh (Hyderabad), Central India and Chotonagpur.
  • The best example of this type is the Paniyans of Malabar (South India) and the Santals of the Chottanagpur. 
  • Risley believed these people as original inhabitants of India who are found to be modified at present by the infiltration of the Aryans, the Scythians and the Mongoloids.
  • The Dravidians were the majority population across the Indian subcontinent before the second millennium.
  • The evidence of early Dravidians comes from studying the Indo-Aryan culture, languages, and findings at many mounds, the preeminent of which are Mohenjodaro in Punjab and Harappa in Larkana District in Sind.

• Dravidian languages:
  • Dravidian languages, a family of some 70 languages spoken primarily in South Asia.
  • The Dravidian languages are spoken by more than 215 million people in India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
  • The Dravidian languages are divided into South, South-Central, Central, and North groups; these groups are further organized into 24 subgroups.
  • The four major literary languages—Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, and Kannada—are recognized by the constitution of India.
  • They are also the official languages of the states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Karnataka (formerly Mysore), respectively.
  • There is considerable literature on the theory that India is a linguistic area where different language families have developed convergent structures through extensive regional and societal bilingualism.
  • It is now well established that the Indo-Aryan and Dravidian language families developed convergent structures in sound system (phonology) and grammar owing to contact going back to the 2nd millennium BCE.
  • The earliest varieties of Indo-Aryan are forms of Sanskrit.