Dravidian peoples

As Dravidians or Dravidian peoples, the ethnic groups are called who speak one of the Dravidian languages. The main factors include the Tamils ​​, Telugus, Kannadigas and Malayalis who are in India or resident in the four southern states (in the case of the Tamils ​​) on Sri Lanka, as well as members of smaller ethnic groups dravidischsprachiger in Central India and Pakistan.

The term " Dravidian " coined Robert Caldwell in his Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian work or South Indian Family of Languages ​​(1856 ), by which the already forty years previously discovered by Francis Whyte Ellis kinship of the languages ​​of South India gained notoriety. Here, Caldwell went back to the Sanskrit word Dravida, which was already used by Indian classical authors for the south Indian peoples. A beyond mere linguistic relationship beyond identity as " Dravidians " to the " Aryans " of Northern India was mainly in the early 20th century, promoted by the so-called Dravidian movement, which was very strong in Tamil Nadu, but hardly spread to the other dravidischsprachigen areas.