Dravidian studies (also Dravidology, Dravidiology) is the academic field devoted to the

Dravidian languages The Dravidian languages are a language family, family of languages spoken by 250 million people, primarily in South India, north-east Sri Lanka, and south-west Pakistan, with pockets elsewhere in South Asia. The most commonly spoken Dravidian l ...

, literature, and

culture Culture ( ) is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, Attitude (psychology), attitudes ...

. It is a superset of Tamil studies and a subset of Indology.

Early missionaries

The 16th to 18th century missionaries who wrote Tamil grammars or lexica include Henrique Henriques, Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg and Constantino Giuseppe Beschi.

Dravidian language hypothesis

The recognition that the Dravidian languages were a phylogenetic unit separate from Indo-European dates to 1816, and was presented by F. W. Ellis, Collector of Madras, at the College of Fort St. George.

Nineteenth-century experts

The 19th century contributors to the field of Dravidology were:

Twentieth-century experts

The noted Dravidologists from the twentieth century are:

Contemporary programs

The Dravidian University at Kuppam,

Andhra Pradesh Andhra Pradesh (ISO 15919, ISO: , , AP) is a States and union territories of India, state on the East Coast of India, east coast of southern India. It is the List of states and union territories of India by area, seventh-largest state and th ...

has created Chairs in the names of Western and Dravidian scholars to encourage research in individual Dravidian languages as well as comparative Dravidian studies: * Bishop Caldwell's Chair for Dravidian Studies * C. P. Brown's Chair for Telugu Studies * Kittel Chair for

Kannada Kannada () is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly in the state of Karnataka in southwestern India, and spoken by a minority of the population in all neighbouring states. It has 44 million native speakers, and is additionally a ...

Studies * Constantine Beschi Chair for Tamil Studies * Gundert Chair for

Malayalam Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian languages, Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of ...

Studies.

Literature

* Robert Caldwell, ''Comparative Grammar of Dravidian Languages'' (1856; revised edition 1875). * *Thomas R. Trautmann, ''Languages and nations: the Dravidian proof in colonial Madras'', University of California Press, 2006, ISBN University of California Press, 2006. *

Film

The 2021 Indian documentary film Dreaming of Words traces the life and work of Njattyela Sreedharan, a fourth standard drop-out, who compiled a multilingual dictionary connecting four major

, Telugu, and Tamil. Travelling across four states and doing extensive research, he spent twenty five years making this multilingual dictionary.

References

External links

*Dravidian studies in the Netherlands, IIAS newsletter (2005

http://www.iias.nl/nl/37/IIAS_NL37_21.pdf]
Extracts from T.R.Sesha Iyengar's "Dravidian India" by Dr. Samar Abbas, Bhubaneshwar, 4/8/2003
* Roja Muthiah Research Library {{Portalbar, India Indology