Talk:Dravidian peoples/Archive 6

message: I'm sorry by I cannot accept this paragraph:
"However, other notable scholars, such as Sri Aurobindo, have demonstrated that there is no such an ethnic or linguistic division between the north Indians and the south Indians. Max Muller's theory was officially supported by the British colonian authorities, who adhered to the "divide and rule" principle."
Firstly Aurobindo is a religious scholar, not an expert on genetics, ethnicity and and linguistics. He has not 'demonstrated' anything on this issue, he simply had a pan-Indian belief system. 
: I agree; I will change the above sentence to say that Aurobindo believed that there is no ethnic distinction, rather than say that he demonstrated it. However, several historians have put forth the theory that there is no ethnic distinction - see Aryan Invasion Theory for sources. I will add a sentence to that effect too. --ashwatha 01:18, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. Several British historians adhered to the theory, but it is not right to say that the British government "officially" supported the theory. I will remove that sentence. --ashwatha 01:18, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

text: Personally, I don't think the divide and rule argument is absurd, and I do see how instilling a belief that there is an ethnic distinction would help the British rule - but whether they did it or not is POV, and has already been dealt with in Aryan Invasion Theory. I will just add a link to that article here and remove that sentence.--ashwatha 01:18, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I accept that 'absurd' is OTT, but I have never seen any evidence for this so-called 'divide and rule' strategy, nor do I understand how the claim that there is a racial difference between Dravidians and Aryans would assist British rule. Historically India was divided into different kingdoms, so such divisions already existed. Now the idea that the Indian upper castes were 'Aryans' could indeed help British rule, by allying the native Indian ruling classes to British rule on the ideology of pan-Aryanism. But the ethno-linguistic distinction between Aryan and Dravidian peoples would alienate South Indians, including their leaders. Overplaying the Aryan idea would be threatening to British rule. For this reason, though Aryanism was indeed part of the culture of British imperialism, I've found no evidence that it was ever a tool of policy. Unlike the Nazis the British were far too canny to let their ideology rule their practical policy..--Paul B 23:11, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

text: So essentially, the whole paragraph can be removed. In fact, the whole article looks pretty lame to me, but I will see what I can do to clean it up. --ashwatha 01:18, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I've removed the claim that Max Muller first used the term Dravidian race. I can find no evidence of this. Indeed Muller was not a race-theorist or a Dravidianist. I've tried to make a more general summary of the role played by race in the modelling of Indian populations by the British. ..--Paul B 18:04, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

text:  There is nothing 'POV' about saying that Tamil is the 'most important' of the Dravidian languages. The point not that it's a better language in some way, but that it is the most widely spoken and has the largest literature. It's necessary to introduce Tamil at this stage so that an uninformed reader will understand that 'Tamils' - referred to later in the article - are the principal sub-group of Dravidian speakers. Still, I shall try to rephrase it. Paul B 02:24, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

text: Thanks, the re-phrasing reads well. I agree that is is certainly the best-known of the Dravidian languages. --ashwatha 02:49, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Sri Aurobindo

message: "Telugu and Kannada have some striking similarity to Sanskrit, while Tamil is the least affected by Sanskrit. Telugu is over 70% Sanskrit." 
Does this mean Telugu vocabulary is over 70% Sanskrit? Telugu grammar? Without more context, I think it is safer to say that Kannada and Telugu resemble Sanskrit more than Tamil does. 
Also, most of the information in the "Dravidian languages" section seems to belong in the Dravidian languages article, not in this one. --ashwatha 00:11, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: To Anon user

message: I think this page should be moved to Dravidian, Dravidians or Dravidian people. The term "Dravidian Race" is an 19th century invention, while the term Dravidian itself has a long and probably complex history that is not really mentioned in the article. Somebody really should write something about the history and etymology of the term Dravidian. And "Dravidian Race" could still be a section in the article. --Batten8 10:22, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The article was originally intended to be about the 19th century concept of a "race". The editor who created it evidently intended it to parallel the Aryan race article. It has now evolved into something different, so yes, Dravidian people or Dravidians would be better. The letter currently rediects to Dravidian, which is a disambiguation page, and I think should remain so. Paul B 10:35, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: If nobody objects, somebody should move the article to Dravidians or Dravidian people then. --Batten8 11:15, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Page move 

message: "Morphologically the people of India may be broadly classified (Malhotra, 1978) into four types --- Negrito, Australoid, Mongoloid and Caucasoid. The Negrito element is characterized by short stature, fizzly hair, fine hair texture, brachycephalichead, dark complexion, short and protruding face, broad nose and thick and everted lips. They are now confined to the Andaman Islands and Nilgiri Hills. Some anthropologists believe that they may have had a wider distribution at one time. The Australoids are characterized by short stature (althoughtaller than the Negritos), wavy to curly hair, hyperdolichocephalic todolichocephalic head, dark complexion, stout brow ridges, sunken nasalroot and abundance of body hair. They are chiefly distributed in central and southern regions of India. The Mongoloid element in India is primarily found in the north-east and the sub-Himalayan regions of India. They have short stature, broad shoulder, scanty facial and body hair, brachycephalic head, flat face, prominent cheek bones, flat nose and epicanthic fold. Mostof the tribal groups of India belong to one of these three fairly distinct morphological types, although it must be emphasized that within any of these types there is a considerable amount of variability. The Caucasoid element in India is the most widespread. They are characterized by a taller stature, dolichocephalic to brachycephalic head, light complexion, straight to wavy hair, lighter eyes, arched forehead, long face with well-developed chin,narrow and prominent nose. ... How are populations from various Indian regions genetically positioned relative to one another? Using the data on allele frequencies at 10 loci presented in Roychoudhury (1977), a single-linkage dendrogram (Figure 2) was constructed. From Figure 2, it is seen that the populations of southern India stand apart genetically from the populations of north, west, east and central India."  WAS 4.250 20:23, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi, I've removed this passage again because its footnote links to a non-existent page. We need to know who said this and when. Paul B 21:11, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: The unsortened exerpt version reads

message: The article "Dravidas" appears to be about this same subject (either an alternative spelling or a wrong one).  It contains little information that this article does not already have (it does mention the Vindhya Range, which this article apparently does not).  I have tagged it to be merged into this one.  --Joel7687 01:31, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merging [[Dravidas]] into this article 

message: Recently a lot of discussions and corrections are going in this topic.But If view differently, its 
not much useful for that topic or interest.In the past there were no records like wikipedia now.If we had such system of records, today we dont need these arguments.
The reason for saying this is, I didn't saw much contraversy in "Aryans".It suppose to be the case.
May Be we can post our input whether towards,or against.But remember to keep the evidences.
For example, 10th planet recently discovered,
Until we get official acceptance, still our textbooks reads " ... 9 planets.)
if we consider "dravidian" as a belief then there will be no question.Untill we get the breakthrough by science we all input our findings / opinions.
218.186.66.245 15:48, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unnecessary efforts In "Dravidians"

message: I'd like to bring to attention the huge amount of negative propaganda that makes up the bulk of scholarly work on anything Dravidian.  The founder of the modern Dravidian movement, Bishop Caldwell, did it to try to convert Tamilians to the Protestant faith.  The man who excavated the Indus Valley sites, such as Mohenjo-daro, perpetuated the theory that the Aryans conquered the Dravidians of the Indus Valley to illustrate the superiority of a white race as opposed to a black race.
Now that the Indus Valley civilisation has turned out to be one of the greatest of the ancient world (bronze age) the same people are revising their opinions to make it seem as if the Indus Valley Civilisation was Aryan.  I don't know the truth exactly, but from the objective evidence, it seems Indus was Dravidian.  The great majority of modern Indians also have traces of Dravidian stock, though the Tamilians would be the purest genetically as they retained a separate identity.
All I'm saying is that when I put up my findings from the internet onto this article, I did it so that people would understand some of the legacy of the Dravidians, the Tamils.  If you look as I have from outside of India, you find no mention of Tamilian discoveries or achievements in history, though they echo even now in science and mathematics.  One of the wonders of the world lies in Tamilnadu, the great temples of southern India, yet the only structure that is ever shown to outsiders, be they Japanese or French, is that of the Taj Mahal.  It is saddening that propaganda detracts people from revealing the truth.
^^ I second the above notion too. As an outsider to India, it is practically common sense that the Aryan civilisation could not have been the Indus Valley people, the oldest temples in the world are all in the south. The north of India (With the exception of the sikh kingdoms) has never been able to protect their temples let alone defend their lands from skirmishes. History seems to portray the Aryans as some white ancient race that dominated India, in Rushdie's latest book he makes use of research that points towards the some northern indian races (descendants of Aryans) as being refugees from europe and entering India fleeing troubles. 
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 219.89.167.180 (talk • contribs) Pjacobi 15:57, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Propaganda 

message: "However anthropological evidence suggests that both the creators of the Indus valley civilization and the later Aryan invaders were from the Nordindid race." 
This article definitly needs to be removed.
-
I agree. Further it is clear that the Dravidians originated in africa and spread throughout all of southeast asia through ausralia and south pacific....... There is plenty of documentation for this. The article is incredibly biased.
:No there isn't. There are no "Dravidians" in Australia and never have been. Dravidians originated in Africa only in the sense that everyone did. The geographical origins of the Dravidian language are unknown. References to the "Nordinid race" have long gone, so you'll have to look elsewhere to justify claims that this article is "incredibly biassed". Paul B 18:31, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hahahahaha 

message: and were considered by some authorities as somewhat pedomorphous. oy vey... IMFromKathlene
:…but Pedomorphic is. (Not that that helps.) oy vey indeedeeoh //Big Adamsky 20:17, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: pedomorphous isn't a word

message: I don't know what the person means by race here. If it's genetic make up, please give the proper literature to support this. As far as I know, all Y-chromosomes and mtDNA found in South Indian caste population is common in whole sub-continent. It's not our problem if somebody can't or doesn't want to go beyond his/her skin colour/anthropometry views. Dravidian identity is wholly based on its unique languages and the culture developed by the people who speak those languages. It looks like too many people belonging to Nordicist, Dravidian movements and Dalitstan organization have vested interest in developing this article as a racial one.
Manjunatha (6 Feb 2006)
:I think it's more likely due to the differing definitions of "race". In much of current Western thinking, race itself is seen as being non-existent outside of cultural perception. So the fact that some have traditionally and still do see the linguistic and cultural differences between the Indo-Aryan and Dravidian peoples as being "racial" means that by definition they qualify as differing "racial" types, at least from a certain point of view. That's how I read it, anyway. --Krsont 10:02, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have also come across a study wherein the genetic differences increases as one goes further south. i.e. South Indians have a slightly different makeup of genes. The differences might only be marginal but the point is, yes, there are differences in genetic makeup if that's what you mean. I'll try to figure out where I can get a source on this, but that should not become the basis for turning this into a racial subject. It is only a secondary aspect and the real difference has a lot to do with many other aspects of life than this. tx Idleguy 10:22, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

text: If I can get that report I can add something on this issue. Until then, I reserve my comments. Idleguy 11:57, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Aryan/Dravidian races