Encyclopaedia of Dravidian Tribes: An Old and Rare Book (Set of 3 Volumes)

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

The philologist, Edwin Tuttle, in his monograph Dravidian Development, incidentally one of the carliest publications of the Linguistic Society of America, indicated that the tribal languages of the Dravidian family preserved more of its archaic features than the 'cultivated languages. Jules Bloch of France in his book, The Grammatical Structure of Dravidian Languages, 1956 took the view that the intensive study of the tribal languages of the Dravidian family will clarify several issues in its linguistic pre-history. The Second Volume of the Dravidian Encyclopaedia issued in 1993, on People and Culture, has also underlined the study of the Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes and the Backward Communities of the Dravidian People for tracing many features not found in the forward communities.

Dravidian Tribes are not only found in numbers in the hilly regions of the Southern States of India, but also, in considerable numbers in Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, West Bengal and Assam. In Gujarat and Rajasthan, survivals of the tribal languages and cultures of this family are found in the southern regions. Even in Punjab, Haryana and Kashmir in the North-west and in Meghalaya and Tripura in the North-cast, indirect influences are traced by linguists and ethnologists.

Beyond India, to quote the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia, Vol. III, p 520:

"Brahui a people mainly in Western Pakistan (Baluchistan and Sind) and also as neighbours or intermingled with the Baluchi population in several areas of Iran and Afghanistan. Total population about 600,000 (1967 estimate). The Brahui language has no writing system and is related to the Dravidian languages slthough it does not duplay a close relationship with any languages of Southern India. The language is divided into a series of dialects. Their religion is Istam of the Sunnite sect. Their occupations are semi-nomadic and nomadic cattle raising and so some extent, farming A small group of Brahui living in in Turkmen USSR is gradually merging with the Balochi.

Nepal has a group of Dravidian speakers called Dhankar. When the hills of Burma and Thailand are combed, more tribes speaking Dravidian languages, it is suspected, can be identified.

The social organization which is self contained coupled with endogamy have helped in preserving many of the archaic traits both in language and culture in the Dravidian societies in spite of the pressure of the predominant cultures which are Aryan in North India and Kolarian and Mon Kmer and Tibetam in the Northcast.

Studies on the Dravidian Tribes were undertaken in the past chiefly by foreign missionaries for conversion to Christianity. A few Anthropologists like Rivers studied the Todas and their institution of polyandry. Many of these studies appeared mostly in English, and a few, in French and German, at least tent to fifteen decades ago. Some of the Journals which carried reports and short length treatments of the Dravidian Tribes have become defunct. Most of the publications are hard to get in Indian libraries. The proposal to compile a Union Catalogue for the holdings in all the libraries in India is yet to be completed.

The desire to know all about the Dravidian Tribes by scholars and administrators in Government is not matched with the availability of relevant published material. The pressure to make available more information was mounting and the International School of Dravidian Linguistics (ISDL) felt that the publication of the summary of all published material on the Tribes of the Dravidian family will help to update knowledge and to locate the gaps for researchers. For those whose interest is marginal, the information found in such a work will be helpful.

In 1978, a team of three young scholars was sent by ISDL to different areas in Madhya Pradesh and Orissa to revisit the tribal areas which had been surveyed carlier. Their reports, unfortunately, were sketchy. The senior dons felt that the expedition was not successful. In that year, a Senior Fellow was funded to go to Iran for about three to four months and did field work among the Brahuis in Zabul, Iran. But his report was unexpectedly delayed though some articles were published by him. These setbacks hardened the determination of ISDL to bring out all information so far available on the Dravidian Tribes. For this, ISDI. had to wait for funds and suitable personnel to head the venture until 1990.

On 10 November 1989, when the fund position improved, the Council of Direction of ISDL decided to launch the preparation of a Handbook on Dravidian Tribes. The availability of T. Madhava Menon, who retired from the Indian Administrative Service and was known to be dedicated to the cause of the Tribes in Kerala came to the notice of ISDL; he was invited to head the unit as the Chief Editor. This work being near to his heart, he readily accepted the invitation and work began on 1 March 1990.

The International School of Dravidian Linguistics (ISDL) has undertaken the preparation of a series of encyclopaedic studies and publications. The First Volume of the DRAVIDIAN EN CYCLOPAEDIA was published in 1991, and has been wall received in India and abroad. The Second Volume has been released in 1993.

ISDL had devoted attention to the various studies undertaken by different scholars both in the academic institutions as well as els of the Dravidian Languages. These are generally without scripts and often relegated to the position of elsewhere on the "Tribal communities speaking one or another "dialects" of a dominant literary language in the vicinity These communities represant uniquely impor tant stages in the history of Dravidian Languages and Cultures. The early consolidation of the various studies on them appeared to be of critical importance because the process of change among them is rapid. It was therefore decided that an Encyclopaedia of Dravidian Tribes is an urgent necessity. It is envisaged as a three-volume compilation: this, the first, contains an over-all "schematic" coverage of the broad cultural characteristics spanning several of these communities, the emphasis being on these characteristics rather than on the individual communities. The second and the third volumes will be a community by community survey.

Several conceptual difficulties of definition and delimitation arose at the commencement of the work itself. These have been outlined in the Introductory Chapters of this Volume. No claim is made here that this is the only or the beat view that may be taken of the matter. We claim however to have made a meaningful effort in this direction and hope that this Encyclopaedia, in addition to providing information on a series of cultural issues and communities, will also be a contribution to a scheme of classification of tribal cultures.

This is an effort to study the aspects of the human culture of a set of people not so much to underline the difference between them and others" as to reveal and understand the vast variety that humans adopt in the expression of their own destiny. The British thought of "Dravidian as a merely Indian phenomenon. We know now that there was a highly developed cultural strain of humanity. peri-Mediterranean in its origin, which spread over most of Asia and developed distinct languages showing familial resemblance indicating a common proto-form and which we designate as "Dravidian". Lexicostatistical evidence indicates a higher percentage of common features among these languages persisting beyond the perceived history of their physical separation by geographical distances, thus showing a high degree of cultural conservatism. Surviving languages of this family are spoken by significant numbers of people both within and beyond the borders of India, eg., Brahul, which spreads even beyond the limits of the erstwhile "British India. In India, apart from the "traditional literary Dravidian languages, (Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu), most of the mother tongues and languages in South India have been identified as "Dravidian". More than 65% of the members officially classified as Scheduled Tribes in India outside the North-east spoke Dravidian languages, such people not being limited to the Peninsula only (IJDL 1983:XII-1)

Dravidian Languages. The question whether a language is Dravidian is normally answered historically by reconstruction. No correlation has been established between ethnic and linguistic groups, there are 613 tribal communities in India with 304 mother tongues reduced to 101 distinct languages (Annamalai 1990). There is a language shift resulting in an ethnic community speaking a genetically different language, or part of an ethnic community doing so like the Gadaba in Orissa. While the population of tribal communities in India in 1961 was 29.9 million, the population of speakers of tribal languages was 12.8 million, indicating that 43% of tribal people had reported a non-tribal language as their mother tongue, this being in most cases the dominant language of the region.

Tribes. The concept of tribes is also one which has defied precise universally accepted definitions. We have only one legally acceptable frame of reference, viz., the Schedule of the Constitution of India, where a number of communities have been defined by enumeration" as "Scheduled Tribes". The Constitution provides for periodical revision of this Schedule, adding and deleting communities. There is over-lap as a result of the re-drawing of the boundaries and classification of the various States of India. Confusions arising out of the vagaries of transliteration from local languages to English and Hindi have added to the difficulties of identification. In spite of these deficiencies, this "bench-mark" has been adopted for this Encyclopaedia, for want of anything less controversial.

There are some tribal communities outside India who also speak Dravidian languages. The Brahui, spread over Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and portions of the territories comprised in the erstwhile Soviet Union, historically spoke a language long recognised as Dravidian. The Dhangar of Nepal are understood to be a section of the Kurukh speaking Oraons who had migrated and settled there in comparatively recent times, but long enough to have developed some linguistic peculiarities of their own. More difficulty surrounds the Vedda of Sri Lanka. Their language has been completely lost there is no evidence to show that it was "Dravidian. But their kinship patterns and several cultural features bear strong resemblance to the undoubtedly Dravidian speaking tribal communities of South India, like the Kader, early writers like the Saracins and Eickstedt had pointed out their ethnic similarities with the South Indian tribes.

"Dravidian Tribea a Logical Construct. Therefore in this Encyclopaedia, the term Dravidian Tribe represents a logical construct: if a community of humans is included as a "Scheduled Tribe" in the Constitution of India, and speaks a language considered on linguistic grounds as a member of the Dravidian Family of Languages, then, we have included it for our study. To this we have added the Brahul because their language is a member of the Dravidian Family of languages. It is with some hesitation we are including the Vedda, our intention is not to claim that they are "Dravidian" As a prototype of a condition still found among many communities in India like the Cholanaikkan, we consider that the Inclusion may be helpful in tracing the pre-historic spread of Dravidian tribes.

The Scheme of Treatment. The communities covered in this Encyclopaedia exhibited a great deal of commonality in several traits. It was therefore decided that the Encyclopaedia will be more useful if it Included a THEMATIC coverage of these traits in addition to an ALPHABETICAL arrangement of the data in regard to the individual communities, in order that we may not, so to say, "miss the wood for the trees. The FIRST Volume is thus an attempt at a conspectus of the cultural traits of the communities arranged in the order of the topics as usually dealt with in Ethnographic studies. Detailed studies of the Individual communities will be featured in the Second and the Third Volumes in the series: the entries in those volumes will be in the ALPHABETICAL order of the spelling of the name of the community as transliterated into English,

"Balanced Treatment. It is an article of faith with the ISDL that, in the Encyclopaedic studies undertaken by it, a proper academic balance will be maintained in regard to the coverage of aspects on which there is controversy, care being taken to present all the view-points expressed. This principle has been observed in this Encyclopaedia also; especially in topics like THE EVOLUTION OF THE HUMAN BEING. where the "last word has been far from being said, we have taken care to scan the latest literature available to us, as for example the studies on human MITOCHONDRIAL DNA. We have also tried to be theoretically neutral in regard to subjects like RELIGION, BELIEF SYSTEMS, etc.

In the THEMATIC coverage presented in the First Volume, we have not been obstinately following either a strictly diachronic or a strictly synchronic treatment. Wherever we thought that it would elucidate matters, we have adopted even an "evolutionary view, without being dogmatic about any value-implication that such a treatment may be thought to entail. Much historical data has been culled from the earliest available sources to illustrate various aspects of the human condition; the communities concerned may not at present exhibit any of these traits, described about them in the early literature. This is especially true of the Toda; many of the details, described in River's classic study (1906), have been furnished here to Illustrate the uniqueness of some cultural practices, even though several of them, Including the sacred ti institution, and the "second" or "dry funerals" have long since become virtually extinct. (cf. Walker In Hockings (Ed) 1989: 200, 202). We have not dared to comment whether they "evolved out of these traits, or the change was thrust on them.

Our stance of "academic neutrality is abandoned when it comes to the assessment of injustices done to these communities by external agencies including centralised government bureaucracies. We have unabashedly taken the side of the poor and the oppressed when it came to the portrayal of their efforts to revolt and secure justice. We have also been distinctly biased in their favour in our assessment of the Government-administered "Development Effort and the tribal experience of it. We believe that in this, we are only being faithful to the tradition of the exceptional humanism of Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of the Indian Nation, and of Jawaharlal Nehru.

Acknowledgements. Several persons and organizations have been generous with assistance and advice, we are grateful to all of them. Special mention has to be made of Sri Mudda Mooppan, a tribal headman about 90 years old, belonging to the Kurumba of Attapady (Palghat District) and a legend in his lifetime. He was honoured with an award by the Dravidian Linguistics Association in 1992 in recognition of his deep knowledge of ethnobotany and tribal medicine. He was a mine of information and familiarised us with the tribal point of view in matters of tribal religion, sorcery and magic and "development".

**Contents and Sample Pages**