Dravidian origins

[Venkatraman Iyer]

Coming to the original question of Bjarte Kaldhol.

Nothing is known about Dravidian immigration into India.
Especially the time when they moved. Scholars like
B. Sergent speculate that Dravidians moved into India
about 10,000 years ago.

Asko Parpola wrote on 20 Mar 2000 in the
www.tamil.net:
<<<
Dear Bala Pillai,
    Many thanks for your kind words and inquiries. I think
it unlikely that anybody will ever succeed in PROVING a
genetic relationship between the Dravidian language family
and any other language family by means of generally accepted
linguistic methodology. This does not mean that Dravidian
languages are not related to any other known language families
-- of course they are, but the relationship is simply so
distant that there is not enough shared linguistic data
left to demonstrate the relationship in a convincing manner.
A minimum requirement for this would seem to be about 100
good etymologies with regular phonemic correspondences. The
structure of Sumerian does not suggest a close relationship
with the Dravidian family. The Elamite, Uralic and 'Altaic'
languages are good candidates in this respect, and a number
of tantalizing etymologies and even some morphological
parallels have been presented from them, and yet all
attempts have failed to convince critical scholars with
most authority.
>>>

David McAlpin did a PhD on the possible relationship
between Elamite and Dravidian, and after his graduate
work, he quit doing Asian studies, and this hypothesis
is not accepted by Bh. Krishnamuri, an authority on
Drav. linguistics. See his mail in Indology,
<<<
At 11:52 02/03/98 -0500, you wrote:

  >McAlpin published his provocative and very interesting study quite some
 >time ago and then he himself (if I am not mistaken) appears to have
 >disappeared from academic cirlces and nothing more was heard from him. In
 >any event, while some linguists are still open to considering his line of
 >argument, it is by no means universally accepted at all. Does anyone know
 >of any more recent work predicated on McAlpin's preliminary
 >investigations?  Regrards, Edwin

In my article 'Comparative Dravidian Sstudies since Current Trends
1969' (In For Gordon Fairbanks, ed. by Veneeta z. Acson and Richard
L. Leed,212-231.1985. Honolulu: Univ of Hawaii Press), I made the
following observations on McAlpin's proposal of
Proto-Elamo-Dravidian."...He compares 57 lexical items drawn from a
corpus of 'about 5000 words' of Achaemenid Elamite (640 BC), and
constructs phonological correspondences and a theory of relationship
between Dravidian and Elamite. He even reconstructs
Proto-Elamo-Dravidian (PED). Thhere are 47 correspondences or
phonological rules which account for 57 etymological groups
(1)...Many of the rules formulated by McAlpin lack intrinsic
phonetic/phonological motivation and appear ad hoc, invented to fit
the proposed correspondences; e.g. PED i,e > 0 (Elamite) when
followed by t, n, which are again followed by a: but these remain
undisturbed in Dravidian (1974:93). How does a language develop that
kind of sound change? This rule was dropped a few years later,
because the etymologies were abandoned (1979:184). (2) he set up
retroflexes as an innovation in Dravdian resulting from PED *rt (94).
Later he abandoned this rule and set up retrofexes and dentals for
PED and said that Elamite merged the retroflexes with dentals
(1979, chart on 184-5)....."But, it is puzzling that in the body of
the article he referes to the splitting of PED dentals into dentals
and post-dentals..(1979:176). His 1981 book was not yet published ;
so I took three of his papers for review in the paper that I prepared
in Dec. 1980. I was able to show a lot of adhocism in his etymologies
as well as correspondences. Dravidian scholars have not accepted
McAlpin's proposal of PED. His corpus of 640BC (corresponding to
Pre-Tamil period) does not favourably compare with Proto-Dravidian,
approximately of 3000 BC.
Regards, Bh.K.
end
Bh. Krishnamurti
H.No. 12-13-1233, "Bhaarati"
Street No.9, Tarnaka
Hyderabad 500 017, A.P.
India
Telephone (R)(40)701 9665
E-mail: <bhk at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN>
>>>


<<<
Dear listmembers,

Since I wanted to know something about the Dravidian languages
without going so far as to read a grammar of Tamil, I sat down to
read Zvelebil's article in Encyclopaedia Britannica (Vol. 22, 15th
edition). In the third paragraph, he states: "Nothing definite is
known about the origin of the Dravidian family."
         Well, let us see what this professed ignorance leads to:

1. There are vague indigenous traditions about an ancient migration
from the south.
2. According to some scholars, Dravidian languages are indigenous to
India.
3. A hypothesis has been gaining ground that posits a movement of
Dravidian speakers from the northwest to the south and east of the
peninsula, a movement originating possibly from Central Asia. (This
hypothesis is not substantiated, and Zvelebil later confesses that
"nothing definite is known about the ancient domain of the Dravidian
parent speech".)
4. Another theory connects the Dravidian speakers with the peoples of
the Indus Valley civilization.
5. The circumstances of the advent of Dravidian speakers in India are
shrouded in mystery. (An "advent" is now taken for granted.)
6. It is possible that a Dravidian-speaking people that can be
described as dolichocephalic Mediterraneans mixed with brachycephalic
Armenoids and established themselves in northwest India during the 4th
millennium BC. Along their route, they may have possibly come into an
intimate, prolonged contact with Ural-Altaic speakers, thus explaining
the striking affinities between the Dravidian and Ural-Altaic language
groups. (No such affinities  are mentioned.)
7. It is possible that Proto-Brahui was the first language to split
off from Proto-Dravidian, probably during the immigration movement
into India some time in the 4th millennium BC...

Now, if nothing definite is known about the origin of the Dravidian
family, or about the ancient domain of the Dravidian parent speech,
why speculate about an immigration movement? And why must this
immigration have happened in the fourth millennium BC?
>>>

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