Negroids & Shudras, North-south

[Raveen Satkurunathan]

On Fri, 17 Mar 2000 15:34:58 -0700, Yashwant Malaiya <malaiya at CS.COLOSTATE.EDU>
wrote:

>1. The siddis or shidis loving in the coastal areas of
>Sindh, Maharastra and Konkana are of Negro descent. Since
>some of them are Hindu, and since they are concentrated in
>coastal areas, suggests that not all of them were brought
>as slaves during the Muslim period. They could have
>arrived as traders etc.
>
>They are physically quite distinct and have nothing to do with
>Dravidians.


There are few "Dravidian" speaking tribals who exhibit typical "Negroid"
physical characteristics;

1. Kurumba of Tamil Nadu
2. Paniyan of Kerala among others


Further Dravidian is a language group not a racial group contrary to what a lot
of people want to believe. Speakers range from Caucasian Brahui to Negroid
Paniyan and every possible human combination in-between including the much
contested Australoid and even some Mongoloid characteristics of tribals in the
east.


>2. Who is a shudra? There are 4 points of view.
>
> <Deleted>

>North South divide: Dakshinapatha or the Dravida country
>included modern Gujarat and Maharashtra. Thus the Gujarati and
>Marathi brahmins are among the "panch-dravida". Orissa
>is tradionally considered North.


See

Dravidian Place names in Maharashtra
F. C. Southworth (University of Pennsylvania)  In their book The Rise of
Civilization in India and Pakistan (1982),  the Allchins state that there is a
substratum of Dravidian place names in Maharashtra. This statement, based
probably on the ideas of H. D.
Sankalia.....

(Archived in Indology list)

Pretty interesting that without the help of modern linguistics, old Puranic
writers “some how” knew that the natives of Gujarat and Maharashtra were
Dravidian speaking although currently a majority of them speak in IE

>Incidentally the old Gurjara country, now in Rajasthan,
>is not considered Dravida.
>
>Yashwant


Raveen