Dasyus and PaNis inRV

[Raveen Satkurunathan]

On Wed, 8 Nov 2000 07:55:32 -0800, Periannan Chandrasekaran
<perichandra at YAHOO.COM> wrote:

<deleted>
>
>Scholars have repeatedly emphasized that Dravidians are mediterranean
>caucasoid. (See KAN Sastri, Michigan Papers 1978, first article, Zvelebil
etc.)
>Associating flat-nose/curly-hair with Dravidians seems to be a layman's
>(mis)conception stereotyping the prevalently dark skintone as going
>hand-in-hand with non-caucasoid features.  Many laymen would be surprised
to
>find that even the scheduled castes of Tamilnadu have caucasoidal features.

Eric Miller, First Edition: Chennai, July 1991 “Tamil Nadu's
Silappathikaram Epic of the Ankle Bracelet: Ancient Story and Modern
Identity”

“The proposition that people frequented Poompuhar by sea from all over the
world is perhaps supported by the fact that today one sees a great variety
of facial types among the Tamils.  In the United States, the mixture of
African and European races resulted to some degree in the following
characteristic clusters: full-lips/wide-nose/receding- forehead/dark-skin
as opposed to thin-lips/thin-nose/vertical-forehead/light-skin. This
grouping of characteristics is markedly not the case among Tamils.  Despite
the fact that I have lived most of my life in New York City, where I have
seen people from all over the world, I was not accustomed to seeing the
endless variety in the combinations of features and colors that I saw in
Tamil faces.

I must admit to moments of quiet, internal disorientation over this
phenomenon. For example: Was the dark-skinned/vertical-foreheaded/thin-
lipped/thin-nosed person speaking to me--in English, with a crisp British
accent--a "white" person or a "black" person? Eventually, I came to the
conclusion that the question I was asking was moot, that my system of
classification was pointless. Such experiences underlined for me the
absurdity of reacting to people differently because of the color of their
skin, the shape of their nose, etc.

One day I mentioned these thoughts to a Tamil scholar. He chuckled, "Yes,
we Tamils are neither black nor white. We are a third race."

The most commonly-held scholarly concept of the origin of the Tamils is
that they migrated overland from around the Mediterranean--which would
provide yet another explanation for the large number of Tamils who 'look
European.' According to this theory, these settlers joined the Negroid
peoples who were already settled on the sub-continent.”


>Schedules tribes are a different matter but then they are historically not
>mainstream Dravidians.


There are no absolute clear cuts with respect to Tribals and Castes in
India. What is a Tribal today can and will be a Caste tomorrow and history
is full of such references. There are many ST groups who are no different
that what you term as ‘mainstream Dravidians’

Regards
Raveen