Kinship systems

[N. Ganesan]

>"Language family" like Dravidian, Indo-European, Uralic, is only an
>analytic convenience and it should not be used to define ethnicities.

Esteemed Indologist,

Ethnic Dravidians are good examples of low-status folks for
millennia. In old Sanskrit texts they are usually refered
to as Shuudras. After an academic conference, with
David Shulman, I went to greet Andree Sjoberg, the one
who did work on Dravidology from 1960s. She told that
Gonds and other Drav. tribes being "underdogs" did not impose
their language on others. Among most Dravidians ethnicity
and language coincide.

The case of French and Bengali is different. Both got changed
to an IE language from their original mother tongue.
A good substratum of Munda and Dravidian exists in Bengali.
The academic consensus, close to 100%, is that Indo-Aryan
languages entered India after the decline of the Indus
cuture and spread by intrusions. And, India is not the
home of PIE.

Regards,
N. Ganesan

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