Kinship systems

[V.C.Vijayaraghavan]

----- Original Message -----
From: "N. Ganesan" <naga_ganesan at HOTMAIL.COM>
To: <INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK>
Sent: Friday, October 13, 2000 2:34 PM
Subject: Re: Kinship systems


> To know whether Gonds are Dravidians or not,
> I suggest a starting point. In Sanskrit, DraviDa/dramiDa
> is from "thamizh". It was Walter Elliot, a British civil
> servant, who first noted the genetic relationship of the language
> of Gonds with that Dravidian languages like Telugu, etc.,
> This happened several years even before Caldwell.
>
> Walter Elliot, Observations on the Language of the
> Gonds and the identity of many of its terms with
> Telugu, Tamil and Canarese, 1847, Jl. of the Asiatic
> Society of Bengal.
>
> Regards,
> N. Ganesan

Many of the Gond language may have many similarities with Tamil or Kannada,
but it does not say about how Gonds view themselves nor does it say anything
about Gonds themselves

You are making a massive mistake by confusing language or more to the point
a "language family" - a linguistic construction- with a human community.
> From an empirical point, words are different from persons. They are
different categories. From an empirical view, the languages and language
groups are different from ethnicities, nationalities and other human
communities. You have to look at the latter on their own terms and not as an
extension of language or rather language groups