Dravidians

Dravidians is a name given to a large group of the non-Aryan races of Southern India, including those speaking Tamil, Telugu, Canarese, Malayalim, Toda, Gond, and six other tongues of minor importance—in all some 20,000,000 of people. These languages are all distinguished by having a rational and an irrational gender in nouns, which in the verbs also are indicated by pronominal suffixes. Thus 'they did it' is different in Tamil, according as the nominative is rational or irrational. The grammatical relations are generally expressed by pronominal suffixes. Rask did much to establish the Dravidian group; the second edition of Bishop Caldwell's great work, Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages (1875; the 1st ed. having appeared in 1856), is the standard authority. See INDIA.