The Origins of Dravidians
Dr K. Loganathan, 25-8-12
Clyde’s study and the postulate that the Proto Dravidians originated in the Sub Saharan area about 10k years ago when it was a fertile place, stands in conflict with that in Tamil literature that mentions the origin of Tamils in Kumari , a submerged island mass. Both views have their merits for that of Clyde’s view fits with the generally accepted view that the whole of mankind in fact originated in Africa and that about 70k years ago they started streaming out from East Africa into Asia Europe and so forth. However in support of the Tamil view we have Sumerian itself being called Kumari suggesting that the Sumerians just before they came to Sumeria around 4000 BC or so perhaps lived in Kumari but the location of which is uncertain. Now if Kumari is the Sumerian term for the Sub Saharan area then problem is solved. But is it? Can the picture of the landmass that is called the Kumari fit in with the Sub Saharan area?
So towards this problem I am embarking a new study the basic points of which are listed below.
1.
The naming of Flora and Fauna is one of the most basic linguistic activities. Now considering that it is pnly around 40k years ago that human beings as such became capable of symbolic behaviour and in South Africa( where still exists the Click language, the world’s most primitive language) we can say the human language as such came into being perhaps around 40k years ago but in a very matured form with syntactic features around 10-20 k years ago. Perhaps from some primitive African languages, it was perhaps around 10k years ago that an Archaic Dravidian language came into being which split into SumeruTamil Elamite and so forth around 5k years ago. It is fortunate for us that the Sumerians invented the cuneiform script and which has been deciphered quite successfully thereby becoming the world’s earliest language to be written down. This is like a fossil where looking inti\o the semantics of some basic words we can get a picture of the kind of landmass they occupied before they came to Sumeria with their advanced concepts of agriculture animal husbandry and so forth. Thus a study of the primitive terms for the flora and fauna may tell us something about the place of origin of Dravidians after they pushed out of Africa and prior to their landing in Sumeria Elam and perhaps also Indus.
2,
Now I find in this connection a point in favor of the Sub Saharan Thesis in the name of Sumerian ‘anse-pirig’ which I suspect is a name for Zebra. The term means ‘fast-moving(anse< Ta, asaa, asey: to move), striped (piri) creature This name is still retained in Tamil as varik kutirai where vari< piri and Kutirai replaces Anse but which is retained in Sk as asva. In Suruppak’s NeRi (c. 3000 BC) we have the ‘dur’ for horse and which is the root form of Ta, turakam meaning also a fast moving creature, Now as far as I know Zebra remains a creature peculiar to Africa and we cannot rule out their presence on the Sub Saharan area about 10k years ago.
3.
However there is problem also related to the same root. Now while lion was called ‘ur’ in Sumerian meaning also ‘dog’ and also ur-mah i.e big dog. the tiger was called ‘pirig’ as I have pointed from citing some lines in Kes Temple Hymn, specially the fifth Hymn. It is pirig> piri> viri> vari: stripes where even now the tiger is called varip puli etc, a term quite widespread in the Dravidian family of languages. Now we have seen that the Tiger also gets represented in many seals of the Indus where it has archetypal significance, something that persists to this day. Now the problem is and if I am not mistaken Tigers are NOT common at all to Africa though leopards panthers and so forth are. Tigers are essentially Asian where they are found quite widely in India including the South and SEAsian countries. Now how can the Tiger become so important in the religious iconography unless the people are quite familiar with it?
Now if tigers were not present in the Sub Saharan area, how can we affirm the Sub Saharan origins of the Dravidian folks even if this view agrees with the general Out of Africa Theory of the drift and spread of mankind?
This view seems to support the Kumari Thesis and which may be a landmass between East Africa and India and where both the zebras and tigers roamed along with many other creatures including of course the elephants, This landmass also may be that which was submerged in the Flood, a legend so widely present in ancient Tamil literature as also in Sumeria. I don’t think the Sub Saharan area has any association with floods
4.
The analysis of just a few words as above is certainly in adequate to come to any definite conclusions. But since the formation of fundamental words are related to flora and fauna, perhaps a more extensive and systematic analysis of the names pertaining to the plants and animals may actually tell us a lot about the place of origins of the Dravidian folks. In order to solve the problem of the origins of the Sumerians and hence the Dravidians, an in depth study of Sumerian language may help us immensely