Dravidianists Take
Note: Dravidian Invasion Theory Gathering force
Shrikant G.
Talageri
“Dravidianism” is the Breaking
India Force which seeks to break/divide India on the grounds of Aryan-vs.-Dravidian.
There are admittedly also a small number of “Aryanists” at the opposite end of
the spectrum: those who insist the Dravidian languages are also descended from
Sanskrit. But the core belief at the center of Dravidianist ideology is that the
Dravidian languages were native to India (this part of it is true) but also
that the “Aryan” (IE) languages (in the remote past, over 3500 years ago)
entered a Dravidian India as the languages of invaders (this part of it is not
true, and is based on pure invented theory, and has been disproved in detail by
many writers, of which, need I point out, I am one).
But the seeds of a Dravidian Invasion
Theory had also been planted long ago, and seem to be slowly gathering speed in
recent times. Till now, the claim was that the Dravidian languages are related
to the extinct Elamite language and in fact originated in the Elamite area
(southwestern Iran and southern Iraq). I have already dealt with this baseless
theory in many articles:
https://talageri.blogspot.com/2025/08/the-alleged-elamite-dravidian.html
https://talageri.blogspot.com/2024/12/the-dravidian-invasionmigration-theory.html
The DIT (“Dravidian Invasion
Theory”) supporters who are also AIT supporters generally place the “Dravidian Invasion/Immigration”
before the “Aryan Invasion”, thereby still making the “Aryans” invaders into
a “Dravidian” India. But some of them, opponents of the AIT, actually bring the
Dravidian languages (at least as immigrants, if not invaders) into
an already “Aryan” India. Since it is not clear which languages, according to
these particular Dravidian invasionists, were spoken in South India before the
arrival of these “Dravidians”, it is not clear who (in terms of
language) are the people of South India who were allegedly invaded (or
linguistically supplanted) by the invading Dravidians, it is not clear if these
invaders invaded “Aryans” or the speakers of some other unspecified language
family.
But now, it looks as if the
Dravidian invaders did not just come from comparatively closer
Iran-Iraq: they came all the way from Africa (Sudan-Uganda, to be precise), and
Elam in Iran-Iraq was just a temporary encampment on the way:
https://x.com/NeilHD108
https://x.com/NeilHD108/status/1877204173139165641
“But Dravidian isn't having evidences of BEING LOCAL or even
Asian origin, it came from Ilam area in southern Iran & even came further
ahead from African Sudan-Uganda, entered south India from Kachh before
splitting it in many branch, it is having links with African & Uralic group
9:32 AM · Jan 9, 2025
So this Dravidian invasion took
place long, long ago, at some time after 10000 BCE!
So did the Aryans invade the
Dravidians or did the Dravidians invade the Aryans? Neither of the two apparently,
although both did invade (or immigrate into) India (shrewdly avoiding contacts
with each other): though still no details about the earlier pre-Dravidian
languages of South India!
https://x.com/NeilHD108
“Steppe origin of Aryans is true, the migration did happen.
But none of R1aZ93 downstream lineages brought Indo-Aryan languages to India.
There was an earlier wave of R1a migration, long before ghaggar stopped
receiving its glacier-fed waters around 6k BCE”
1:27 PM ·
Nov 1, 2025
“And for Dravidian. No evidence of its presence either in
IVC or deep south. In SriLanka you get pre Buddhist Brahmi, you find IA
Sinhalese Prakrit in all Brahmi, but none in Tamil. If Dravidian already there,
it should’ve reached island long before IA did”
1:38 PM ·
Nov 1, 2025
The linguistic evidence for all this African claptrap:
https://x.com/NeilHD108
https://x.com/NeilHD108/status/1863241831988994192
“Here's
one interesting relationship between Tamil and Elamite (almost nothing) vs
Dravidian Branches and Central African languages (distantly related) So,
Dravidian is very less likely originated from Iran, Iran was just a junction
point from its root travel from Sudan Africa”
8:50 PM · Dec
1, 2024
And he provides the following “genetic” charts (I neither
know nor care for the source) to prove his linguistic claim:
8:50 PM · Dec
1, 2024
Note the disclaimers within the charts themselves!: How do they
show that “Dravidian Branches and Central African languages”
are “distantly related”, though they do indeed
specifically state that “Tamil and Elamite are not related”?
But, on the basis of this, he confidently asserts that the Dravidian
languages came into India from outside (and later, so did the “Aryan”/IE
ones), though they did not “invade” one the other.
What is this “distant relationship”? Here, just for starters (I would
welcome a more detailed analysis by anyone else showing this “distant
relationship”), a look at Telugu and Mende numbers 1-100 from
my article on numbers and numerals:
Telugu (Dravidian):
1-10: okaṭi, reṇḍu, mūḍu,
nālugu, ayidu, āru, ēḍu, enimidi, tommidi,
padi
11-19: padakoṇḍu, panneṇḍu,
padamūḍu, padanālugu, padihēni, padahāru, padihēḍu,
paddenimidi, pandommidi
tens 20-100: iruvai, muppai,
nalubhai, yābhai, aravai, ḍebbhai, enabhai, tombhai,
vandala
Other
numbers: tens+unit. Thus 21: iruvai okaṭi, 99: tombhai tommidi
Mende (NigerCongo):
1-10: yira, fere, sawa,
nani, lolu, woita, wofela, wayakpa,
tau, pu
11-19: pu-mahũ-yira (10+mahũ+1)
etc.
20, 40, 60, 80, 100: nu-yira-gboyongo,
nu-fere-gboyongo, nu-sawa-gboyongo, nu-nani-gboyongo, nu-lolu-gboyongo
Other numbers: vigesimal + 1-19.
Thus:
21:
nu-yira-gboyongo mahũ yira (20+mahũ+1), 99: nu-nani-gboyongo
mahũ pu-mahũ-tau (80+mahũ+19).
Is
there any connection between these two: and if not in respect of numbers, then
in respect of any other aspect of language?
I
think someone should put a full-stop to this DIT rubbish, which is even
more ridiculous than the AIT (since in the cae of the AIT we do at
least have undeniably related languages far outside India),
unless more credible linguistic evidence can be produced.
I
would request Koenraad Elst to clarify the matter, since he is an opponent of
the AIT, but is he also a supporter of the DIT? His reply to the above would
seem to indicate this:
https://x.com/ElstKoenraad/status/1863226862580666645
“The Dravidian Immigration Theory had
already been theorized decades ago (Elamite origin),& now genetics points
the same way: from W Iran, where Elam was to come up, 8-6000y ago. Can also be
reconciled w/ the Heggarty paper; Manu's bringing IE from there.”
7:51 PM · Dec
1, 2024
And in reply to the following from https://x.com/NeilHD108
“Dravidian does preserve elements of African languages
from Sahel belt as demonstrated by Bernard Sergent. It's presence as a single
language is late to mainland India and it never reached IA heartland in the
north, it moved Deccan and split into branches”.
1:48 PM · Nov
1, 2025
Koenraad replies:
https://x.com/ElstKoenraad
https://x.com/ElstKoenraad/status/1984612094050754870
“Thanks
for this reference. I reported on Sergent's hypothesis in my book *Update on
the Aryan Invasion Debate* (1999), but have since not followed up on it. At the
time I doubted it, as Sergent included even languages from Senegal. But if they
could reach India, why not Senegal?”
6:52
PM · Nov
1, 2025
Who
are these people who “could reach India”, and on what basis is this
being concluded or even speculated?
These
matters should not be left hanging inconclusively in the air. They should be
thrashed out – if there is indeed anything to be thrashed out! – or else nipped
in the bud.
APPENDIX ADDED 2 November 2025 night:
I put up this article today morning (2 November 2025). The following comment
was given by a reader named Rahul: “There
are very ancient remains of pre-Dravidian language substrate in Dravidian
itself as per recent study. Guliga a deity worshipped by locals in coastal
regions in south India to this day is very ancient and likely adopted from
these ancient people.”
I replied: “This kind of talking in the
air is absolutely meaningless. Which "pre-Dravidian language", and
when did all this happen, and what is the evidence for it?”
His reply: “The remnants of very
ancient language related to population of Aborginal remnants in South Asia,
elemental god derived from common Australian Guli(hear). The idea is that
languages die out every 5000 years and new languages replace them but the
presence of additional deep substratum in Dravidian shows that some words could
survive and live forever. This could also be case for names of Vedic dieties
especially names of elemental gods like for example fire (Agni) could be very
ancient more than Vedic language itself.”
And he gave the URL of the following article by Václav Blažek:
https://www.academia.edu/44051940/Australian_Substratum_in_Dravidian_Mother_Tongue_XI_2006
To this I replied: “Thank you for that paper. It is fascinating,
both as an example of deep knowledge (on the part of Václav Blažek) as well as
the general tendency in western academia to go berserk in amassing and
overloading large amounts of data (not always correct or genuine, and not
always following the strict phonetic correspondences and rules they demand from
others) in order to prove their points. But it does not have any relevance to
the present subject. I have just now come home (it is night) but I will add an
appendix to my present article some time tomorrow to deal with this (Václav
Blažek's) article.”
However, I am adding the appendix today night itself.
So here is my assessment of the
irrelevance of Václav Blažek's article to
the subject of my present article (on the DIT).
But first, in passing, a word on the
following in the above comment: “This could also be case for names of Vedic
dieties especially names of elemental gods like for example fire (Agni) could
be very ancient more than Vedic language itself.” Apart from the
fact that this is totally unconnected with the subject of the DIT, Agni
cannot be a substrate word in the Vedic language: it has cognates in other IE
languages (e.g. Latin ignis, Lithuanian ugnis, Slavic ogni,
etc.).
But, coming back to Blažek's article. It has
no relation at all to the question of any Dravidian invasion-of/immigration-into
India from either Elam or Africa:
1. Blažek starts out by referring to the
different studies linking Dravidian languages variously with Altaic,
Uralic, Sumerian, Elamite, and Kartvelian/Caucasian
(Georgian, etc.), and even Indo-European. He
also then adds Afro-Asiatic (which includes Semitic, Chadic,
etc.), He only discounts other studies connecting Dravidian with Wolof
(a Niger-Congo language of Africa) and Japanese. Almost
all these languages are unrelated to each other!
Then he refers to various different studies
linking Australian languages with Austronesian (Malay, Hawaiian,
etc), Austro-Asiatic (Munda, Khmer, Vietnamese,
etc), Papuan, Andamanese, and along with Dravidian, also (sub-Saharan)
African, Indo-European, Finno-Ugrian and Amerindian!
Clearly, the world of interfamilial studies
linking different families to each other is a free-for-all world of speculation
in which the sky is the limit!
2. Blažek tells us that the date of arrival
of the Australian languages in Australia, based on human artifacts in
Australia, goes back to anywhere between 40,000 to 62000 years ago!
Surely, this time-frame cannot be made to fit in with any accepted date or
time-frame for any “arrival” of Dravidian languages into a proto-Australian-speaking
South India!
Even if we accept that even after the
main body of proto-Australian speakers (over 40000 years ago) had
already passed out of India and into Australia, residual
proto-Australian speakers still remained in South India as
“natives” who were invaded by Dravidian invaders and
immigrants somewhere in the last less-than-10000
years (at the maximum estimate), is it rational to postulate that words present
in the Australian languages of Australia (which
have been there since over 40000 years) were present in the alleged
residual Australian languages in South
India a few thousand years ago?
3. It is interesting that Blažek seems to cite
speculative studies identifying Dravidian singular and plural first
and second person personal pronouns with Australian ones as evidence
that the Dravidian languages absorbed these Australian personal
pronouns as “substratal” words in South India.
In my articles explaining the linguistic case
to Indians who deny the existence of an Indo-European language
family, I have pointed out:
“But there are
classes of words which are not easily borrowed.
Personal pronouns are one such class. Compare the personal pronouns in the
various Indo-European languages: the nominative plurals in Sanskrit vay-,
yūy-, te, English we, you, they, and Avestan vae, yūz,
dī, or the accusative forms of the same plural pronouns, Sanskrit nas,
vas, Avestan noh, voh,
Russian nas, vas, and the Latin
nominative forms nos, vos.
Or the Sanskrit
dative forms -me and -te with Avestan me and te, English me and thee, Greek me
and se (te in Doric Greek), Latin me and te, etc.
Again,
one word will illustrate the picture much more clearly: Sanskrit tu-, Hindi
tū, Marathi tū, Konkani tūȗva, Sindhi tuȗ, Punjabi tūȗ,
Gujarati tū, Bengali tui, Oriya tu, Assamese toi, Kashmiri
tsa, Romany (Gypsy) tu. In Iranian, we have Avestan tū, Persian
tu, Pashto tu, Kurdish tu, Baluchi tæw.
Here
are the words in the other distant branches: Latin tū, Italian
tu, Spanish tu, Portuguese tu, French tu, Romanian tu,
Catalan tu, Irish tu, Scots-Gaelic thu, Welsh ti,
Old English thū (later English thou), Icelandic thu,
German du, Norwegian du, Danish du, Swedish du, Old
Church Slavic ty, Russian ty, Belarusian ty, Polish ty,
Czech ty, Slovak ty, Ukrainian ty, Bulgarian ti,
Serbian ti, Croatian ti, Slovenian ti, Macedonian ti,
Bosnian ti, Armenian du, Albanian ti, Doric Greek tu,
Lithuanian tu, Latvian tu, Tocharian tu, Hittite ta /
du.
Compare
this flood of Indo-European words with the Dravidian equivalents: Tamil nī,
Malayalam nī, Toda nī, Kota nī, Brahui nī, Kurukh nīn,
Kannada nīnu, Kolami nīv, Naiki nīv, Telugu nīvu.
It is extremely unnatural for languages to borrow personal
pronouns from other languages. Therefore the completely sweeping nature of the
correspondences among different Indo-European languages is again proof of the
relationship between them.”
But here we have these linguists telling us
that Dravidians entering India a few thousand years ago abandoned
their own original Dravidian personal pronouns, and borrowed
as substrate words Australian personal pronouns
from the pre-Dravidian natives of South India – words
still found in the Australian languages in Australia after over
40000 years! Does this make the DIT a credible
proposition?
Or do these linguists mean that the Dravidian languages in South
India are actually descended from the Australian languages, which
is why they have the same personal pronouns: i.e. Dravidian
languages are an evolved form of the proto-Australian languages spoken
in South India since much more than 40000 years?
In that case, the DIT stands automatically dismissed.
5. After this, I need not reiterate that the article exhibits “the general tendency in western academia to
go berserk in amassing and overloading large amounts of data (not always
correct or genuine, and not always following the strict phonetic
correspondences and rules they demand from others) in order to prove their
points”. The amount of free-for-all speculation exhibited in the
article in order to try to connect Dravidian with Australian is
self-evident.
6. And after all this, as I wrote in my reply to the comment: “it does not have any relevance to the present
subject”.
No amount of alleged “Australian
substrates” in Dravidian can be treated as evidence that Dravidian
languages came from Elam in Iran-Iraq or from Central
Africa, or indeed from anywhere outside South India.
