Dravidian language link with the Indus Valley civilisation

• According to a research paper, the Harappan language has its roots in the proto-Dravidian language, which is the ancestral language of all the modern Dravidian languages.
• The paper titled, ‘Ancestral Dravidian languages in Indus Civilization: ultraconserved Dravidian tooth-word reveals deep linguistic ancestry and supports genetics’ has been published in the peer-reviewed journal of the Springer Nature Group.
• The Indus Valley Civilisation is the earliest known urban culture of the Indian subcontinent.

Key findings:

• The Indus Valley script is yet to be deciphered.
• There were trade relations between the Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC) and the Persian Gulf as well as Mesopotamia.
• Therefore, it was searched through the near-Eastern texts to locate foreign words with roots in the Indus Valley.
• The Akkadian (language spoken in ancient Mesopotamia) word for elephant- ‘pīru’/‘pīri’ and their variations, as well as the old Persian word for ivory, ‘pīrus’ possibly had roots in the Indus Valley.
• Since people of ancient Persia had functioned as intermediaries between Mesopotamia and IVC traders, while exporting IVC’s ivory, they had arguably spread the Indic word to Mesopotamia
• The speakers of ancestral Dravidian languages had a greater historic presence in northern India including the Indus Valley region from where they migrated.
• The spread of proto-Dravidian languages from the areas of northwestern India to southern India.
• After the decline of the Indus Valley Civilisation, groups from north and northwestern India speaking a proto-Dravidian language moved south and east.

Dravidian languages:

• Dravidian languages, the family of some 70 languages spoken primarily in South Asia.
• The Dravidian languages are spoken by more than 215 million people in India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

The Dravidian languages are divided into

South group:

• It consists of seven languages viz., Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, Tulu, Kodagu, Toda and Kota.

Central group:

• It consists of eleven languages i.e, Gondi, Khond, Kui, Manda, Parji, Gadaba, Kolami, Pengo, Naiki, Kuvi, and Telugu. Out of these, only Telugu became a civilized language and the rest remained tribal languages.

North groups:

• It consists of three languages i.e. Brahui, Malto and Kudukh.
• Brahui is spoken in Baluchistan, Malto spoken in Bengal and Orissa, while Kurukh is spoken in Bengal, Orissa, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh.

The major languages of the Dravidian group that is recognized by Indian constitution:

1. Telugu (numerically the biggest of the Dravidian languages)
2. Tamil (the oldest and purest language of the Dravidian family)
3. Kannada
4. Malayalam (smallest and the youngest of the Dravidian family)