Dravidian studies

Dravidian language hypothesis

The recognition that the Dravidian languages were a phylogenetic unit separate from Indo-European dates to 1816, and was presented by F. W. Ellis, Collector of Madras, at the College of Fort St. George.

Nineteenth-century experts

The 19th century contributors to the field of Dravidology were:

Twentieth-century experts

The noted Dravidologists from the twentieth century are:

Contemporary programs

The Dravidian University at Kuppam, Andhra Pradesh has created Chairs in the names of Western and Dravidian scholars to encourage research in individual Dravidian languages as well as comparative Dravidian studies:

• Bishop Caldwell's Chair for Dravidian Studies
• C. P. Brown's Chair for Telugu Studies
• Kittel Chair for Kannada Studies
• Constantine Beschi Chair for Tamil Studies
• Gundert Chair for Malayalam Studies.

Literature

• Robert Caldwell, Comparative Grammar of Dravidian Languages (1856; revised edition 1875).
• Bhadriraju Krishnamurti (2003). The Dravidian Languages. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521771110.
• Thomas R. Trautmann, Languages and nations: the Dravidian proof in colonial Madras, University of California Press, 2006, ISBN University of California Press, 2006.
• Murray Barnson Emeneau (1994). Dravidian Studies: Selected Papers. Motilal Banarsidass. ISBN 8120808584.

Film

The 2021 Indian documentary film Dreaming of Words traces the life and work of Njattyela Sreedharan, a fourth standard drop-out, who compiled a multilingual dictionary connecting four major Dravidian languages Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, and Tamil. Travelling across four states and doing extensive research, he spent twenty five years making this multilingual dictionary.