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The Dravidian languages are a language family spoken mainly in southern India and parts of eastern and central India as well as in northeastern Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and overseas in other countries such as Malaysia and Singapore. The Dravidian languages with the most speakers are Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam. There are also small groups of Dravidian-speaking scheduled tribes, who live beyond the mainstream communities, such as the Kurukh and Gond tribes. It is often considered that Dravidian languages are native to India.〔Ancient India: A History of the Indian Sub-Continent from C. 7000 BC to AD 1200, by Burjor Avari, url=(), Routledge〕 Epigraphically the Dravidian languages have been attested since the 2nd century BCE. Only two Dravidian languages are exclusively spoken outside India: Brahui in Pakistan and Dhangar, a dialect of Kurukh, in Nepal. Dravidian names of places along the Arabian Sea coast and the Dravidian grammatical influence such as clusivity in the Indo-Aryan languages namely Marathi, Konkani, Gujarati, Marwari and Sindhi languages suggest that Dravidian languages were once spoken more widely across the Indian subcontinent.〔Edwin Bryant, Laurie L. Patton (2005), The Indo-Aryan controversy: evidence and inference in Indian history, p. 254〕 ==Etymology== Alexander D. Campbell first suggested the existence of a Dravidian language family in 1816 in his ''Grammar of the Teloogoo Language'',〔Alexander Duncan Campbell (1816) (''A Grammar of the Teloogoo Language'' ), ''commonly termed the Gentoo, peculiar to the Hindoos inhabiting the north eastern provinces of the Indian peninsula'', College of Fort St. George Press, Madras 〕 in which he and Francis W. Ellis argued that Tamil and Telugu descended from a common, non-Indo-European ancestor. In 1856 Robert Caldwell published his ''Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages'',〔Robert Caldwell (1856) (''A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages'' ), Williams and Norgate, London 〕 which considerably expanded the Dravidian umbrella and established Dravidian as one of the major language-groups of the world. Caldwell coined the term "Dravidian" for this family of languages, based on the usage of the Sanskrit word ' in the work ''Tantravārttika'' by . In his own words, Caldwell says, The 1961 publication of the ''(Dravidian etymological dictionary )'' by T. Burrow and M. B. Emeneau proved a notable event in the study of Dravidian linguistics. As for the origin of the Sanskrit word ' itself, researchers have proposed various theories. Basically the theories deal with the direction of derivation between ' and '. There is no definite philological and linguistic basis for asserting unilaterally that the name ''(Dravida )'' also forms the origin of the word ''Tamil'' (Dravida → Dramila → Tamizha or Tamil). Kamil Zvelebil cites the forms such as ''dramila'' (in 's Sanskrit work ''Avanisundarīkathā'') ' (found in the Sri Lankan (Ceylonese) chronicle ''Mahavamsa'') and then goes on to say, "The forms ''damiḷa''/''damila'' almost certainly provide a connection of ' " and "... ' < ' ...whereby the further development might have been *' > *' > '- / ''damila''- and further, with the intrusive, 'hypercorrect' (or perhaps analogical) -''r''-, into '. The -''m''-/-''v''- alternation is a common enough phenomenon in Dravidian phonology" Zvelebil in his earlier treatise states, "It is obvious that the Sanskrit ', Pali ''damila'', ' and Prakrit ' are all etymologically connected with '" and further remarks "The ''r'' in ' → ' is a hypercorrect insertion, cf. an analogical case of DED 1033 Ta. ''kamuku'', Tu. ''kangu'' "areca nut": Skt. ''kramu(ka)''." Further, another Dravidian linguist Bhadriraju Krishnamurti in his book ''Dravidian Languages'' states, Based on what Krishnamurti states (referring to a scholarly paper published in the ''International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics''), the Sanskrit word ' itself is later than ' since the dates for the forms with -r- are centuries later than the dates for the forms without -r- (', '-, ''damela''- etc.). The ''Monier-Williams Sanskrit Dictionary'' lists for the Sanskrit word ''(unicode:draviḍa)'' a meaning of "collective Name for 5 peoples, viz. the (unicode:Āndhras, Karṇāṭakas, Gurjaras, Tailaṅgas,) and (unicode:Mahārāṣṭras)".〔(Sanskrit, Tamil and Pahlavi Dictionaries ) 〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Dravidian languages」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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