Who are the dravidians.

This is Work in progress.
Dravidian is a term wrongly attributed to a race or ethinicity of people of south india.
Dravida is a sanskrit term used to denote a geographical region south of the vindhyas, which is mainly th costal regions and the term itself denotes costal or seafarign people.
there have been a lot of distortions made about the racial and ethinic identities of these people during the british times to divide and rule the people of india.
on considerable research on would find that most of the caste and non caste people of south have migrated to the south from jot just north india but as far as iran and central asia over many centuries in various waves.

infact the word dravidian is a sanskrit/prakrit word. and it denotes a geographic region only. and it has notthing to do with tamil as a language except that tamil was a primary and oldest language in dravidian region for the past 2000 or more years. hence linguists used this term to denote languages of this region. which was later distorted with racial connotations.

The question is about vedic civilization and non vedic(like proto-shaivic) ones in india. vedic civilization expanded/assimilated to include all non vedic ones into it as early as late rig vedic times and sure ly by yejur veda times. so by 1000 bc most non vedic beliefs like proto-shaivaism in north and many other pagan and tribal beliefs had merged to form the hinduism of the vedantic times (aka post-vedic or vedantic or puranic or hindu culture, I will use these words interchangably). the prakrit speaking groups were wery much part of these. south got added to the post-vedic civilization's expantion around 3000 years ago and the first waves were that of the late vedic shiva worshiping aryans. this is clear from the fact that shaiva faith merged with the pagan/tribal faiths in the south first and then other vedic influence came later.
Tamil language as an independent identity never existed before 2000-2500 years ago. i.e., it evolved from proto-dravidian in the classical ages around 500 b.c to 1000 a.d and not in ancient or prehistoric ages when post-vedic civilization was started.

so tamil was very much part of post-vedic civilization except the language was different. hence has had a distinct flavour within the hindu civilization. which was the case not just about tamil but also various other prakritic languages like pali, abharahamsa etc in the heartland of vedic culture. i.e., in delhi, bihar, nepal, punjab etc.
similarly in persian which was in iran, the north eastern languages, SEasia and etc. which all got merged into the late/post-vedic or hindu civilization, but however had a distinct flavour due to the linguistic difference.

The proofs for these are present in our mythology and epics if we interpret them correctly in essence than take them literally and also from the fact that we hear the names of southers clans in them and also later stone edicts. examples are the aryan god murugan aka karthikeyan marrying a hill tribe of the south named valli as his second wife. similarly the myth of kumarikandam where the original tribes of south moved from a sunken island below india in the indian ocean connecting india with SEasia, australia, mauritius etc. The history of these cultural mergers into vedic fold was recorded as mythological stories rather than explicitly for reasons we dont know why (probably due to the hindu belief that one should never see the sources of rishis[rishimoolam] and rivers[nadimoolam] as it will al). Thus this period is also called puranic period or age of mythologies of india.

unfortunately all this has been politiced only recently to divide people and giving them seperate identities.

if we see the origins of Tamil, it surely did not come from sanskrit. as far as I have researched my hypothesis is that when the early prakrit speaking ppl came south from north they merged with some austro-asiatic(like the veddoids, andamanese and other hill tribes which still exist) speaking tribes in the south and this led to the evolution of tamil. the evolution of proto-tamil might have happened around 1500-500 bc and by 200 bc tamil had become a complete language but its grammer was codified only by 200 a.d by tolkappiar.

when I say "people from north merged with some austro-asiatic tribes" what I mean is that, tamil has had indo-aryan language influence right from its birth. but influence of vedic sanskrit(which is one of the indo-aryan languages and the primary one) was probably never there and classical sanskrit influenced tamil at later stages.
if u see the loan words from sanskrit(or one of the prakrits which all sound like sanskit mostly)in the earliest of tamil works, they are considerable in number.
so obviously when tamil was grown enuff to have litrary works it already had considerable influence.
more over the gramatical structure of classical tamil has considerable influence from indo-aryan. pali for sure had a great influence on tamil as pali was in srilanka atleast by ashokas times around 250 BC. and it surely would'nt have missed south indian region before going to srilanka. remember buddhism and jainism had its influence in south and tamil nadu as early as it had been. thiruvalluvar himself was a jain as many claim and talks about the adi bagavan which is the way jains call their god and their language was prakritic(a naturally evolved version of sanskrit and used by common folks and not the learneds). buddhism brought paali(another praktitic language in which buddhist writings were made) influence into tamil.
and all these happened much before or during the sangam(the word sangam is pali and a buddhist concept) age and during the regime of the earliest known pandyan kings. no tamil kings are known before them. and I bet the pandyas themselves were the first prakritic tribes from the north who merged with the austro-asiatic tribes of the south(probably originating from the submerged kumarikandam linking india with SEasia and australia by land) to create the tamil civilization with aryan and austro-asiatic influences.

the brahminical influence and classical sanskrit's influence could have come much later during the later sangam and bakthi movement times.

so with these we can say that tamil language took birth due to the merger or mixing of indo-aryan prakritic speaking people with austro-asiatic or some tribal language of the south.

Hence we see that it was only the language which was distinct formed from the merger of aryan and tribal influences but the people were very much from the north indian regions except the the tribes who migrated from further south. hence the term dravidian doesnot have a racial sense. at the max we can say that dravidians were of mixed ethinicity in their origin stages. but later we will see that more migrations from the north merged with the people of dravidian region and hence making them completely of post-vedic or hindu civilization. some examples of later migrants were the pallavas and cholas who came in only in the 1 millineum AD. these people had their origins from the pahalva,kamboja and other north western tribes of middle india.


I put some important links here which can be refered to understand the origins of various clans here.

an interesting article on spread of aryan/late vedic/shaivic hindu culture to south by michael danio

Tamil_people#History

early tamil history
kumari kandam, Agastya, Sangam , Pandya, Chera, Pallava, Chola

deccan south-central indian history
Chalukya, Rashtrakuta, Kalinga, Hoysala , Satavahana , Kadambas

origins and history of some south indian people or people of the dravida region. note that almost all of them have their origins in the northern parts of india.
Paravas , Nadar , Vanniyar , Vokkaliga , Padayatchi , reddi , reddiar , Mudaliar , nayak , Chettiar , Nair , Pillai , Velalar ...


To summarise, dravidian as a race is a modern invention of the 19th century especially by the missionaries.
Dravid is a sanskrit word(not southindian/dravidian word) which was mainly used to denote southern andra region and especially to seafaring people.

Dravidian ethinically is a subgenere of the main indian race I can say. They probably emerged from a mix of some prakrit speaking northern clans with austro-asiatic/veddoid tribes in the south at a very early time much before the vedics expanded from the Sindu-sarasvati region and hence have a distinct ethnic identity(also due to one lineage from another race like veddoid or austro-asiatic) from the mainstream vedic aryans or their counterparts in the north.
I cite many stories from south indian mythology which depict this. dravidians probably evolved from 3 or more major waves of migrations from the north and mixing with minor tribes of south.

here is a list.

1. veddoid/austro-asiatic tribes from sunken indian ocean islands(srilanka, lakshwadweep, maldives, marutius region or SEasian region?) move to a virtually empty south india. (kumari kandam myth)
probable timeline - 4000-3000 b.c
Region - deep southern tip of TN.

2. by this time there are alredy some northindian (prakrit speaking) clans which migrated to deccan regions and may be further south. (early yadu clans/proto-shaiva cults)
region - deccan northern T.N

3. first major wave of migration from the north was that of soem proto-shaivic aryan clans who assimilated soem hill tribes(probably ones who migrated from indian ocean) - murugan-valli mythology. starting of proto-dravidian language,culture, ethinicity.
probable timeline 3000 B.C
Region - deep south TN region.
(again yadu/anu clans)

4. second major waves of non vedic(asura) aryan clans (parashuram mythology) (anu/druhyu clans)
and minor vedic aryan(vamana myth) both to konkan/malabar region.
probable timeline 3000-2000 B.C (puru clan)
region - konkan/malabar - west coast.

5. Major vedic aryan waves happens a little later.
( rama/ravana/Agasthiya myths)
(ikshvaku/turuvasa/puru clans)
probable time line - after 2000 B.C - 500 b.c.
region - deccan till deep south. major assimilation.
evolution of hinduism from vedic and other sects of india.
tamil already developed from proto dravidian.

6. spread of non vedic cults like jainism and buddhism.
(recorded history)
(clans already assimilated into one common race and many 100s of minor clans/jatis)
500 b.c. to c.e.
tamil reaches maturity and becomes classic. other dravidian languages start evolving.

7. next major vedicization/sanskritization waves of the south by brahminic migrations.
(recorded history/brahminic migrations to various southern kingdoms on the invite of hindu kings)
all mixed clans already.
start of revival hinduism.
200-b.c. to 1000 a.d.
other major dravidian languages mature due to sanskritization.

my pointers are just a starting and a rough idea of my thought and needs a lot of refinement.