Dravidian peoples
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| approx. 217 million speakers | |
| Languages | |
| Dravidian languages | |
| Religion | |
| predominantly Hinduism, and other Jainism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity. |
Dravidians are native speakers of any of the Dravidian languages. There are around 200 million native speakers of Dravidian languages. They form the majority of the population of South India. Dravidian-speaking people are natively found in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan,Nepal, Maldives, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
Historically the word "drāviḍa" is used to denote the geographical region of South India, and was devoid of any ethnic or linguistic identity. In Prakrit, words such as "Damela", "Dameda", "Dhamila" and "Damila" evolved from "Tamila" could have been used to denote an ethnic identity.
Tamil has a literary tradition dating back to the 3rd century BCE. The third century BCE onwards saw the development of large Dravidian political states: Chola dynasty, Pandyan dynasty, Chera Dynasty and a number of smaller states. The Satavahana dynasty, Rashtrakuta dynasty, Western Chalukya Empire, Kakatiya dynasty, Hoysala Empire, the Vijayanagara Empire and the Mysore kingdom were established by the Dravidian people.
The Chola Empire was one of the biggest maritime empires in medieval India, stretching from Southern India to Southeast Asia including Philippines, Malaysia, Southern Thailand and Indonesia. Medieval Tamil guilds and trading organizations like the "Ayyavole and Manigramam" played an important role in the Southeast Asia trade. Traders and religious leaders travelled to Southeast Asia and played an important role in the cultural Indianisation of the region. Locally developed scripts such as Grantha and Pallava script induced the development of many native scripts such as Khmer, Javanese Kawi script, Baybayin, and Thai.
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