Anthropological type of the Tamils – are Dravidians the immediate genetic descendants of African immigrants?

The notion of Dravidian, it’s been already said, is defined linguistically: the Dravidian linguistic family occupies the major part of the Deccan peninsula, it unites several languages that are strongly correlated through their different features and forms a group that is clearly differentiated from other known linguistic families.

Anthropologists determined in the 19th century that this linguistic family coincides largely with a physical type, characterized by a very dark skin, a medium height (1.62 meters among the Tamils) and features that are closer to the Europeans than to the Veddah group: thinner nose, non-eversion of the lips, curly hair, dolichocephalic head but of a less pronounced degree, chin and forehead are not receding. This type is called Melano-Indian by Henri Vallois, who makes it one of the four great races of India.

Classical anthropology hesitated on their affiliation: if one goes by skin-color, the Melano-Indians are affiliated to the Blacks—this was the opinion, writes Vallois, of the majority of the authors—; if one sticks to other characteristics, they become closer, on the contrary, to the Europeans. “If it were not for their skin-color, [<p.45-46>] they could be taken for Europeans.” And more precisely, they belong, through all their traits, except color, to the vast Mediterranean group.

The coincidence between speakers of the Dravidian languages and the Melano-Indian type is ample, but it is no way perfect. The Melano-Indians form the basis of the Deccan population, but in the Gangetic plain and the north of the Deccan, millions of speakers of the Indo-Aryan languages are of the same type, whereas the Brahui, speakers of a Dravidian language of Pakistan, are distinguishable neither physically nor genetically from their Baluch, that is, Iranian neighbors. Finally, according to Vallois, “in two regions,” these Melano-Indians “are particularly pure”: on the one hand, in the Tamil country and, on the other hand, in “a large group that occupies the last foothills of the plateau up to the Gangetic plain: these are the Mundas and some other peoples. Now, the Mundas do not speak a Dravidian language but one with Far-Eastern affinities. It must be presumed that the earliest speakers of Munda languages were of the physical type seen among their Mon-Khmer linguistic cousins, that they were therefore of the ‘yellow’ race or, to use the anthropological terminology, mongoloids or xanthoderms. This speaks for the extent of population admixture.

It remains that the hypothesis that there may have been in the past a greater coincidence between Dravidian languages and Melano-Indian type carries weight: beyond the very large equivalence in the Deccan, it is known that the Dravidian languages retreated in the north before the Indo-Aryan languages: that is to say that the Melano-Indians who were of the Dravidian language two or three thousand years ago speak Indo-Aryan languages today. Inversely, the language and physical aspect of the Brahui is explicable through an opposite phenomenon: these Brahui have arrived in Pakistan during the Muslim epoch, towards the 13th century, and must have constituted an exclusively masculine military group that was relatively not numerous. They have taken women at their new location even while preserving their language—while persianizing their vocabulary with Iranian words—, and the properly Melano-Indian contribution ended up increasingly diluted in their intermarriages with the surrounding white populations. In both cases, it is easy to discern an earlier situation where, disregarding the Veddah substrate, the Deccan was a land that was both Dravidian from a linguistic point of view and Melano-Indian from an anthropological point of view. Thus there is a large coincidence between the two terms.

As we have seen, this Dravidian and Melano-Indian population has in fact been superimposed on an earlier veddhoid people with which it became mixed. Moreover, multivaried craniometric measurements [<p.46-47>] have revealed that the veddhoids, Dravidians (or, more exactly, Melano-Indians) and Mediterraneans are populations that are anthropologically very close, and represent three ‘waves’ of the same human ‘current’ issuing from Africa probably starting from the upper paleolithic. It has been emphasized how the prehistoric skulls of India and the neighboring countries to the north-west are often half-‘veddhoid’ or half-‘australoid’, depending on the authors, and half-‘dravidian’, which some interpret in terms of admixture, but which also bears testimony just as much to the affinity, the continuity of the two human layers under discussion. In turn, the succeeding human layer, that which brings into India the properly mediterranean type, in its variant labeled ‘indo-afghan’, is also their prolongation.

The Melano-Indians are thus ‘black Mediterraneans’. This can have three distinct explanations:

• either the original Homo sapiens sapiens population was dark, as is thought by many authors today, and in this case the white (leucoderm) and yellow (xanthoderm) ‘races’ result from depigmentation. In these conditions, one of two things is possible: either the Melano-Indians evidence a primitive state, still pigmented, of the mediterranean type, or instead, since all other Mediterraneans, in their numerous anthropological variants (called ibero-insular, atlanto-mediterranean, indo-afghan, south-oriental, saharan, nordic), are white, the Melano-Indians owe their color to a process of repigmentation in the tropical zone over the millennia;
• or the Melano-Indians/Dravidians, few in number on their arrival in India, have mixed with the previous, itself pigmented, veddhoid population, and it is this anthropological ‘substrate’ which is at the origin of their color.

Now, if we recall that the resemblances among Nubians, proto-dynastic Egyptians, Dravidians and what was formerly called “Hamites” appear henceforth through multivaried cranial measurements “as being very evident,” and that among the so-called “Hamites” (in reality of the kushitic languages, that is to say the linguistic family called semito-hamite), the Somalis and Galla are black-skinned, it is probable that the Dravidians have conserved their color on leaving Africa; their installation in the Indian tropical zone could have subsequently only confirmed and augmented this pigmentationhttp://www.svabhinava.org/aitvsoit/Sergent-AfroDravidian-frame.php

Traditional South Indian clothing potrayed here in an oil painting!!!

South Indian Thali (http://foodomania.com/south-indian-thali/)

South Indian Thali

Posted by Kavitha | Foodomania on August 22nd, 2013

A South Indian Thali is made up of a selection of various South Indian dishes.

There really is no “rule” as to what constitutes a Thali (read: Thaalee).

You’re just going to have to fill it up with whatever YOU think makes a complete meal! 

So what would constitute a full meal for you? A salad or hummus? 

Indians are known for having elaborate meals. We have 2 kinds of dry veggies, 1 veggie curry, 2 soupy curries, curd, fried dumplings & fryums, pickles and at least 1 type of sweet.

But there can be more. Like I said – no rule.

Here’s what I made for my “South Indian Thali” –

The dishes in this South Indian Thali are –

1. Rice – Cook any kind of rice you like the way you want. I love simplePonni white rice.
2. Sambar / Kulambu – A delicious soup-like dish made with lentils. There are so many types of Sambar that you can make. This happens to be my favorite. If you don’t want to make Sambar,  you can also make Vathal Kuzhambu.
3. Rasam – Rasam or Saaru is a South Indian soup, traditionally prepared using tamarind juice as a base, with the addition of tomato, and chili pepper, pepper, cumin and other spices as seasonings. {recipe coming soon}
4. Pumpkin Kootu – Kootu is a curry in which vegetables are cooked with lentils. They are liquidy. I have a recipe for Chayote Kootu on my site. Pumpkin Kootu is similar to that.
5. Potato Fry – The best part of Thaali (according to me!) is the potato fry!  I’ve seen this on almost every Thaali I’ve ever eaten. And it tastes amazing with rice! Get the recipe here.
6. Carrot Kosumari – Its a delicious Salad with a south Indian twist. Grated carrot, coconut line juice and a tadka! {recipe coming soon}
7. Medu Vadai – Deep Fried Goodieee! A lentil dumpling. Must -have! Recipe here.
8. Fried Papad – Appalam or Papad is very common in a south Indian meal. Of course, we can’t have deep fried snacks everyday. But once in a while, fried Papad is a wonderful addition to the meal. There’s no recipe. Buy the papad and deep fry!
9. Curd – Curd is plain yogurt. Curd Rice is as required to a south Indian as water is to people!  {How-to post on making curd at home coming soon}
10. Mango Pickle – A pickle adds a kick to the meal. I love the spicy mango avakkai pickle. But use what you have & like!
11. Akkaravadisal – “End every meal with a dessert and you’ll be happy!“. It is not always possible. But if you do decide to have a feast, why not make a sweet too? Akkaravadisal is a sweet made with cooked rice & lentils. {recipe coming soon}. You can make any south Indian sweetof your choice.

Take a large plate and arrange tiny cups on the edge of the plate. Fill each cup with these dishes and serve hot!

This is just to give you an idea of how the Thali is. You can make dishes that you like.

What would you make for your “Thali”? 

http://foodomania.com/south-indian-thali/

South Indian cuisine still retains many elements of the ancient Dravidian culture that flourished 4,500 years ago

Travelers to the Indian south are in for a glorious treat. They will not be eating tandoori chicken, lamb curry, nan or other standard fare, but exotic foods spiced with cinnamon, tamarind and pepper, or fragrant with coconut and curry leaves.

South Indian cuisine still retains many elements of the ancient Dravidian culture that flourished 4,500 years ago: steamed dumplings with coconut, jaggery (raw sugar) and cardamom in a rice wrapper; food served in banana leaves, or the ubiquitous spice blend kari podi, or curry powder, are all indigenous to this region. The geographic and cultural seclusion of the South Indian peninsula, separated from the north by the high Vindhyas, has left southern cuisine very ”Indian,” unaffected by outside influences.

It is represented by four distinct regional styles: Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Intriguing and diverse, these regional cuisines reflect the natural resources of each area, as well as the rich ethnic mixture of its people – Syrian Christians, Arab or Mogul Muslims, Jains or Sephardic Jews.

 

 

 

There are, however, a few unifying elements of southern cooking, like the use of rice as a staple, as well as certain varieties of squashes and greens, coconut, jaggery, peanuts and sesame seeds. Herbs and spices are a potent underpinning, including curry leaves (balmy herb), tamarind (sour pod), sour lime and spices such as mustard, ginger, turmeric, coriander, fenugreek, black pepper and the incendiary red Guntur chilies.

India’s wealth of regional cuisines has acquired new prominence in the last four or five years. Local cooking styles and specialties, once dismissed as ordinary, have come into favor, and native cooks, once considered unrefined, have become celebrities. As a result, there is a far greater variety of regional foods available to travelers in South India than was the case just a few years ago.

Vegetarian dishes, which originated in the Tanjore courts of Dravidian kings, are collectively known as South Indian vegetarian, or Tamil food. Throughout the south, dishes like sambar, kotto and koyamboo (spicy vegetable and lentil stews), kari or thovaran (warm vegetable salads), rasam (soup) and pachadi (yogurt salad) are popular.

The best eating places throughout India are hotel dining rooms, many of which offer authentic regional foods, often in grand settings reminiscent of a bygone age. The dining room at Lalitha Palace Hotel in Mysore, once a palace of the Maharajah of Mysore, serves a delicious vegetarian feast, a dozen dishes on a single platter. The food is mild and slightly sweet, in accord with the preferences of the people of Karnataka. ”We add more tomatoes, rather then spices, to enhance and accentuate the flavor of our local sweet tamarind,” said B. S. K. Rao, the hotel’s food and beverage manager.

South Indian vegetarian cooking also includes preparations like idli (steamed dumplings), dosa (lacy crepes), pesaruttu (mung bean pancakes) and vada (bean fritters), all made with sourdough batter of rice and/or bean. These light vegetarian protein foods, called tiffin, are popular snacks served with a chutney and a lentil sauce. Tiffin is served at any time of day – including breakfast – at snack bars.

Although tiffin are found throughout India, they originated here. A good spot for tiffin, under the palm and mango trees, is the open-air Woodlands Drive-In, on Cathedral Road in Madras. Other choices in Madras are Palimar in Menaka, and the Hotel Palmgrove.

Although all South Indians enjoy vegetarian delicacies, South India, contrary to the general belief, is not predominantly vegetarian. In fact, less than 15 percent of the South is Hindu Brahmin, of whom only 8 percent are strict vegetarians.

An extraordinary nonvegetarian cuisine, the Chettinadu cooking of Chettiyars (the prosperous business caste of Tamil Nadu), has only recently come into the limelight, having traditionally been served in obscure eateries called muniandi villa. Its distinguishing features are the use of black pepper and the preparation of savory meats with marinades and broths. ”Chettinadu food is mild because we use no red chilies, only black pepper and some very fragrant spices, such as saffron, mace, cashew nuts and rose petals,” explained G. Ramesh, manager of Kaaraikudi, a Chettinadu restaurant in Madras with splendid interiors brought in segments from Chettiyars’ 18th-century villas. Rain Tree Taj Connemara is another restaurant with a sumptuous period decor, this one recalling the vast dining room of a local villa, with carved wooden beams and colorful tiles. Chicken or crab Chettinad are among the favorites here. Turkey, rabbit, venison and organ meats like brain, kidney and liver are all used in this cuisine. One outstanding soup made with lamb shins, mutton paya, is generally enjoyed as a light supper accompanied by delicate rice noodles. Two particularly delicious specialties at Kaaraikudi are kozhi varuval (spicy fried chicken) and kola urundai (meat balls).

At Rain Tree, try the kozhi melagu (chicken rubbed with black pepper and tamarind) or karu vepellai yera (grilled jumbo prawns flavored with curry leaves).

South India is a coastal culture. Naturally, seafood plays an important role, unlike the inland north where lamb and chicken are common fare. Throughout the Kerala region, shrimp, ranging from tiny thumbnail size to jumbo tiger prawns, and fish, such as pomfret, shark, skate, catfish and salmon, are served lightly braised in herb-flavored sauces. Karimeen varathathu (fish fried with spices), meen patichthu (fish braised with spices) and konju chameen (spicy pan-roasted tiny shrimp) are exceptional creations. In Cochin, the spice port of the west coast, two restaurants offer outstanding fish specialties. At the Rice Boats restaurant of the Malabar Hotel, the karimeen pulichadu (fish in sour kokum fruit sauce) with Kerala red rice is visually stunning – ivory fish contrasting with brilliant red sauce studded with coconut chunks. And at the Taravadi restaurant in the Casino Hotel, freshly caught tiger prawns, smothered with roasted spices and grilled, are addictive.

Appam, a cross between a pancake and a crepe made with rice flour and palm sap, called toddy, is a Kerala specialty. It’s eaten for breakfast and is also traditional with fish. ”To experience Kerala you must eat our appam,” declared K. C. Joseph at Rice Boats, who must have swirled some hundred thousand appam in the pan in his 35 years as a chef. ”The secret is not in the cooking but in the batter – the toddy that controls it,” explained Mr. Joseph. A traditional Kerala breakfast, available everywhere in the region, includes appam and tamarind fish stew, meen pulichathu, or a coconut vegetable stew called avial.

When it comes to spicy food, Andhra Pradesh produces a type of chili that is the hottest in the world, Guntur chili. The Andhra region includes the city of Hyderabad, with its Mogul influences, as well as the Hindu vegetarian community. And the small town of Amaravati has its own very spicy and nonvegetarian cuisine. ”The food is spicy hot, but not tongue-scorching like Andhra vegetarian food,” explained Ravi Gopalakrishnan, general manager at the Amaravati restaurant in Madras. Its superb chicken Amaravati is chicken braised in red chilies, fenugreek, garlic and ginger, then pan roasted with curry leaves until crisp and crackling, and doused with lemon juice.

To try southern cooking in all its variations, Dakshin restaurant in the Park Sheraton in Madras offers a unique opportunity to try many of the dishes mentioned above, as its large menu includes foods of all the southern regions. The interior of the expansive restaurant resembles the residence of the Raja Guru (the royal high priest), lavish with ornate carved wooden beams, temple bells and glass and gold-leaf paintings.

Mouthwatering delicacies are offered on platters lined with banana leaves, the serving dishes that are replicas of 13th-century patterns called urli and adduku. Paramasivam Iyer, a celebrated chef of regal disposition, prepares specialties such as banana crepes or scallion dumplings in the dining room. Of the resurgence of regional food, Mr. Iyer said, ”This is the most wonderful thing that has happened to us Indians since independence.”

Most southern sweets are rice based and candylike, delicately flavored with saffron and cardamom. In Madras, anyone with a sweet tooth must visit the store called Grand Sweets and Snacks on Main Road downtown. About a dozen women in traditional costumes wait on customers and prepare sweets under the shady tamarind trees of the open-air shop. Try their badaam halwa (ground almonds and saffron), adirasam (a jaggery and cardamom-scented fried-rice dumpling) or mysorpak (chickpea-flour fudge) or jangery (saffron-flavored pretzels ).

One day this past summer, I stood in the intense heat of the courtyard, where shady trees fanned the stillness, heavy with the spices of these traditional sweets. Watching the women wrapped in lustrous saris prepare and serve these centuries-old delicacies, I was struck by the innocent insularity of South India, seemingly unaffected by the passage of time.http://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/21/travel/fare-of-the-country-south-india-s-regional-cuisines.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

http://www.pbs.org/hiddenindia/history/index.htm

The original historical peoples of Kerala are called Dravidians, from the language group to which they belong. Malayalam, the language of Kerala, is related to other south Indian tongues such as Tamil. This group is quite different from the languages of north India which belong to the Indo-European family. Several hundred years before the Common Era, peoples from the north entered Kerala and brought their religious system, Hinduism, with them. Today, the gods of the Hindu faith are the same throughout India, but the Dravidian people of Kerala retained their distinctive culture, elements of which remain to this day. One of these is the position of women, for unlike anywhere else, family lineage and inheritance passed through the women of a family and not men. Women always had high status, could control their own wealth, and even in pre-modern times women from elite families were often educated.

Ancient Man and His First Civilizations Indus Valley civilization Mohenjo-daro, Harappa and other cities. (Modern Pakistan, Which was a part of India until 1947)

Dravidians

 

Other Indians

 

Other Indians

 

Other Indians

 

 

Also included with this second (OOA) group were Albinos, who were probably motivated by a quest for relief from the heat and burning Sunshine of southern Africa – and relief from the torment heaped upon them by normal Africans. Even today, superstitious Blacks of southern Africa; maim and mutilate Albinos in the ignorant belief that their body parts process magical properties, which they use in rituals.

 

These are “Authentic” Albinos of the “Original” People of India – The “Dravidians”.

 

YES! ALL OF THESE PEOPLE, IN THEIR HEALTHY STATE, ARE ALL “BLACK” SKINNED!

JUST LIKE THE BLACK DRAVIDIANS ABOVE.

 

 

The Albino pictures above, are taken from the study by Andreas Deffner titled: White, too white A Portrait of Albinism in India.http://realhistoryww.com/world_history/ancient/Indus_Valley_India_1.htm

Native Dravidian religions

Native Dravidian religion, or more commonly Dravidian religion, refers to a broad range of deities and belief systems found inSouth India, South West India and some parts of East India. They differ from Brahminism and Puranic Hindusim in that they were either historically or are at present non-Agamic (which is not being granted the sanction of the Vedas). Scholars like Arumuka Navalar worked to subsume native deities in the Vedic pantheon. The Dravidian worship of village deities is recognised as a survival of the pre-Brahmanic Dravidian religion.[1] A large portion of these deities continue to be worshipped in the Village deities of Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka, and their subsequent influence in South-east Asia examples of which include the Mariamman temples in Singapore andVietnam. Worship of anthills, snakes and other forms of guardian deities and heroes are still worshiped in the Konkan coast,Maharashtra proper and a few other parts of India including North India which traces its origins to ancient Dravidian religion which has been influencing formation of mainstream Hinduism for thousands of years.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Dravidian_religion

  DRAVIDIAN YOGI ASCETICS WITH DREADLOCKS ;(like Rasta in Jamaica) CENTRAL INDIA    (courtesy of Project Guttenberg)

The principal Dravidian tribes are the Gonds, Khonds and Oraons. The Gonds were once dominant over the greater part of the Central Provinces, which was called Gondwana [71]after them. The above three names have in each case been given to the tribes by the Hindus. The following tribes are found in the Province:

Gond, Oraon or Kurukh, Khond, Kolām, Parja, Kamār. Tribal Castes: Bhatra, Halba, Dhoba. Doubtful: Kawar, Dhanwār.

The Gonds and Khonds call themselves Koi or Koitur, a word which seems to mean man or hillman. The Oraon tribe call themselves Kurukh, which has also been supposed to be connected with the Kolarian horo, man. The name Oraon, given to them by the Hindus, may mean farmservant, while Dhangar, an alternative name for the tribe, has certainly this signification.

There seems good reason to suppose that the Gonds and Khonds were originally one tribe divided through migration.72 The Kolāms are a small tribe of the Wardha Valley, whose dialect resembles those of the Gonds and Khonds. They may have split off from the parent tribe in southern India and come northwards separately. The Parjas appear to represent the earliest Gond settlers in Bastar, who were subjugated by later Gond and Rāj-Gond immigrants. The Halbas and Bhatras are mixed tribes or tribal castes, descended from the unions of Gonds and Hindus.http://www.shahamaasi.com/18.html

http://www.india-tourist-places.com/category/states-of-south-india/tamil-nadu/rameshwaram/

Rameshwaram – The Masterpiece Of Dravidian Architecture

 October 12th, 2011 |  Author: trvel-guru

Rameshwaram Jyotirlinga of Lord Shiva is situated on the peninsular tip Rameshwaram. It was Lord Rama who installed this Linga there, when he was on his way to attack Ravana he reached this place where he made a linga of sand and worshipped it. It was also believed that when Lord Rama was drinking water on the seashore there was a celestial proclamation – ‘You are drinking water without worshipping me’. Listening to this Lord Rama made a linga of sand and worshipped it and asked to be blessed so that he could vanquish Ravana. Lord Shiva blessed him accordingly. He also requested Lord Shiva to reside eternally here so that entire mankind should benefit from it. Shiva then manifested himself are the Linga and got installed there for eternity.

This Shivastalam is considered to be one of the holiest shrines in India. It represents the southernmost of the 12 Jyotirlingams of India and has been a time honored pilgirmage center held on par with Banaras. The island-temple town is located off of the Sethu coast of Tamilnadu (south eastern).

The legend bestowed upon the land :

Rameshwaram is where Lord Rama rested and prayed after his triumph over the demon king Ravan. A sacred site for both Vaishnavites and Shaivities, no Hindu pilgrimage is complete without a visit to this holy city. The island of Rameshwaram is one of the most venerable temple towns in India without a visit to which, the pilgrimage of a devout Hindu is not complete. According to the epic Ramayana, Lord Rama(an incarnation of Lord Vishnu, the protector), rested here before and after his battles with Ravana, the demon king, in Sri Lanka, just 24 kilometers away. Therefore Rameshwaram tour is a must for every Hindu devotee.

One of The Four Dhams of Hindus :

The great Sage and reformer of 8th century, Sri Shankaracharya(Adi Shankara), grouped the four most important temples towns of India and named them ‘The Char Dham’ (the four abodes). These four temple towns are Puri in east, Dwarka in West, Badrinath in north and Rameshwaram in South. It is said that one who travels to all these Dhams in a single tour, attains the ultimate salvation and is freed from the chain of rebirth cycle. These towns are considered to be the most sacred by Hindu religion and visiting them is considered a must for everyone before they set upon the final journey of their life. Rameshwaram with temples like Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple, and Kothandaraswamy Temple is definitely the most important of all the four.