Dravidians and Africans

 

Dear Friends

 

The issue of the linkage between Africans and Dravidians is not something that can be dismissed as something that has no substance in it at all. Anyone who sees the Ethiopians and Tamils could see a remarkable physical resemblance and during my stay in London I mistook some Ethiopians in fact for Tamils. Perhaps some Dravidian tribes at least,  are people with intimate relationship with some Africans, a notion that deserves to be investigated further. Such studies were promoted at one time by the political leaders in Senegal and some books published by the anthropologist K.P. Aravanan, now the Vice Chancellor of a university in Tamil Nadu owe to this. One of them is the collection of articles, some quite rare indeed and edited by K.P. Aravanan, and   published under the title “Dravidians and Africans”. The copy I have was published in 1997 and Tamil Koottam holds the copyright.

 

The book also contains many photographs that reveal the presence Muruka worship among the East Africans where the Vel, the Spear and the Mayil, the peacock are unmistakably similar to those in Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka.

 

I shall select only some relevant parts from some of these essays so that they enjoy a wider publicity and the issue of the African connections, among others, of the Dravidians folks becomes a lively  again. This may also serve as an antidote to the very popular and highly publicized Aryan Racialism of many scholars both European and Indian.

 

Dr K.Loganathan   Jan 2003

 

 

Essays:

 

Part 1

 

1.

Negrititude and Dravidian Culture

 

Leopold Sedar Sengkor (President of Senegal) (Lecture delivered in Madras under the auspices of the International Institute of Tamil Studies on the 23rd May, 1974)

 

2.

 

Links between Ur and the Indus

 

David Howard Day

 

3.

 

Dravidian and Negro-African
(Ethnic and LinguisticAffinities)

By U.Pupadhyaya Susheela O.Uphadyaya

 

Part 2

 

4

The Dravidian and Sudano­Sahelian Civilisations

CHEIKH TIDIANE N DIAVE

 

 

5

The Languages of Africans and Dravidians

A BIRD’S EYE VIEW*

S. R SANTHARAM

 

6.

 

The Riddle of Lost Lemuria

 

Alexander Kondratov

 

7.

 

The Dravidians in Africa

 

MIILE HOMBURGER*

 

8.

 

The Cultural and Commercial Contacts between Africa and Dravidian India

(With special reference to f he Krishna Legend)

 

K. P. ARAVAANAN

 

 

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