DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9541#0343
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BOOK IV.
DRAVIDIAN STYLE.
CHAPTER I.
introductory.
The limits within which the Dravidian style of architecture pre-
vailed in India are not difficult to define or understand. Practically
they are those of the Madras Presidency, or, to speak more correctly,
they are identical with the spread of the people speaking Tamil, or
any of the cognate tongues. Dr. Caldwell, in his 'Grammar,' estimates
these at forty-five or forty-six millions,1 but he includes among them a
number of tribes, such as the Tudas and Gonds, who, it is true, speak
dialects closely allied to the Tamil tongues, but who may have learnt
them from the superior races, in the same manner that all the nations
of the south-west of Europe learnt to speak Latin from the Romans ;
or as the Cornish men have adopted English, and the Irish and
northern Scots are substituting that tongue for their native Gaelic
dialects. Unless we know their history, language is only a poor test
of race, and in this instance architecture does not come to our aid.
It may do so hereafter, but in so far as we at present know, these tribes
are in too rude a state to have any architecture of their own in a
sufficiently advanced state for our purposes. Putting them aside,
therefore, for the present, we still have, according to the last census,
some thirty millions of people speaking Tamil, Telugu, Canarese, and
Malayalam, whom we have no reason for doubting are practically of
the same race, and who, in so far as they are Hindus—not Jains, but
followers of Siva and Vishnu—practise one style of architecture, and
that known as the Dravidian. On the east coast the boundaries of the
style extend as far north as the mouth of the Kistnah, and it penetrates
sporadically and irregularly into the Nizam's territories, but we cannot
yet say to what extent, nor within what limits.
1 'Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages,' London, second edition,
1875, p. 4-2.
BOOK IV.
DRAVIDIAN STYLE.
CHAPTER I.
introductory.
The limits within which the Dravidian style of architecture pre-
vailed in India are not difficult to define or understand. Practically
they are those of the Madras Presidency, or, to speak more correctly,
they are identical with the spread of the people speaking Tamil, or
any of the cognate tongues. Dr. Caldwell, in his 'Grammar,' estimates
these at forty-five or forty-six millions,1 but he includes among them a
number of tribes, such as the Tudas and Gonds, who, it is true, speak
dialects closely allied to the Tamil tongues, but who may have learnt
them from the superior races, in the same manner that all the nations
of the south-west of Europe learnt to speak Latin from the Romans ;
or as the Cornish men have adopted English, and the Irish and
northern Scots are substituting that tongue for their native Gaelic
dialects. Unless we know their history, language is only a poor test
of race, and in this instance architecture does not come to our aid.
It may do so hereafter, but in so far as we at present know, these tribes
are in too rude a state to have any architecture of their own in a
sufficiently advanced state for our purposes. Putting them aside,
therefore, for the present, we still have, according to the last census,
some thirty millions of people speaking Tamil, Telugu, Canarese, and
Malayalam, whom we have no reason for doubting are practically of
the same race, and who, in so far as they are Hindus—not Jains, but
followers of Siva and Vishnu—practise one style of architecture, and
that known as the Dravidian. On the east coast the boundaries of the
style extend as far north as the mouth of the Kistnah, and it penetrates
sporadically and irregularly into the Nizam's territories, but we cannot
yet say to what extent, nor within what limits.
1 'Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages,' London, second edition,
1875, p. 4-2.