Hi Sreenathan,
--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "sreenathan.ansi"
<sreenathan.ansi@...> wrote:
> I hope you are suggesting Nilgiri groups of languages as pre
> Dravidian substratum.
From M. Witzel's paper on South Asian substrate languages in _Mother
Tongue_, Special Issue, Oct. 1999:
http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/MT-Substrates.pdf
<< The South is frequently supposed to have been Dravidian from times
immemorial. However, in the refuge area of Nilgiris with their
isolated Drav. tribes (Toda, etc.), we find a substrate, see
Zvelebil 1990, 63-70. Isolated words indicating this pre-Drav.
substrate (Zvelebil 1990: 69f., Zvelebil 1979: 71f.) include the
following Irula words: mattu 'lip', Do"kene, dekene, Dekena,
Dekkada 'panther', ovarakaGku, OrakaGku, OraGgeku, OraGge,
Orapodu 'tomorrow' (unless DEDR 707 Tam. uR2aGku 'to sleep'),
buNDri 'grass hopper' (unless DEDR 4169), muTT(u)ri 'butterfly'
(unless DEDR 4850 miTL 'locust'), vutta 'crossbar in a house'. These
instances should encourage Drav. specialists to look for substrates
in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, etc. However, just like the propagators
of indigenous "Aryans" in the North, Dravidians of the South
frequently think that they are autochthonous. >> [Note:
Anthropological literature says that Irulas possess "Negrito"
morphological features -- Francesco]
Best,
Francesco