Dravidian studies

Dravidian studies (also Dravidology, Dravidiology) is the academic field devoted to the Dravidian languages, literature, and culture. It is a superset of Tamil studies and a subset of Indology.

Early missionaries
The 16th to 18th century missionaries who wrote Tamil grammars or lexica include Henrique Henriques, Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg and Constantino Giuseppe Beschi.

Dravidian language hypothesis
The recognition that the Dravidian languages were a phylogenetic unit separate from Indo-European dates to 1816, and was presented by F. W. Ellis, Collector of Madras, at the College of Fort St. George.

Nineteenth-century experts
The 19th century contributors to the field of Dravidology were:

Twentieth-century experts
The noted Dravidologists from the twentieth century are:

Contemporary programs
The Dravidian University at Kuppam, Andhra Pradesh has created Chairs in the names of Western and Dravidian scholars to encourage research in individual Dravidian languages as well as comparative Dravidian studies:
 * Bishop Caldwell's Chair for Dravidian Studies
 * C. P. Brown's Chair for Telugu Studies
 * Kittel Chair for Kannada Studies
 * Constantine Beschi Chair for Tamil Studies
 * Gundert Chair for Malayalam Studies.

Literature

 * Robert Caldwell, Comparative Grammar of Dravidian Languages (1856; revised edition 1875).
 * Thomas R. Trautmann, Languages and nations: the Dravidian proof in colonial Madras, University of California Press, 2006, ISBN University of California Press, 2006.
 * Thomas R. Trautmann, Languages and nations: the Dravidian proof in colonial Madras, University of California Press, 2006, ISBN University of California Press, 2006.

Film
The 2021 Indian documentary film Dreaming of Words traces the life and work of Njattyela Sreedharan, a fourth standard drop-out, who compiled a multilingual dictionary connecting four major Dravidian languages Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, and Tamil. Travelling across four states and doing extensive research, he spent twenty five years making this multilingual dictionary.