to black; dark eyes; black hair, either straight, wavy or curly, but not
woolly or frizzly; thick lips; low nose with wide nostrils; usually short
stature, though the Australians are somewhat taller than the Dravidians.
When the skulls are compared with each other whilst they correspond in
some particulars, they differ in others. In both races, the general form
and proportions are dolichocephalic, but in the Australians the crania
are absolutely longer than in the Dravidians, owing in part to the prominence
of the glabella. The Australian skull is heavier, and the outer table
is coarser and rougher than in the Dravidian; the forehead also is much
more receding; the sagittal region is frequently ridged, and the slope
outwards to the parietal eminence is steeper. The Australians in the norma
facialis have the glabella and supra-orbital ridges much more projecting;
the nasion more depressed; the jaws heavier; the upper jaw usually prognathous,
sometimes remarkably so.” Of twelve Dravidian skulls measured by Mr.William
Turner, in seven the jaw was orthognathous, in four, in the lower term
of the mesognathous series; one specimen only was prognathic. The customary
type of jaw, therefore, was orthognathic. The conclusion at which Sir
William Turner arrives is that by a careful comparison of Australian and
Dravidian crania, there ought not to be much difficulty in distinguishing
one from the other. The comparative study of the characters of the two
series of crania has not led me to the conclusion that they can be adduced
in support of the theory of the unity of the two people.”1
3)
Dravidian languages confined to the area of pre-partition India
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All
the Dravidian languages, now reckoned 19, are confined to India and Pakistan
which together constituted the former British India, and no language of
any form bearing close relationship to the Dravidian family is found to
exist anywhere else, except isolated Dravidian roots and words that form
part of the basic vocabulary of the West Aryan languages, both classical
and modern.
1.C.T.S.I.Introduction,pp.XXXV & XXXVi
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