Origins of Malayalis-?.1.1

In my previous post I had mentioned Caldwell and Logan's arguments for Malayali words for east and west. While Caldwell derives it from Proto-Tamils' movement from east to west; whereas Logan derives it from sun's movement.

I'll again quote Caldwell's words here.

The Malayalam word for east, kizhakku, means beneath, and because melku (west) means above, Dr. Caldwell argues that the Malayalis must have come from the Tamil country east of the ghats, since there they had the low level of the ocean on the east and the high level of the ghat mountains on the west.

Other day, I was checking Tamil words for east and west. To my utter surprise Tamils also have the same words, kizh and mekku, for east and west.

Now, if Proto-Tamils became Malayalis then Tamils above ghats shouldn't have the same words. That in my opinion shows it's Proto-Malayalis who became Tamils(at least a section of them). This of course goes well with my old theory that Mangalore is the urheimat of SD-I speakers. The diversity of SD-I languages along Mangalore-Nilgiri belt in fact shows SD-I speakers first moved along coastal Karnataka region then migrated inwards.

Directions in Dravidian languages:
In my opinion, the directions in Dravidian languages need to be studied properly. Only in SD-I there are independent words for north and south common to most of the languages in the branch. For east and west all the words appear to be local innovations after languages became independent. However, it is clear that none of these were part of Proto-Dravidian or Proto-Dravidians were directionless people.

The words for north and south, baDagu and teGku, are common to Kannada, Tamil, Tulu and Malayalam. The words for east and west are mUDu and paDu respectively in Kannada(Tulu). However, Malayalam word for east is 'kilakku' and west is, though Caldwell/Logan call it 'melku', at present 'padinjayir' which cognates with Kannada 'padu' is in the common usage.

Kannada east and west are directly connected to sun's movement where 'mudu' means 'form' or 'rise' and 'padu' means 'fall', 'die' or 'set'. In fact, Malayalam west 'padinjayir' means 'setting sun'(padu + njayir (sun, nesara in Kannada)).

The Origins of Indians: Version 7.1

Formation of North Indian and South Indian male population(Hierarchical model).

Note: Moving Austro-Asiatics so high in the hierarchy may seem bit odd. But I have my reasons for that. It is true that Austro-Asiatics may appear at low frequencies (<1%) among many castes and as such do not show any particular distribution. However, their influential presence is among Brahmins in South India. The defining South Indian kingdoms like Satavahana (IE), Kadamba(IE, Dravidian), Chera(Dravidian) and Kalabhra(I don't know)show very strong Austro-Asiatic cultural motifs.

It appears Buddhist-Brahmin kingdom of Satavahana gave rise to Jain-Brahmin kingdoms of Kadamba in Karnataka and Chera in Kerala. Whereas Kadamba gave rise to Kalabhra in Tamil Nadu (kaDaMbaru -> kaLaMbar -> kaLabra?).

The study, "Genetic affinities among the lower castes and tribal groups of India: Inference from Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA", Thanseem et al. (2006) found O2a-3/86 in a combined pool of Kannada and Telugu Brahmins. I feel that explains mixed Munda and Vedic/Jain/Buddhist identities of these kingdoms.

Tribes forming a their own kingdoms is not unheard of in Central India. In the last millennium a Dravidian tribe, Koitor(Gonds), also carved out a reasonable big but short-lived kingdom in that region. Probably, technological/cultural gulf between Koitor at one end and Mughals/Marathas(their destroyers) at other end might have been too high, whereas, that of Mundas and others 2000 years back might not be so.