The Pre-Dravidians.
The term Pre-Dravidian, the first use of which seems to be due to Lapicque, is now employed to include certain jungle tribes of South India, the Vedda of Ceylon, the Sakai of the southern Malay Peninsula, the basal element in certain tribes in the East India Archipelago and the main element in the Australians. Pre-Dravidian characters are coarse hair, more or less wavy or curly, a narrow head, a very broad nose, dark brown skin and short stature.
The Kadir.
The following may be taken as examples of the Pre-Dravidian jungle tribes of Southern India[961]. The Kadir of the Anaimalai Hills and the mountain ranges south into Travancore, are of short stature (1.577 m. 5 ft. 2 in.), with a dark skin, dolichocephalic and platyrrhine. They chip their incisor teeth, as do the Mala-Vadan, and dilate the lobes of their ears, but do not tattoo. They wear bamboo combs similar to those of the Sakai. They speak a Tamil patois. "The Kadirs," according to Thurston, "afford a typical example of happiness without culture"; they are nomad hunters and collectors of jungle products, with scarcely any tillage; they do not possess land but have the right to collect all minor forest produce and sell it to the Government. They deal most extensively in wax and honey. They are polygynous. Their dead are buried in the jungle, the head is entirely covered with leaves and placed towards the east; there are no monuments. Their religion is a crude polytheism with a vague worship of stone images or invisible gods; it is "an ejaculatory religion."
The Paniyan.
The Paniyan, who live in Malabar, the Wynad and the Nilgiris, have thick and sometimes everted lips and the hair is in some a mass of short curls, in others long wavy curls. They are dark skinned, dolichocephalic (index 74), platyrrhine and of short stature (1.574 m. 5 ft. 2 in.). They sometimes tattoo, and the lobes of the ears are dilated. Fire is made by the sawing method. They are agriculturalists and were practically serfs; they are bold and reckless and were formerly often employed as thieves. They speak a debased Malayalam patois. Their dead are buried; they practise monogamy and have beliefs in various spirits.
The Irula.
The Irula are the darkest of the Nilgiri tribes. They are dolichocephalic (index 75.8), platyrrhine and of low stature (1.598 m. nearly 5 ft. 3 in.). No tattooing is recorded, but they dilate the lobes of their ears. Their language is a corrupt form of Tamil. They are agriculturalists and eat all kinds of meat except that of buffaloes and cattle. They are as a rule monogamous. Their dead are buried in a sitting posture and the grave is marked by a stone. Professedly they are worshippers of Vishnu.
The Kurumba.