Turkish draughts differs widely from all other modern varieties of the game. It is played on a board of 64 squares, all of which are used in play. Each player has 16 pieces, which are not placed on the two back rows of squares, as in chess, but on the second and third back rows. The pieces do not move diagonally as in other forms of the game, but straight forward or to the right or left horizontally. The king has the same command of a horizontal or vertical row of squares that the queen in Polish draughts has over a diagonal. Capturing is compulsory, and the greatest possible number of pieces must be taken, captured pieces being removed one at a time as taken.
Authorities.—Falkener’s Games Ancient and Oriental; Lees’ Guide to the Game of Draughts; Drummond’s Scottish Draught Players (Kear’s reprint); Gould’s Memorable Matches and Book of Problems, &c. The Draughts World is the principal magazine devoted to the game. In Dunne’s Draught Players’ Guide and Companion a section is devoted to the non-English varieties.
(J. M. M. D.; R. J.)
DRAUPADI, in Hindu legend, the daughter of Drupada, king of Panchala, and wife of the five Pandava princes. She is an important character in the Mahabharata.
DRAVE, or Drava (Ger. Drau, Hung. Dráva, Lat. Dravus), one of the principal right-bank affluents of the Danube, flowing through Austria and Hungary. It rises below the Innichner Eck, near the Toblacher Feld in Tirol, at an altitude of a little over 4000 ft., runs eastward, and forms the longest longitudinal valley of the Alps. The Drave has a total length of 450 m., while the length of its Alpine valley to Marburg is 150 m., and to its junction with the Mur 250 m. Owing to its great extent and easy accessibility the valley of the Drave was the principal road through which the invading peoples of the East, as the Huns, the Slavs and the Turks, penetrated the Alpine countries. The Drave flows through Carinthia and Styria, and enters Hungary near Friedau, where up to its confluence with the Danube, at Almas, 14 m. E. of Esseg, it forms the boundary between that country and Croatia-Slavonia. At its mouth the Drave attains a breadth of 1055 ft. and a depth of 20 ft. The Drave is navigable for rafts only from Villach, and for steamers from Bárcs, a distance of 95 m. The principal affluents of the Drave are: on the left the Isel, the Gurk, the Lavant, and the largest of all, the Mur; and on the right the Gail and the Drann.
DRAVIDIAN (Sanskrit Draviḍa), the name given to a collection of Indian peoples, and their family of languages[1] comprising all the principal forms of speech of Southern India. Their territory, which also includes the northern half of Ceylon, extends northwards up to an irregular line drawn from a point on the Arabian Sea about 100 m. below Goa along the Western Ghats as far as Kolhapur, thence north-east through Hyderabad, and farther eastwards to the Bay of Bengal. Farther to the north we find Dravidian dialects spoken by small tribes in the Central Provinces and Chota Nagpur, and even up to the banks of the Ganges in the Rajmahal hills. A Dravidian dialect is, finally, spoken by the Brāhūīs of Baluchistan in the far north-west. The various Dravidian languages, with the number of speakers returned at the census of 1901, are as follows:—
| Tamil | 17,494,901 |
| Malayālam | 6,022,131 |
| Kanarese | 10,368,515 |
| Tulu | 535,210 |
| Kodagu | 39,191 |
| Toda | 805 |
| Kōta | 1,300 |
| Kuruχ | 609,721 |
| Malto | 60,777 |
| Gōndī | 1,125,479 |
| Kui | 494,099 |
| Telugu | 20,697,264 |
| Brāhūī | 48,589 |
| ————— | |
| Total | 57,497,982 |