Page:An introduction to Dravidian philology.djvu/38

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28

with regard to the grammatical structure also.

Now, however, the Scythian theory of Caldwell is generally rejected by scholars and in thus rejecting it, they have also declined to see any affinity between the Dravidian and the Aryan languages. Caldwell's achievement, therefore, lay only in the perception of unity and homogeneity among the Dravidian languages. Thus, by the rejection of relationship either with the Scythian or the Indo-European, the Dravidian languages have come to acquire a unique position, a position of isolation from any of the known families of languages. It must, however, be acknowledged that the complete unity among the Dravidian languages established by Caldwell was no small an achievement in itself. We shall now proceed to examine whether this isolation of the Dravidian family of languages can be accepted or