This volume is a contribution both to comparative Dravidian studies and to the theory of language change and linguistic reconstruction. It makes available the author's most important published articles on Dravidian over the last forty years and includes a new and substantial introduction to the field. The book concludes with a survey of Dravidian language studies over the last thousand years and a critical account of work since 1950. Those articles reprinted in the work appear substantially unchanged, with individual comments.

The Dravidian languages are spoken by nearly 200 million people in South Asia and in diaspora communities around the world. They include Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu, as well as over 20 non-literary languages. Bhadriraju Krishnamurti, one of the most eminent Dravidianists of our time, provides a linguistic overview of the Dravidian language family. He describes its history and writing system, discusses its structure and typology, and considers its lexicon. Distant and more recent contacts between Dravidian and other language groups are also covered.