Dravidian studies (also Dravidology, Dravidiology) is the academic field devoted to the Dravidian languages, literature, and culture. It is a superset of Tamil studies and a subset of Indology.

The 16th to 18th century missionaries who wrote Tamil grammars or lexica include Henrique Henriques, Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg and Constantino Giuseppe Beschi.

More information Dravidologist, Photo ...

Dravidologist	Photo	Period	Work
Henrique Henriques		1520–1600	Portuguese Jesuit priest and missionary. After his initial days in Goa he moved to Tuticorin. As a missionary he strongly believed that books of religious doctrines should be in local languages. He is considered to be the first European Tamil scholar. He set up the first Tamil press and got books printed in Tamil script. The first book printed in Tamil script was "Thambiran Vanakkam" (தம்பிரான் வணக்கம்) (1578), a 16-page translation of the Portuguese "Doctrina Christam". Thereby, Tamil became the first non-European language to be printed on a printing press.[citation needed]
Constantine Beschi also called Vīramāmunivar (Tamil: வீரமாமுனிவர்)		1680 –1742	Italian Jesuit priest and renowned poet in Tamil language. Authored several Tamil dictionaries: including the "Chaturakarati" (சதுரகராதி), a Tamil-Latin and Latin-Tamil-Portuguese dictionary. He translated the famous Thirukkural epic poem of Thiruvalluvar (1730) in Latin. His greatest poetical work is the "Thembavani" (தேம்பாவணி) (the Unfading Garland), a poem on the life of Saint Joseph.
Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg		1682–1719	Lutheran clergy member and the first Pietist missionary to India. He was among the first Protestant missionaries to arrive in India at the Danish colony of Tranquebar in 1706. He translated the Old and the New Testament into Tamil. In 1708 he compiled "Bibliothece Malabarke", listing the 161 Tamil books he had read and described their content.

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The recognition that the Dravidian languages were a phylogenetic unit separate from Indo-European dates to 1816, and was presented by F. W. Ellis, Collector of Madras, at the College of Fort St. George.

The 19th century contributors to the field of Dravidology were:

The noted Dravidologists from the twentieth century are:

The Dravidian University at Kuppam, Andhra Pradesh has created Chairs in the names of Western and Dravidian scholars to encourage research in individual Dravidian languages as well as comparative Dravidian studies:^[1]

• Bishop Caldwell's Chair for Dravidian Studies
• C. P. Brown's Chair for Telugu Studies
• Kittel Chair for Kannada Studies
• Constantine Beschi Chair for Tamil Studies
• Gundert Chair for Malayalam Studies.

• Robert Caldwell, Comparative Grammar of Dravidian Languages (1856; revised edition 1875).
• Bhadriraju Krishnamurti (2003). The Dravidian Languages. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521771110.
• Thomas R. Trautmann, Languages and nations: the Dravidian proof in colonial Madras, University of California Press, 2006, ISBN University of California Press, 2006.
• Murray Barnson Emeneau (1994). Dravidian Studies: Selected Papers. Motilal Banarsidass. ISBN 8120808584.

The 2021 Indian documentary film Dreaming of Words traces the life and work of Njattyela Sreedharan, a fourth standard drop-out, who compiled a multilingual dictionary connecting four major Dravidian languages Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, and Tamil.^[2][3][4] Travelling across four states and doing extensive research, he spent twenty five years^[5] making this multilingual dictionary.

• Indology
• Proto-Dravidian
• Elamo-Dravidian
• Dreaming of Words