Dravidian peoples
Dravidians are native speakers of any of the Dravidian languages of South Asia. There are around 220 million native speakers of Dravidian languages. They form majority of the population of South India. Dravidian-speaking people are natively found in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Maldives, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
Historically the Sanskrit word "drāviḍa" is used to denote geographical region of South India. and was devoid of any ethnic or linguistic identity While in Prakrit, words such as "Damela", "Dameda", "Dhamila" and "Damila" which later evolved into "Tamila" could have been used to denote an ethnic identity. The largest-Dravidian ethnic groups are Kannada people from Karnataka, the Tamil People from Tamil Nadu, Puducherry Sri Lanka,Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, the Telugu people from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, and the Malayalam people from Kerala and Tulu people from Karnataka. Ancient Dravidians were noted for their martial, religious and mercantile activities. Urbanisation and mercantile activity along the western and eastern coast of what is today Tamil Nadu and Kerala led to the development of four large political states Chola dynasty, Pandyan dynasty, Chera Dynasty and a number of smaller states warring amongst themselves for hegonomy and dominance over the region. Some of the greatest Dynasties in Indian history were established by partly the Dravidian people under the Satavahana dynasty, Rashtrakuta dynasty, Western Chalukya Empire and fully Vijayanagara Empire and kingdoms like Pandya. Among languages spoken today, Tamil is the oldest known Dravidian language with unbroken literary tradition since the 3rd century BC.