Dravidian languages are a family of around 75 languages spoken by more than 215 million people in South Asia. The major languages of this family are Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Gondi, Tulu and Kurukh. The Dravidian languages are spoken in India mainly in the south, in Sri-Lanka and settlers in areas of southeastern Asia, southern and eastern Africa. Brahui spoken in Pakistan is isolated from all of the other members of the family. The four major languages- Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam possess independent scripts and literary histories dating from before the Christian Era. According to some scholars Dravidian language is indigenous to India. A recent hypothesis posits a movement of Dravidian speakers from the northwest to south and east of the Indian peninsula, a movement originating possibly from as far away as Central Asia. Another theory connects the Dravidian speakers with the people of the Indus Valley Civilisation.

A number of features of the Dravidian languages appear in the Rigveda, the earliest known Indo-Aryan literary work. The term dravida itself is almost certainly a Sanskritization of the earlier Pali and Prakrit terms damilo, damila, davida which must have been derived from the Tamil name of the language, Tamil. Writing was first developed in Tamil Nadu, sometime about 250 BC when the Ashoken Southern Brahmi script was adapted for Tamil.