that become so by the uncovering of any square from which a piece has been removed during the capture, e.g. white queen at square 7, black at squares 10, 18, 19, 22 and 27, the queen captures at 10, 22, 27 and 19, and the piece at 22 being now removed, she must go to 15, take the man at 18, and stay at 22, 25 or 29. In consequence of the intricacy of some of these moves, it is customary to remove every captured piece as it is taken. If a man arrives at a crowning square when taking, and he can still continue to take, he must do so, and not stay on the crowning square as at draughts. Passing a crowning square in taking does not entitle him to be made a queen. In capturing, the player must choose the direction by which he can take the greatest number of men or queens, or he may be huffed. Numerical power is the criterion, e.g. three men must be taken in preference to two queens. If the numbers are equal and one force comprises more queens than the other, the player may take whichever lot he chooses. This form of draughts, played on a board of 144 squares with 30 men a side, is extensively practised by British soldiers in India.
The German Damenspiel is Polish draughts played on a board of the same size and with the same number of men as in the English game. It is sometimes called Minor Polish draughts, and is practised in Germany and Russia.
The Italian game differs from the English in two important particulars—a man may not take a king, and when a player has the option of capturing pieces in more than one way he must take in the manner which captures most pieces. There is a difference too in the placing of the board, the black square in the corner of the board being at the player’s right hand, but until a king is obtained the differences from the English system are unimportant in practice.
In Spanish draughts the board is set as for the Italian game. The men move as in English draughts, but, in capturing, the largest possible number of pieces must be taken, and the king has the same powers as in the Polish game. The game does not differ essentially from the English game until a king is obtained, and many games from Spanish works will be found incorporated in English books. Sometimes the game is played with 11 men and a king, or 10 men and 2 kings a side, instead of the regulation 12 men.
Turkish draughts differs widely from all other modern varieties of the game. It is played on a board of 64 squares, all of which are used in play. Each player has 16 pieces, which are not placed on the two back rows of squares, as in chess, but on the second and third back rows. The pieces do not move diagonally as in other forms of the game, but straight forward or to the right or left horizontally. The king has the same command of a horizontal or vertical row of squares that the queen in Polish draughts has over a diagonal. Capturing is compulsory, and the greatest possible number of pieces must be taken, captured pieces being removed one at a time as taken.
Authorities.—Falkener’s Games Ancient and Oriental; Lees’ Guide to the Game of Draughts; Drummond’s Scottish Draught Players (Kear’s reprint); Gould’s Memorable Matches and Book of Problems, &c. The Draughts World is the principal magazine devoted to the game. In Dunne’s Draught Players’ Guide and Companion a section is devoted to the non-English varieties. (J. M. M. D.; R. J.)
DRAUPADI, in Hindu legend, the daughter of Drupada, king of Panchala, and wife of the five Pandava princes. She is an important character in the Mahabharata.
DRAVE, or Drava (Ger. Drau, Hung. Dráva, Lat. Dravus), one of the principal right-bank affluents of the Danube, flowing through Austria and Hungary. It rises below the Innichner Eck, near the Toblacher Feld in Tirol, at an altitude of a little over 4000 ft., runs eastward, and forms the longest longitudinal valley of the Alps. The Drave has a total length of 450 m., while the length of its Alpine valley to Marburg is 150 m., and to its junction with the Mur 250 m. Owing to its great extent and easy accessibility the valley of the Drave was the principal road through which the invading peoples of the East, as the Huns, the Slavs and the Turks, penetrated the Alpine countries. The Drave flows through Carinthia and Styria, and enters Hungary near Friedau, where up to its confluence with the Danube, at Almas, 14 m. E. of Esseg, it forms the boundary between that country and Croatia-Slavonia. At its mouth the Drave attains a breadth of 1055 ft. and a depth of 20 ft. The Drave is navigable for rafts only from Villach, and for steamers from Bárcs, a distance of 95 m. The principal affluents of the Drave are: on the left the Isel, the Gurk, the Lavant, and the largest of all, the Mur; and on the right the Gail and the Drann.
DRAVIDIAN (Sanskrit Draviḍa), the name given to a collection of Indian peoples, and their family of languages[1] comprising all the principal forms of speech of Southern India. Their territory, which also includes the northern half of Ceylon, extends northwards up to an irregular line drawn from a point on the Arabian Sea about 100 m. below Goa along the Western Ghats as far as Kolhapur, thence north-east through Hyderabad, and farther eastwards to the Bay of Bengal. Farther to the north we find Dravidian dialects spoken by small tribes in the Central Provinces and Chota Nagpur, and even up to the banks of the Ganges in the Rajmahal hills. A Dravidian dialect is, finally, spoken by the Brāhūīs of Baluchistan in the far north-west. The various Dravidian languages, with the number of speakers returned at the census of 1901, are as follows:—
| Tamil | 17,494,901 |
| Malayālam | 6,022,131 |
| Kanarese | 10,368,515 |
| Tulu | 535,210 |
| Kodagu | 39,191 |
| Toda | 805 |
| Kōta | 1,300 |
| Kuruχ | 609,721 |
| Malto | 60,777 |
| Gōndī | 1,125,479 |
| Kui | 494,099 |
| Telugu | 20,697,264 |
| Brāhūī | 48,589 |
| Total | 57,497,982 |
Of these Tamil and Malayālam can be considered as two dialects of one and the same language, which is, in its turn, closely related to Kanarese. Tulu, Kodagu, Toda and Kōta can be described as lying between Tamil-Malayālam and Kanarese, though they are more nearly related to the latter than to the former. The same is the case with Kuruχ and Malto, while Kui and Gōndī gradually approach Telugu, which latter language seems to have branched off from the common stock at an early date. Finally, the Brāhūī dialect of Baluchistan has been so much influenced by other languages that it is no longer a pure Dravidian form of speech.
The Dravidian languages have for ages been restricted to the territory they occupy at the present day. Moreover, they are gradually losing ground in the north, where they meet with Aryan forms of speech. If we compare the caste tables and the language tables in the Indian census of 1901 we find that only 1,125,479 out of the 2,286,913 Gōnds returned were stated to speak the Dravidian Gōndī. Similarly only 1505 out of 17,187 Kōlāms entered their language as Kōlāmī. Such tribes are gradually becoming Hinduized. Their language adopts an ever-increasing Aryan element till it is quite superseded by Aryan speech. In the north-eastern part of the Dravidian territory, to the east of Chanda and Bhandara, the usual state of affairs is that Dravidian dialects are spoken in the hills while Aryan forms of speech prevail in the plains. The Dravidian Kui thus stands out as an isolated island in the sea of Aryan speech.
This process has been going on from time immemorial. The Dravidians were already settled in India when the Aryans arrived from the north-west. The fair Aryans were at once struck by their dark hue, and named them accordingly kṛiṣṇa tvac, the black skin. In the course of time, however, the two races began to mix, and it is still possible to trace a Dravidian element in the Aryan languages of North India.
The teaching of anthropology is to the same effect. Most speakers of Dravidian languages belong to a distinct anthropological type which is known as the Dravidian. “The Dravidian race,” says Sir H. Risley, “the most primitive of the Indian types, occupies the oldest geological formation in India, the medley of forest-clad ranges, terraced plateaus, and undulating plains which stretches, roughly speaking, from the Vindhyas to Cape Comorin. On the east and west of the peninsular area the domain of the Dravidian is conterminous with the Ghats,
- ↑ In Dravidian words a line above a vowel shows that it is long. The dotted consonants ṭ, ḍ, and ṇ are pronounced by striking the tip of the tongue against the centre of the hard palate. The dotted ḷ is distinguished from l in a similar way. Its sound, however, differs in the different districts. A Greek χ marks the sound of ch in “loch”; ṣ is the English sh; c the ch in “church”; and ṛi is an r which is used as a vowel. In the list of Dravidian languages the names are spelt fully, with all the necessary diacritical marks. In the rest of the article dots under consonants have been omitted in these words.
