The Dravidian language family is the world's fourth largest with nearly 250 million speakers across South Asia from Pakistan to Nepal, from Bangladesh to Sri Lanka. This authoritative reference source provides a unique description of the languages, covering their grammatical structure and historical development, plus sociolinguistic features. New to this edition are chapters on Betta Kurumba, Kurux, Kuvi and Malayalam, enlarged sections in various existing chapters, as well updated bibliographies and demographic data throughout.