INTRODUCTIONThe four areas which we have delineated are also important barriers of
communication which limited the spread of regional languages. The border
between the Tamil and the Telugu region follows the southern rim of the
Rayalaseema region, the northern border of the Telugu language region
and thus the border of the Dravidian languages in general more or less
follows the third zone. In the western highlands the region of the
southernmost Indo-Aryan language, Marathi, is situated between the
second and the fourth areas. The area between the first and the second
zones is a region of a variety of old tribal languages, but this region has
been penetrated by the lingua franca of the North, Hindi. But Hindi did
not manage to penetrate the area beyond the second zone. Not all borders
of language regions in India are marked by such thresholds, but the pattern
illustrated here shows a remarkable coincidence of environmental
conditions with the spread of languages. History and the environment are
interdependent and Indian history owes much to an environment which
has a highly differentiated structure and which is in some ways extremely
generous but can also prove to be very hostile and challenging to those
who have to cope with it.