Sangom Sir,
Its sorta amusing to see some posters going the way as though 'dravidians' were the beginning of everything, and even more comical to see some claiming tambrams must associate with ravana and all that...
Anyways, coming to your post, as regards the point in bold, i do not think owls, patridge birds, dogs, monkeys, etc were looked down upon as lowly creatures once upon a time.
Though there is no proof, the more i study totemic animals, i feel groups of people identified their geographical area based on animals. That is to say, they lived in an area where there were plentiful tigers or monkeys or dogs or Owls, etc.
Imagine days when there was nothing called 'besant nagar' or 'adayar'. How wud one identify the locale in which he lives?
Unless men wandered away to faraway regions, it may be possible to persume that a wide geographic region was 'characterised' by which animal inhabited that area in plentiful numbers. Hence it became a 'totemic' animal.
Additionally, when men learnt to protect themselves from attacking tigers, attacking monkeys, attacking owls, etc (or even hunt them down for food), they most likely used the same camouflage as the animals. Even today there are tribals in africa who decorate their skin with zebra stripes, tiger stripes, etc
I think it was about men imitating an animal he though was ferocious and terrifying, and either triumphing over that very animal or wearing that animal's camouflage so as to protect himself from it.
Men in the past i feel were merged with nature and hence did not characterise any animal as lowly or high
Maybe you will find this interesting - as we can understand from this work, beauty does not need a context...anything merged with nature appeared beautiful (or powerful) to ancient men (or conveyed some meaning, social context, etc) -
Amazon.com: Natural Fashion: Tribal Decoration from Africa (9780500288054): Hans Silvester: Books
Men and apes are no different, Men like apes are strongly territorial and defend their boundries in which they live. So when a particualr group of men (of say the monkey totem), made powerful conquests, maybe their totemic identities gained preeminence, and came to become part of mainstream 'religion'.
Maybe in an urban context, a particular animal may be considered lowly. But back in the past, maybe that same animal conveyed a social position of some standing (in a range of people using various totemic identifications).
Also sir, maybe we are giving too much importance to the word 'dravidian'. We must remember that Robert Caldwell coined the term 'Dravidian', and that too from the Sanskrit "drāvida", which was used in a 7th century text to refer to the Tamil language.
I would be glad to see evidence, how did others refer to Tamil language or to Tamilians (or how did tamilians refer to themselves or their own language), in an ancient past.
Personally, i do not think there is anything called a dravidian monolith. I presume various tribals of the south have been waging war against one another for conquests of land / resources (as humans everywhere else have done), unless there is a particular reason to think otherwise (meaning to say the context of 'dravidian' as a single 'united' entity is lacking).
These tribals could have come from anywhere to the south (or vice-versa), and tried to make a common place their 'home'. They may have fought, merged, then formed a composite tribe..they cud have taken an animal totem to signify their place of residence or prowess at any time (before or after a merger)...
Speaking of prowess, lets not underestimate 'guerreilla' warfare, signified by ambushes, raids, etc - which is how tribal wars were. Though there were no gorillas in 'guerrilla' warfare, such raids, ambushes, did signify 'war', power and prowess in an ancient time (despite being so very far from the cavalry, etc of later day armies).
Regards.
