Dr. G. Uma Maheshwar Rao represents the University of Hyderabad in Prof. M.B.Emeneau Centenary International Conference on South-Asian Linguistics. The paper presented by him is titled "Dravidian and Mongolian Genetic Relationship: A Case for Reconsideration" and focuses on the hypothesis that there exist a distant genetic relationship between the languages of these families like comprehensive evidence in the form of lexical cognates and phonological correspondences and shared lexical ambiguities.

          The evidence presented here is derived from basic vocabularies like pronouns, numeral, body parts, animal names and direction words. Basic resources for this study include Dravidian Etymological Dictionary, Introduction to Mongolian comparative studies, Introduction to Altaic Linguistics and Mongolian-English Dictionary. He begins the discussion by stating that there are a considerable number of structural similarities shared between these languages.

          The methodology adopted is presented in three parts: strongest evidence in terms of certain sound correspondences; supporting evidence in the form of common basic vocabulary; and additional evidence including more questionable ones

           Evidence presented have different dimensions like lexical equations based on sound and semantic similarities, recurrent phonological correspondences in dissimilar sounds; and semantic parallelism in the related groups of words. He has discussed some basic verbs, nouns phonological correspondences, parallel lexical ambiguities and lexical evidence common to Mongolian and Dravidian.

           In conclusion, this paper has proved the hypothesis of existence of distant genetic relationship between Dravidian and Mongolian which is established through linguistic correlations with mitochondrial genetic studies in biology. Dr. Rao's study will provide linguistic evidence for genetic mapping of various populations of the world.

           In the discussion that followed the session, chaired by Prof. Bh. Krishnamurti, the first question was asked by Prof. Hans Henrich Hock regarding the characteristics of cognate selection of Mongolian, which does not contain front vowels and is quite confusing. Prof. Rao answered that there was further research going on in this field. Prof. Kikkeri Narayan, raised a question relating to the antiquity of Mongolian, for which Prof. Rao replied quoting the expeditions of Ghengiz Khan, emphasizing that the literary history of Mongolian dated back to 12 th Century and many Indian text of that age was translated to Mongolian.

           The Chairperson of the session, in his final remarks, observed that there was a need for different methodology to handle all these matter as according to him comparative method is not sufficient to deal with genetic studies.