The Dravidian Family of Indian Languages
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The Dravidian Family
The Dravidian race is spread videly over India., but all the members of it do not speak Dravidian languages. In the north many of them have become Aryanized, "and have adopted The Aryan languages of their conquerors while they have retained their ethnic characteristics. Besides these, many millions of people inhabiting central and southern India. possessing the physical. type classed by ethnologists as 'Dravidian ' are almost the only speach of two other important families of speech, the Munda and the Dravidian proper. Owing to the fact that these languages are nearly all spoken by persons possessing the same physical type, many scholars have suggested. a connexion between the two families of speech. but a detailed inquiry carried out by the Linguistic Survey shows that there is no foundation "for such It theory. Whether we consider the phonetic systems. the methods of inflexion, or the voeabuladas. the Dravidian have no connexion with the Munda languages. They differ in their sounds, in their modes of indicating gender, in their declensions of nouns, in their method of indicating the relationship of a verb to its objects, in their numeral systems, in their principles of conjugation, in their methods of indicating the negative, and in . their vocabularies. The few points in which they agree are common to many languages scattered all over the world.
Leaving. therefore, the fact of the so called Dravidian race speaking two different families of languages to be discussed. by ethnologists. we proceed to consider those forms of speech which are called • Dravidian' by philologists. We do not know how long the speakers of these languages have been settled in
India. It seems to be certain that they had been long in the . the country at the time of the eadiest Aryan immigrations,
but we do not know whether they are to be considered as autochthoncs or as having, in t heir turn, come into India. from some other country. We shall see that the fact that one tribe, not of the' Dravidian' physical type, but speaking a. la.nguage certainly belonging to the Dravidian linguistic family, the Brahuis, is found in the extremc north west of India has been adduced by Bishop Caldwell and others as indicating that the speakers of proto-Dravidian, like the Aryans, must have entered India from the north west; but this argument is not convineing. It puts the speakers aa forming the rearguard of an invasion from the north west, but the facts are equally consistent with an assumption that they form the survivors of the vanguard of a national movement: from th~ east or from the south of India.. more over, in this case, physical type would be a most unsafe g uide. For some centuries the Booms have lived amidst an Eranian population, with which they have freely intermarried, while they have heen separated by many hundred miles from the nearest speakers of other Dravidian languages. Even if it were conclusively proved that there was such a type as that called' Dravidian' by ethnologists, and that the original Brihiiis possessed that type, it would be surprising if, under the eircumstances in wh~h they live, they had. retained it.
F rom the Linguistic side Bishop Caldwell adduced a great mass of materials in his attempt to show that the Dravidian languages also point to the conntries beyond nort,h~ western India. and. their' Scythian' inhabitants as being their original nidus and his
theory that they were related to Turkish, Finnish; and Hungarian 1 bas since been
repeated over and over again in popula.r works, but has miledto ga,wth.e acceptance of
.. modern scholara.
I have already alluded to the attempts made to prove a conextion with the munda languages, and have explained how this cannot be considered to exist. Finally allusion nmy be made to comparision with the Australian languages, and to suggestious of a. possible connexion by la.nd between India and Australia in the times when the prehistoric Lemurian continent is believed to existed. That certain resemblance in language' have been found cannot , be denied, but, as yet, we cannot quote anything sa proving that a. linguistic conuexion is probable. All that we can say with om present knowledge is that it is Dot impossible. Up to a. few year ago the knowledge of the Australian languages possed by Europea.n scholar was very scanty In 1919 Pater W. Schmidt
1
Succeeded in reducing order out of chaos, &lid in classifying the numerous cognate
tongues spoken ill th&t great illl&nd-continent. The next st&ge in the investigation will be to carry on the inquiry into New Guinea. and thence into India. This inquiry was actually begun under Pater Schmidt's auspices" 2.But was interrupted during the War, and up to the date of writing nothing has appeared on the subject. We can only, for the present, wait and hope that in the near future sufficient materials will be forthcoming to settle the queationonce for all. . The dravidain languages at the present day have their chief home in the south of the Indian peninsula., as contrasted. with.the Aryan languages of the north. The northern limit of this southern block of Dravidian languagea may roughly be taken as the north-east corner of the district" of Chanda. in the Central provences .
Thence, towards the Arabian Sea, the boundary runs south-west to Kolhapur, whence it follows the line of the Western Ghats to about a hundred. miles below Goa, where it joins the sea• The boundary eastwards from Chanda. is more irregular, the hill country being mainly Dravidian with here and there a Munda colony, and the plains Aryan. Kandh, which is found most to the nortb-east, is almost entirely surrounded by Aryan•speaking Oriyas. Besides this solid block of Dravidian-speaking country, there are islands of languages belonging to the family far to the north in the Central Provinces and Chota Nagpur, even up to the bank of the Ganges at B•ajmabal. Most of these are rapidly falling under Aryan influences. Many of the speakers are adopting the Aryan caste system and with it broken forms of Aryan language, so that there a.re in this tract numbers • of Dravidian tribes to whose identification philology can offer no assistance. Finally, in far off Baluchistan, there in Brahul, concerning which, as already stated, it is uncertain whether it is the advance guard or the rearguard ofa Dravidian migration.
If Burnell was correct in his quotation.
3, A sanskrit writer of the 7th century who claimed. familiarity with the languages of southern India divided them into two groups, that •of the Andbra and that of Dravida country. The former corresponds to the modern-TelugU and the latte do
the modern Tamil and its relatives. and the division well corresponds with: the present .division of the existing vernaculars. The language of Andhra was the parent of Telugu. Kurulkh, Malto, Kui, KoIami. and gondi are intermediate languages, and, except Brahul and a couple of Hybrids, all the rest are desiended from the language of dravida The relationship between the various Dravidian languages is therefore illustrated in the 'following
On this basis we can. divide the Dravidian languages into four groups, to which may
De added a pair of semi-Dravidian Hybrids, making five in all. The number of people
•speaking each, according to the Survey and accordiug to the Census of 1921. is
shown on the margin. As this Survey did
not extend to southern india most of the
great Dravidian languages remained outside the sphere of is operation but as some reference to them is necessary in order to understand their connexion with Dravidian languages spoken in the area. of subject to the Survey, and as there is no immediate
prospect of a. Linguistic Survey being under. taken in the Madras Presidency, as has been begun in Burma, in the following pages I shall eudeavour to describe all the:languages of the family in some detail.
The Dravidian languages are polysyllabic and agglutinative, but do not possess
anything like the wonderful luxurious of agglutinative suffixes which we have noticed as distinguish the
Munda . family. They represent, in fact, a later stage of development, for, although still agglutinative, they exhibit the suffixes in a. state
- ,in which they are beginning to be modified by euphonic consideration , dropping
letters in one place and changing vowels in another. The suffixes. though thus sometimes losing their original form. are nevertheless still independent and separable from the stem word, which itself remains unchanged. The following general account of tbe main characteristics of Dravidian forms of speech is taken, with one or two verbal allterations, from the Manual of Administration of t he Madars Presidency...
In the Dravidian languages all nouns denoting inanimate substance and irrational being are of the neauter gender. The distingues of male and female appear only in the pronouns of the third person of the verb.in all tghe cases the distinction of gender is marked by separated words singnifing male ans female.
The most cultivated and
the best known of. all the Dravidian form of speech is Tamil. It covers the whole of southern India up to Mysore and the Ghats on the west. and reaches northwards as far as the town of Madras and beyond. It is also spokenasa vernacuhu.• in the northern pa.rt of the island of Ceylon, while most of the emigrants from the Peninsula to British Burma and the Straits Settlements, the so-called. Klings or Kalingas, have Tamil for their native language; s0 also have a large proportion of the emigrant coolies who are found in Mauritius and in other British colonies. In India itself, Tamil speakers, principally domestic servants, are found in every large town and cantonment. The Madras servant is usually without religious prejudices or scruples as to food. headgear,orceremonial,so that he ca.n accommodate himself to all circllmstances, in which respect he is unlik.e the northern Indian domestic. Tamil, which is sometimes called. Malabar, and also, by Deccan musulmans and in the west of India. .Arava , is a fairly homogeneous language.
Only a few petty dialacts mention margin have been
reported. lruIa and Kasuva.arethe dialects of small tribes spoken in the Nilgiris,and they have not \been touched by the Survey In classifying them as forms of Tamil I am merely following previous authorities, and
they themselves are not certain as to the correct affiliation of Kasuva • Korava,
Kaikiidi, aud Burgandi are spoken by vagrant tribes wandering over southcl1)' India, and as some of them were found in Bombay and the Central Proviuces, they feIl into the Survey's net, an4 have been analysed aU.d described in Volume IV. 'i'here are also ffilUly provincial forms of thc language, but of these the Survey is necessarily ignorant. Standard Tamil itself has two forms, the Shen (i.e. perfect) and the KOdun or Codoon (i.e. rude\. The first is the literary language used for poetry, and has
artifical features. Codoon ~nil . is the style used for the purposes of ordinary
Ancient Tamil has an a lphabet of its own, the Vatteluttu, i.f'. 'round writing, ' while
the modern language employs one which is also in its present form very distinctive. and which can be tra.ced up to the ancient Brahmi character used by Asoka, through the old Grantha a lphabet used in southern India for writing Sanskrit. 1'he Vatteluttu is also of North Indian origin. The modern Tamil character is an adaptation of the Grantha letters which corresponded to the letters existing in the old, incomplete, Vatteluttu alphabet, from which also a few chafilCters have heen retained, the Gralltha not possessing the equivalents. Like the Vatteluttu, it is singularly imperfect considering the copiousnes<! of the modern vocahulnry which it has to record.
Tamil is the oldest, richest, and most highly organized of the Dravidian languages; plentiful in vreahulary, and cultivated from a remote period It has a great literature of high merit.. This is not the place in which to give an account of Tamil literature, but mention may be made of one or two of the more famous works that adorn it. Its beginning was due to the labours of the Jains, who.se aCtivities as authors in this language extended from the eighth or ninth to The thirteenth century. . The Ksral of Tiru.vaUuvar, wbich teaches the Sankhya philosophy in 1330 poetical a.phorisms on virtue, wealth, and pleasure, is universily consider
one of its brighteat gems. The -author is said to have been a Pariah, and
a.coonling to Bishop Caldwell, he cannot be p1aoed 1a.ter . tha.n the 10th century A.D. Another great ethical poem, the Ja.in Naladiyar, is perhaps still older. A woman writer called Auveiyar, or 'the Venera.ble Matron,' and the reputed Sister of Tiruva.Uuvar, but probably of Jatar date, is said to have been the authoress of the Atti sudi and the konreiveyndan , two shoter works, which are still read tamil schools. We may fither mention the Chintamani " romantic epic of great beauty, by an unknown J ain poet. the Rdmijya"a of Kamba.n,---fIdl epic said to rivaJ. the chintamani in poetic charm, and t he classical Tamil grammar, the Nallul, of Pavanti. Specitl reference must &l.so be made to the anti Bramanical Tamil literature of the Sitar (i.e. Siddhas or sages). The Sittar were a. Tamil sect. who, while retaining Siva as the name of the•one God, rejected everything in Siva-worship inconsistent with pure theism. They were quietists in religion and alchemists in science. Their mystical poems, especially the Siva-vakyam are mid to possess• singular beauty, and some scholaN have detected in them traces of Christian infiuence.
Modern Tamil literature may be taken as commencing in the eighteenth century. The most important writers are :I'ayumimavan, the author of 1453 pantheistio stanza.s Which have high reputation, and the Italian Jesuit:Besch.i. (d. 1742). Besohi', Tamil style is considered irreproachable. His principal work in that language is the TCmbadani. or ' Unfading Garland.' It is a mixture of old 'l'a.millegends with Italian reminiscences, of which the leading example is Ml episode from Tasso's GerusalemtIU ..Liberata, in which St. J oeeph is made the hero.
Closely Connected with Tamil is Ma1ayaJam. the language of the Malabar cost. Its name is derived from mala,the local. word for
tain,' with a termination meaning ` possessing,' the whole word thus meaning literally ` mountain region,' and strictly applicable rather to the country in which it is spoken than to the language itself. It is a modern offshoot from Tamil, dating from, say, the ninth century. In the seventeenth century it became subject to Brahmanical influence, received a large infusion ofSanskrit words, and adopted the Grantha character in supersession of the Vatteluttu for its alphabet. From the thirteenth century the personal terminations of the verbs, till then a feature of Malayalam, as of the other Dravidian languages, began to be dropped from the spoken language, and by the end of the fifteenth century they had wholly gone out of use except by the inhabitants of the Laccadives and by the Moplahs of South Kanara, in whose speech remains of them are still found. The Moplahs, who as Musalmans had religious objections to reading Hindu mythological poems, have also resisted the Brahmanical influence on the language, which with them is much less Sanskritized than among the Hindus, and, where they have not adopted the Arabic character, they retain to o1d Vatteluttu.
Malayalam has a fairly large literature, principally, as explained aboves Brahmanical, acid including one historical work of some importance, the Keralotpatti . It has one dialect, theYerava, spoken in Ccorg.
The true centre of the Kanarese-speaking people is Mysore. The historic " Carnatic " was for the most part in the Deccan plateau above the Ghats. The language is also spoken in the south east corner of the Bombay presidency and occupies aastripe of the coast between Tulu and Marathi above the gates is satge east ward into the Nizam dominious and north ward to beyond the Kistna.
The ancient Ka narese ,alphbate
known as the Hala-kannada, which was the same as that in contemporary use for Telugu, dates from the thirteenth century, but since then there has arisen a marked divergence between the two characters, which has increased since the introduction of printing in the course of the nineteenth century. Neither of these characters has been limited by the number of letters in the old Vatteluttu alphabet, and hence they are as full and complete as that of Malayalam or as any of the alphabets used for writing Sanskrit. The curved form of the letters is a marked feature of both, and this is due to the custom of writing with a stilus on palmleaves, which a series of straight lines would inevitably have split along the grain. In Hala-kannadais preserved an ancient form of the language, analogous to that of literary Tamil, and nearly as artificial. Up to the sixteenth century Kanarese was free from any admixture of foreign words, but since then the vocabulary has been extensively mixed with Sanskrit. During the supremacy of Haidar Ali and Tippu Sultan, Urdu. words were largely imported into it fromMysore, and it has also borrowed from Marathi on the north-west, and from Telugu on its north-east.
