Linguistic and Cultural Studies of

LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL
STUDIES OF TAMIL AND DRAVIDIAN

DR. SUNITI KUMAR CHATTERJI
National Professor of India in Humanities, National Library, Calcutta

The study of linguistics in Tamil is one of the oldest disciplines in the language, and from the time of the Tholkaappiyamonwards (early centuries A. D.) Tamil scholars have taken a refreshingly realistic attitude to the facts of the language, whether in phonetics and phonology or in morphology. Although there has been the inevitable influence of the Sanskrit grammatical system, the special facts or features of Tamil were all noted and docketed. Fundamental works like the–Tholkaappiyam, the Nhannuul, the Viiracoozhiyamare there, and then the long range of commentaries, for elucidating the facts of Tamil. The study of Tamil was taken up by foreign students of Tamil from the 17th century, by the Portugese missionaries in Goa and Malabar. The first printed book using Tamil characters came out from Cochin in 1579. Foreign scholars of eminence were like the Italian Jesuit Roberto de Nobili (early 17th century), the German Barholomew Ziegenbalg (1663-1719), who wrote a grammar of Tamil at Tranquebar after founding a mission there in 1706, and above all, the Italian Constantius Beschi (1680-1746), famous as a Tamil poet as the author of the Thembavani(1724) or “the unfading Garland” (a sort of a Christian Purana), besides his grammar of both old and modern Tamil in Latin and a comprehensive work on Tamil grammar and poetics the Thonnuul-vilhakkam.Then in the 19th century came other European scholars who wrote on Tamil (and other Dravidian) grammar and linguistics, like Groul, Caldwell, Gundert, Kittel, Brown, Hahn, Denis Bray and Sten Konow, Vinson, Pope and then Jules Bloch, Kuiper, M. B. Emeneau, A. Master, T. Burrow, Kamil Zvelebil, Andronov, Rudin and others. The old historical and comparative method which has been so fruitful and positive in its results has naturally been followed by these investigators and we have also some eminent Indian scholars who have made valuable contribution in elucidating the nature and history of Tamil and other Dravidian languages, and also Dravidian linguistics in general, like K. V. Subbaiya, K. Amrita Rao, L. V. Ramaswami Ayyar, P. S. Subrahmanya Sastri, K. Ramakrishnayya, R. A. Narasimhacharya, A. N. Narasimhayya, G. S. Pai, T. N. Srikantaiya, Sudhibhushan Bhattacharya and others.

During the present generation the science of linguistics has taken a new turn both in its approach and its methodology in the West, particularly in America. This approach and methodology have been called the Synchronistic as opposed to the earlier Diachronistic(as it has been named) i. e., the comparative and historical one. With the elanof something aggressively modern and “progressive,” and with the power derived from scientific gadgets, the new approach and method in the hands of some of its more ardent protagonists were inclined to belittle and even at times to throw overboard the current Diachronistic or Historical and Comparative School. Linguistics which deals with human speech (speech is partly a mechanical and physical phenomenon and at the same time is very largely a psychological, aesthetic and social one) is a complex human science and not exclusively a simpler physical one. In their zeal for the new approach, some exponents of it are inclined to look upon the synchronistic method (which has not much use for the comparative and historical values) as if linguistics were a branch of mathematics or physics, and they forget the implications of the warning given by F. de Saussure years ago that linguistics is not to be made “a caricature of some other discipline.” Language is perpetually in a state of movement like every other thing connected with man–it is never at stand-still; and the attempt to take language as something static, permanent and abstract may have some value as a theoretical and even as a fundamental enquiry in science, but the object of language study as a human phenomenon for ever on the move, and not bound by any set of meticulously framed rules (even the speech of the same individual at any given time) is in this way rather obscured. After the initial glamour of the new synchronistic method of descriptive and structural linguistics, with its imposing array of mathematical tables and its display of complicated symbols and figures, as well as is new terms (sometimes quite unnecessary, and frequently confined to individual investigators who have not yet been able to arrive at a generally accepted coherent and explicit terminology), many linguistic workers are now feeling the need for crying halt to these ultra-progressive methods and to test their validity and utility in both theory and practice. A typical instance of this critical attitude will be fond in the paper by Dr. Takdir S. Alisjahbaa, Professor of Linguistics and of Malay in the University of Kualaluropur in Malaysia entitled “the failure of modern linguistics in solving the problems of emergent nations.” Of course, no one will deny that the science of linguistics can only advance with the modern application of both theoretical and practical science, particularly in the physical aspect of language in connection with the speech, sounds and the behaviour, as well as the function of the voice as much as that of gesture. Modern scientific phonetics with its new discoveries and theories now forms one of the indispensable bases of linguistics, thanks to the work of masters like Jespersen, Daniel Jones, N. Trubetzkoy and others.

The last word in descriptive linguistics, in terms of the system evolved by himself, has been said by the Sanskrit grammarian Panini some 2,500 years ago, and the clarity and sanity as well as the comprehensiveness of his approach in a combined morphophonemic study of the facts of a living speech, which Sanskrit was with him in the 5th century B. C. in the extreme north-west of India, are now being rediscovered and hailed with admiration in both Europe and America and in India and Japan. The much-needed harmonisation between the old diachronism, in language study, the comparative and historical method and the new synchronism, the descriptive and structural method, is now felt as something absolutely necessary for a steady and well-balanced progress of the vessel of Linguistic Science, the sail and the ballast both functioning properly to help it forward. In 1962, at the ninth International Congress of Linguists which was held at Harward University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in America, the matter was discussed, and I had a paper on the subject of a judicious combination of both the methods. Then at the last (tenth) International Congress of Linguists which was held at Bucharest in August-September 1967, this subject formed the most prominent matter for discussion in five plenary sittings, and eminent linguisticians like. B. Malmberg (Sweden–“Synchrony and Diachrony”), E. Petrovici (Rumania–“Interpretation of Linguistic Systems”), Roman Jakobson (U. S. A.–“Linguistics and Adjacent Sciences”), G. Devoto (Italy–“The Comparative Method and the Actual Linguistic Currents”) and Olga Akhmanova (U. S. S. R.–linguistics and the Quantitative Approach”) whose papers were printed and distributed, inaugurated various aspects of this question, and there were lively discussions. Prof. G. Devoto in a way put in the case for what he called ‘the co-existence” of the two methods, and that alone would appear to be helpful in preventing a meaningless split up of the science and give to either method its proper place.

But the Syncoronistic approach has come to stay, and the Diachronistic cannot be ignored either. It is the historical ground which we cannot ignore. When Panini sat down to describe the character of the Sanskrit language, he took it up as it was known to him, and he could not have any sense of a historical development of Sanskrit (both as a current speech–Laukika, and as language of the Vedic literature–Chandasa, which he took to be one), and therefore his treatment was from the nature of the case a rigidly descriptive and structural one. The grammarians of Prakrit could not treat the Prakrit dialects as self-sufficient–the earlier bases of these could not be dissociated from Sanskrit. The continuity–Sanskrit, Prakrit, Bhasha, or Old, Middle and New Indo-Aryan–was an overwhelming fact which could never be lost sight of. But in the case of languages which had no records earlier than the recent two centuries, there could not be any case for a historical survey, although comparison with connected dialects or speeches would force themselves to our notice. Here the language as it is –the Ding an sich, ‘the thing in itself’–practically took up the whole field.

The prestige of a sacred language as the vehicle of a particular religion is tremendous, and theology and a blind religious faith colour or blur our linguistic sense. Thus in medieval times European Christians piously believed that all the speeches of the world were derived from Hebrew, the language of the Word of God. Roman Catholic missionaries and others sometimes believed that Latin, the language of the liturgy of their Church, was in a vague way the mother of all languages. So in India, too, Hinayana Buddhists following the Pali canon thought that Pali, miscalled Magadhi, was the original and the source-language. The Jains similarly held the Ardha-Magadhi Prakrit of their canonical books, supposedly the language of Mahavira himself (just as Buddhists similarly erroneously thought that Pali was Buddha’s own speech) in great respect as the Arshaspeech, the primeval speech current among the Rishis or sages.

So among Brahmanical Hindus all over India, Sanskrit, the language of the Vedas and Puranas and other Sastras, the language of the Gods and the sages, was the original language, and the source of all languages. There was no difficulty in accepting the position that Tamil and other Dravidian languages, as much as the various medieval Prakrits and their modern descendants, were all derived from Prakrit. Medieval and modern Sanskrit scholars of Telugu and Kannada and Malayalam, and almost equally of Tamil, thought that Sanskrit was the source-language. But it must be said that this was not accepted universally. There were Tamil saints and sages, who had profound love for their language, who like Thirumuular declared that the Supreme Sivan was both Aryan and Tamil (i.e., Arya and Dravida), and the Kuralof Thiruvalluvar was as great as the Vedas. They refused to accept the position that Sanskrit, the language of the Gods and the Rishis, was the source of Tamil, and the South Indian Vaishnavas gave to the Bhakti literature of the Azhvars when placed besides the Veda and Vedanta texts an equal or even a higher status. The tables are being turned now–an irrational approach which is more patriotic than scientific now claims for Sangam Tamil a more ancient age than the language of the Vedas; and in a recent work like the Muthal Thaaymozhi this view about Ancient Tamil being the mother of all languages has been put forward in all seriousness.

Be it as it may, we find that the study of Tamil (and other Dravidian) grammar and linguistics among some ardently patriotic Tamilians is inspired by easily understandable notions about the exalted position of Old Tamil. What they say about the facts of the language, since their views based on a meticulous study of the documents, have to be considered with due respect, and their help is to be taken wherever there is something positive. But Dravidian grammatical studies among present-day scholars have now taken up the two-fold path which are but two aspects of the same investigation accepted all over the world,–the old Diachronistic, and the new Synchronistic. Some among the younger generation of investigators of Tamil and Dravidian in Tamizhakam, and of the other Dravidian languages in Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra have got the requisite training in Poona and in the American universities and their intensive enquiries into specific aspects of a proper factual analysis of Tamil and other Dravidian languages are being placed before the scholarly world. All this will only enlarge the scope of our study and will make it all comprehensive. In order to be more fruitful, I would only suggest that these enquiries need not be totally dissociated from the current line of Diachronistic approach, particularly by going in for an unnecessary neologism in technical terms and by intricacies and complexities of too much symbolisation. And the traditional method is also to take all help from the new descriptive and structural one. Kalidasa said–Puranamityeva na sadhu sarvam “because it is old everything is not good”, and this is quite true; and while admitting this, we should also be a little circumspect for “everything that is new is not good, unless it is proved to be so”.

Details of phonetics and phonology, or morphology, of syntax, of vocabulary and other inner aspects of Tamil as a language are being investigated by a growing band of young workers, and that it is a matter which we should welcome. But there are ever so many other problems about Tamil and Dravidian, which are deep, and tremendously baffling They refer to the outward history of Dravidian and Tamil, they are matters which are au tour du sujet, “round about the subject.” And yet they are very vital. They, of course, are not immediately connected with basic actualities of Tamil linguistics, which can be properly looked over by the descriptive and structural method, working hand in hand with the historical and comparative one. But there are certain other basic things which have not merely linguistic but also cultural and interracial in their ground. To mention a few matters which are still unsolved and are baffling us:

(1) The linguistic parentage or relationship of Dravidian, from pre-historic times. Its connection with Altaic and Ural-Altaic, with the stilt problematic Aegean or Pelasgian, and with other ancient speech-families, as proposed. Particularly the questions of Altaic-Dravidian and Aegean-Dravidian present themselves as most intriguing and tantalising.

(2) Linguistic interpretation in the evolution of primitive Dravidian (and Tamil); the pre-historic impact of the various speeches of the near-east and of the Hamitic World, and of Altaic, and of Indo-Aryan in India particularly of the latter during historical times.

(3) The questions of primitive Dravidian outside India and within India–its character, its content, its chronology.

(4) Aryo-Dravidian interaction in phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicology as indicative of a racial and cultural fusion.

(5) The Mohenjodaro people, and the problem of the Indo-Europeans and Dravidians as well as the Austrics as the ground of Hindudom or pan-Indian culture.

(6) The pre-Dravidian and pre-Aryan substrata in India: vestiges of an unexplained or unidentified Sprachgut.

With regard to the other three languge-families of India, we are on a more certain and positive ground so far as Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan are concerned. Particularly in the case of Indo-European, we have quite a satisfactory mass of facts and evidence about its pre-history and its development. Excepting for Siamese or Thai, the Sino-Tibetan world presents a fairly clear picture, thanks to the researches of Maspero, Karlgren and the rest. The Austric languages also present a coherent tableau in its two main divisions of Austro-Asiatic and Austronesian although the origins and early development of Austric and the full development of Kol (Munda) of Mon-Khmer and of Austronesian are not clear. The Dravidian problem remains the most baffling, as we cannot as yet spot any of the relations of Dravidian outside India. The theory of the French Anthropologist Georges Oliver about the Dravidian being an independent branch of the human race–the South Indian (or pan Indian) or Melanindiani.e., black or dark Indian Race–is only an acknowledgment of inability to explain. This is one of the most outstanding ground question of Dravidian linguistic, cultural and racial, which is awaiting solution.
Paper read at the Second International Conference.–Seminar of Tamil Studies held at Madras.