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 Tholkaappiyam onwards
(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 Viiracoozhiyam are 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 elan of 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 background 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 Arsha speech, 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 Kural
of 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 background. 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 background 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 Melanindian i.e., black or dark Indian
Race–is only an acknowledgment of inability to explain. This is one of the most
outstanding background 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.
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