Everything about Dravidian Languages totally explained
The
Dravidian family of languages includes approximately 73 languages that are mainly spoken in
southern India and northeastern
Sri Lanka, as well as certain areas in
Pakistan,
Nepal,
Bangladesh, and eastern and central
India, as well as in parts of
Afghanistan,
Iran, and overseas in other countries such as
Malaysia and
Singapore.
Origins of the word Dravidian
The English word Dravidian was first employed by
Robert Caldwell in his book of comparative Dravidian grammar based on the usage of the Sanskrit word in the work
Tantravārttika by (Zvelebil 1990:xx). As for the origin of the Sanskrit word itself there have been various theories proposed. Basically the theories are about the direction of derivation between and .
There is no definite philological and linguistic basis for asserting unilaterally that the name
Dravida also forms the origin of the word
Tamil (Dravida -> Dramila -> Tamizha or Tamil). Zvelebil cites the forms such as
dramila (in 's Sanskrit work
Avanisundarīkathā) (found in Ceylonese chronicle Mahavamsa) and then goes on to say (ibid. page xxi): "The forms
damiḷa/
damila almost certainly provide a connection of " and "... < ...whereby the further development might have been * > * > - /
damila- and further, with the intrusive, 'hypercorrect' (or perhaps analogical) -
r-, into . The -
m-/-
v- alternation is a common enough phenomenon in Dravidian phonology" (Zvelebil 1990:xxi)
Zvelebil in his earlier treatise (Zvelebil 1975: p53) states: "It is obvious that the Sanskrit, Pali
damila, and Prakrit are all etymologically connected with " and further remarks "The
r in > is a hypercorrect insertion, cf. an analogical case of DED 1033 Ta.
kamuku, Tu.
kangu "areca nut": Skt.
kramu(ka).".
Further, another eminent Dravidian linguist
Bhadriraju Krishnamurti in his book
Dravidian Languages (Krishnamurti 2003: p. 2, footnote 2) states:
"Joseph (1989: IJDL 18.2:134-42) gives extensive references to the use of the term,
dramila first as the name of a people, then of a country. Sinhala inscriptions of BCE [BeforeChristian Era] cite -,
damela- denoting Tamil merchants. Early Buddhist and Jaina sources used - to refer to a people of south India (presumably Tamil); - was a southern non-Aryan country; -,, and - were used as variants to designate a country in the south (
Kādambarī,
Daśakumāracarita-, fourth to seventh centuries CE) (1989: 134-8). It appears that - was older than - which could be its Sanskritization."
Based on what Krishnamurti states referring to a scholarly paper published in the International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics, the Sanskrit word itself is later than since the dates for the forms with -r- are centuries later than the dates for the forms without -r- (-,
damela- etc.). So it's clear that it's difficult to maintain Dravida -> Dramila -> Tamizha or Tamil.
The Monier-Williams Sanskrit Dictionary lists for the Sanskrit word
draviḍa a meaning of "collective Name for 5 peoples, viz. the Āndhras, Karṇāṭakas, Gurjaras, Tailaṅgas, and Mahārāṣṭras".
Dravidian languages are spoken by more than 200 million people. They appear to be unrelated to languages of other known families like
Indo-European, specifically
Indo-Aryan, which is the other common language family on the Indian subcontinent. Some
linguistic scholars incorporate the Dravidian languages into a larger
Elamo-Dravidian language family, which includes the
ancient Elamite language (
Haltami) of what is now south-western Iran. Dravidian is one of the primary linguistic groups in the proposed
Nostratic language system, linking almost all languages in North Africa, Europe and Western Asia into a common family with its origins in the
Fertile Crescent sometime between the last
Ice Age and the emergence of
proto-Indo-European 4-6 thousand years BC.
Dravidian grammatical impact on the structure and syntax of Indo-Aryan languages is considered far greater than the Indo-Aryan grammatical impact on Dravidian. Some linguists explain this anomaly by arguing that Middle Indo-Aryan and New Indo-Aryan were built on a Dravidian
substratum.
History
The origins of the Dravidian languages, as well as their subsequent development and the period of their differentiation are unclear, partially due to the lack of
comparative linguistic research into the Dravidian languages. In addition to
Elamite, unsuccessful attempts have also been made to link the family with the
Japonic languages,
Korean,
Sumerian, the
Australian Aboriginal languages and the unknown language of the
Indus Valley civilisation. The theory that the Dravidian languages display similarities with the
Uralic language group, suggesting a prolonged period of contact in the past, is popular amongst Dravidian linguists and has been supported by a number of scholars, including
Robert Caldwell,
Thomas Burrow, Kamil Zvelebil, and Mikhail Andronov This theory has, however, been rejected by specialists in Uralic languages, and has in recent times also been criticised by other Dravidian linguists like
Bhadriraju Krishnamurti.. Rasmus K. Rask (1787-1832) considered Dravidian as belonging to the "
Scythian" languages referring to Scythians as non-Semitic and non-Indo-European peoples and languages of Eastern Europe and Western Asia sometimes also termed "
Hyperborean".
Many linguists, however, tend to favour the theory that speakers of Dravidian languages spread southwards and eastwards through the
Indian subcontinent, based on the fact that the southern Dravidian languages show some signs of contact with linguistic groups which the northern Dravidian languages do not.
Proto-Dravidian is thought to have differentiated into Proto-North Dravidian, Proto-Central Dravidian, Proto South-Central Dravidian and Proto-South Dravidian around 500 BC, although some linguists have argued that the degree of differentiation between the sub-families points to an earlier split.
The existence of the Dravidian language family was first suggested in
1816 by Alexander D. Campbell in his
Grammar of the Teloogoo Language, in which he and
Francis W. Ellis argued that
Tamil and
Telugu were descended from a common, non-Indo-European ancestor. However, it wasn't until
1856 that
Robert Caldwell published his
Comparative grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian family of languages, which considerably expanded the Dravidian umbrella and established it as one of the major language groups of the world. Caldwell coined the term "Dravidian" from the
Sanskrit drāvida, which was used in a 7th century text to refer to the
Tamil language of the south of India. The publication of the
Dravidian etymological dictionary
by
T. Burrow and
M. B. Emeneau was a landmark event in Dravidian linguistics.
List of Dravidian languages
Those recognized as
Official languages of India are in
boldface:
Southern
Central
The languages formally enumerated by linguists (Zvelebil 1990:p xiv, Subrahmanyam 1983) as belonging to the Central Dravidian subfamily are:
Kolami
Naiki
Parji
Ollari
Gadaba
Other possible enumerations are:
Kolami-Naiki
Parji-Gadaba
Northern
The languages formally enumerated by Dravidian linguists (Zvelebil 1990:p xiv, Subrahmanyam 1983) as belonging to the North Dravidian subfamily are the three below:
Brahui
Kurux
Malto
Scholar Franklin C. Southworth writes that the relationship between Brahui and the Dravidian languages is "perhaps" close enough to prove a relationship.
However, according to scholar Edwin Bryant, Brahui, Kurukh and Malto have their own myths about external origins (coming from outside.) The Oraons (Kurukh) have traditionally claimed to be from the Deccan Peninsula, more specifically, Karnataka. The same tradition has existed of the Brahui. They call themselves immigrants. Many scholars hold this same view of the Brahui such as L. H. Horace Perera and M. Ratnasabapathy. Mr. Bloch who wrote about the Brahui in 1911, 1925 and 1929 wrote that they were immigrants from far south. during later centuries, however, Dravidian languages like Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu have been greatly influenced by Sanskrit in terms of vocabulary, grammar and literary styles."
The above views must be considered in the light of the well-known Indologist and linguist (Zvelebil 1975: pp50-51): "... the period of the high water mark of Tamil classical literature was one in which the two great Sanskrit epics were already completed, but the Sanskrit classical poetry was barely emerging with ." More importantly he continues: "No stylistic feature or convention could have been borrowed by the Tamils (though of course there are borrowings of stories" (emphasis added). Zvelebil remarks:"Though the dominance of Sanskrit was exaggerated in some Brahmanic circles of Tamilnadu, and Tamil was given unduly underestimated by a few Sanskrit-oriented scholars, the Tamil and Sanskrit cultures were not generally in rivalry".
However more recent research has shown that Sanskrit has been influenced in certain more fundamental ways than Dravidian languages have been by it: It is by way of phonology and even more significantly here via grammatical constructs. This has been the case from the earliest language available (ca. 1200 B.C.) of Sanskrit: the Vedic speech.
The Vedic language has retroflex consonants even though it's well known that the Indo European family and the Indo-Iranian subfamily to which Sanskrit belongs lack retroflex consonants (/, ) with about 88 words in the Veda having unconditioned retroflexes (Kuiper 1991, Witzel 1999). Some sample words are: (,,, ) This is cited as a serious evidence of substrate influence from close contact of the Vedic speakers with speakers of a foreign language family rich in retroflex phonemes (Kuiper 1991, Witzel 1999). Obviously the Dravidian family would be a serious candidate here (ibid as well as Krishnamurti 2003: p36) since it's rich in retroflex phonemes reconstructible back to the Proto-Dravidian stage[SeeSubrahmanyam 1983:p40, Zvelebil 1990, Krishnamurti 2003].
A more serious influence on Vedic Sanskrit is the extensive grammatical influence attested by the usage of the quotative marker iti and the occurrence of gerunds of verbs, a grammatical feature not found even in the Avestan language, a sister language of the Vedic Sanskrit. As Krishnamurti states: "Besides, the Veda has used the gerund, not found in Avestan, with the same grammatical function as in Dravidian, as a non-finite verb for 'incomplete' action. Vedic language also attests the use of iti as a quotative clause complementizer. All these features are not a consequence of simple borrowing but they indicate substratum influence (Kuiper 1991: ch 2)".
The noted Indologist Zvelebil remarks (External Link): "Several scholars have demonstrated that pre-Indo-Aryan and pre-Dravidian bilingualism in India provided conditions for the far-reaching influence of Dravidian on the Indo-Aryan tongues in the spheres of phonology (for example, the retroflex consonants, made with the tongue curled upward toward the palate), syntax (for example, the frequent use of gerunds, which are nonfinite verb forms of nominal character, as in “by the falling of the rain”), and vocabulary (a number of Dravidian loanwords apparently appearing in the Rigveda itself)"
Further Information
Get more info on 'Dravidian Languages'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://dravidian_languages.totallyexplained.com">Dravidian languages Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
