Dravidian Languages

"The greater part of Telugu literature consists of Poetry, which is written in the higher dialect. So different is the higher dialect from the dialect branches of study."

"The language started as a variant of Tamil that was spoken in regions of Kerala, and evolved its own form, grammar, and vocabulary by 500 CE. A significant transition from Tamil happened with the introduction of a form of literature called Manipravalam, which freely mixed words from Sanskrit into the language."

"The Malayalam speakers – referred to as Malayalis – have been strongly peripatetic. Hence, the language is heard widely all over India as well as in the Persian Gulf countries, Europe, Australia, and the North America."

"Malayalam is one of the five major languages of the Dravidian language family, which also includes Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Tulu."

"The emotional and sensual character of popular Tamil religion in particular the ecstatic union with various deities which had long existed within the indigenous south Indian Folk Religion"

"The Tamil Nationalism Movement had a specifically shaiva component that fostered the idea that Siddhantam preceded all other as the original Tamil Religion"

"Tamil Religion(Tamilism): Siddantham is the true and Original Philosophy of Tamilians who are not Brahmins"

"Telugu language is the largest member of the Dravidian language family. Primarily spoken in southeastern India, it is the official language of the state of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. In the early 21st century Telugu had more than 75 million speakers."

"The first written materials in the language date from 575 CE. The Telugu script is derived from that of the 6th-century Calukya dynasty and is related to that of the Kannada language. Telugu literature begins in the 11th century with a version of the Hindu epic Mahabharata by the writer Nannaya."

"There are four distinct regional dialects in Telugu, as well as three social dialects that have developed around education, class, and caste. The formal, literary language is distinct from the spoken dialects—a situation known as diglossia."

"Like the other Dravidian languages, Telugu has a series of retroflex consonants (/ḍ/, /ṇ/, and /ṭ/) pronounced with the tip of the tongue curled back against the roof of the mouth. Grammatical categories such as case, number, person, and tense are denoted with suffixes. Reduplication, the repetition of words or syllables to create new or emphatic meanings, is common (e.g., pakapaka ‘suddenly bursting out laughing,’ garagara ‘clean, neat, nice’)."

"Andhra Bhasha — the language of the Andhras is known as Telugu, or Tenugu (tene = honey, agu = is), meaning, sweet as honey. Telugu is numbered among the Dravidian languages, of which four are of importance in South India, namely Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam."

"The Telugu language does not seem to be as ancient as Tamil, though it is more ancient than Malayalam, and at least of equal antiquity with Kanarese. It is not possible to say with any certainty when the language now known as Telugu came into vogue."

"The Government of India decided that on the occasion of the Rajyotsava day in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh formation day in Andhra Pradesh which fall on 1 November to declare Kannada and Telugu as Classical Languages. This decision of the Government of India is based on the recommendation of the Committee of Linguistic Experts set up by the Ministry of Culture."

"In the familiar milieu of the Tamil land, where musicians and devotees can sing and proclaim about the Lord who is wonderfully auspicious, the Srivaisnava uses Tamil, the language that he is most accustomed to."

"Sri Aurobindo’s study of Tamil, which he did with the help ;of Subramania Bharati, led him to discover that the “original connection between the Sanskrit and Tamil tongues” was “far closer and more extensive than is usually supposed” and that they were “two divergent families derived from one lost primitive tongue.” The artificial division between Indo-European and Dravidian languages had gone: “My first study of Tamil words had brought me to what seemed a clue to the very origins and structure of the ancient Sanskrit tongue.”"

"In...the cultural milieu, however, Sanskrit has greater prestige than Tamil. It is the language of revelation (sruti), of the eternal Veda."

"The bhakti movement began in South India about the sixth century AD when several saints wandered from temple to temple singing the praise of Vishnu or Shiva. The twelve devotees of Vishnu who are recognized as poet-saints by the Srlvaisnava community were called the alvars and the sixty-three devotees of Siva were known as nayanmars. Tirumankai alvar and NammaWar wrote over half of the four thousand verses [in Tamil language] that forms the Divya Prabandham or Sacred Collect for the Srlvaisnava community."

"For the first time within Hinduism, devotion was expressed in a mother tongue, a language --- continuous with the language of one’s earliest childhood and family, once folk and folklore. Unlike Sanskrit, it was a spoken language, associated with powerful emotions, and the deity of the Tamil hymns was brought close to the worshipped by the language fraught with tender words used for beloved ones."

"In actual life, it is impossible to separate us into two nations. We are not two nations. Every Moslem will have a Hindu name if he goes back far enough in his family history. Every Moslem is merely a Hindu who has accepted Islam. That does not create nationality. … We in India have a common culture. In the North, Hindi and Urdu are understood by both Hindus and Moslems. In Madras, Hindus and Moslems speak Tamil, and in Bengal, they both speak Bengali and neither Hindi nor Urdu. When communal riots take place, they are always provoked by incidents over cows and by religious processions. That means that it is our superstitions that create the trouble and not our separate nationalities."

"The history of publishing and printing in Tamil is as interesting and rich as the language itself. The first book [Tamil] dates back to 20 October 1578. On the eventful day, Portuguese missionary Henrique Henriques (also Anrique Anriquez) published ‘Thambiraan Vanakkam' with paper imported from China."

"From its inception, Tamil devotion meant that speakers of Tamil had to be at the service of the language, to labor in its name and on its behalf. Glossed in devotional narratives as tamiḻppaṇi, “Tamil work,” or tamiḻttoṇṭu, “Tamil service,” this labor is presented as honorable, virtuous, and meritorious. It is mandatory for all those who claim to be Tamilians for it is an obligation (kaṭamai), even a debt (kaṭaṉ), that they owe, by virtue of being speakers of Tamil, to their language."

"Dravidianism, too, lent its support to the contestatory classicist project, motivated principally by the political imperative of countering (Sanskritic) Indian nationalism.... It was not until the DMK came to power in 1967 that such demands were fulfilled, and the pure Tamil cause received a boost, although purification efforts are not particularly high on the agenda of either the Dravidian movement or the Dravidianist idiom of tamiḻppaṟṟu."

"...considering most of the consequences of the rediscovery of classical Tamil literary and cultural heritage, we feel we are entitled to characterize these consequences as the Tamil renaissance; that is, compared with the general cultural and even ... imaginative and erudite literature before roughly 1850, the Tamil linguistic and cultural scene exhibited unmistakable signs of vigorous revival."

"Literature in all Dravidian languages owes a great deal to Sanskrit, the magic wand whose touch raised each of the languages from a level of patois to that of a literary idiom."

"The dating of Sangam literature and the identification of its language with Old Tamil have recently been questioned by Herman Tieken who argues that the works are better understood as 9th century Pāṇṭiyan dynasty compositions, deliberately written in an archaising style to make them seem older than they were. Tieken's dating has, however, been criticised by reviewers of his work."

"In 2004 Tamil was declared a classical language of India, meaning that it met three criteria: its origins are ancient; it has an independent tradition; and it possesses a considerable body of ancient literature. In the early 21st century more than 66 million people were Tamil speakers."

"The earliest Tamil writing is attested in inscriptions and potsherds from the 5th century BCE. Three periods have been distinguished through analyses of grammatical and lexical changes: Old Tamil (from about 450 BCE to 700 CE), Middle Tamil (700–1600), and Modern Tamil (from 1600)."

"The Tamil writing system evolved from the Brahmi script. The shape of the letters changed enormously over time, eventually stabilizing when printing was introduced in the 16th century CE. The major addition to the alphabet was the incorporation of Grantha letters to write unassimilated Sanskrit words, although a few letters with irregular shapes were standardized during the modern period. A script known as Vatteluttu (“Round Script”) is also in common use."

"Spoken Tamil has changed substantially over time, including changes in the phonological structure of words. This has created diglossia—a system in which there are distinct differences between colloquial forms of a language and those that are used in formal and written contexts. The major regional variation is between the form spoken in India and that spoken in Jaffna (Sri Lanka), capital of a former Tamil city-state, and its surrounds."

"Within Tamil Nadu there are phonological differences between the northern, western, and southern speech. Regional varieties of the language intersect with varieties that are based on social class or caste."

"Like the other Dravidian languages, Tamil is characterized by a series of retroflex consonants (/ḍ/, /ṇ/, and /ṭ/) made by curling the tip of the tongue back to the roof of the mouth. Structurally, Tamil is a verb-final language that allows flexibility regarding the order of the subject and the object in a sentence. Adjectives and relative, adverbial, and infinitive clauses normally precede the term they modify, while inflections such as those for tense, number, person, and case are indicated with suffixes."

"The land of Tamil speech and people was in ancient times ruled by three famous lines of king, the Chera, Chola], and Pandiya. The land ruled by them was called Chera Nadu (Chera country), Chola Nadu (Chola country), and Pandiya Nadu (Pandiaya country) respectively."

"Tamils are of Dravidian origin. Many historians claim that the Dravidians, before the dawn of the history of the Tamils, were spread all over India. For various reasons they split into small groups. Consequently, the original language also split into different languages. Tamil is found to have retained about 80 per cent of the features of the original Dravidian language."

"There are three major sub-groups in the Dravidian family of language, namely, South Dravidian, Central Dravidian, and North Dravidian"

"The Tamil literature may broadly be classified into:(i) Sangam Classics; (ii) Bhakthi or Devotional Literature;(iii) Ethics, and (iv) Modern Literature."

"The early Tamil literatures are called [w:Sangam literature|Sangam Classics]]. Though there are controversies over the time of the Classics, generally the period between 200 BCE and 500 CE is considered the period of Sangam. Sangam Classics are mostly descriptive."

"Many of the poems [in Tamil] seem to belong to the post-Sangham Age. It is widely accepted that among these, Thirukkural was composed before the second century CE. The Thirukkural consists of 1330 Kural, which are short verses of seven words. Thiruvalluvar is the author of this book."

"The famous Tamil work Silappathikaram belongs to the later Sangam period. w:Ilango AdigalSaint Ilango, a Chera prince, wrote this epic. Silappathikaram is the story of a chaste woman, Kannaki."

"Bhakti literature deals with religious philosophy, the history of saints, etc. Most of these are devotional poems. Religious teaching entered Tamil literature for the first time in Manimekalai. Sathanar the author of this book believed in Buddhism. The philosophy of Buddha is extensively discussed in Manimekalai."

"Modern literature must be dealt with under two sub-headings: (1) Prose and (2) Poetry. It may be noted that prose writings have gained more popularity in this century. Prose style is chosen as a better medium for novels, short stories, essays, etc."

"In general, grammar includes phonology, morphology and syntax. But Classical Tamil tradition seems to differ from this. The earliest grammar Tholkappiyam deals not only with phonology, morphology and syntax but also with personal and impersonal, internal and external dialects of life, beauty of literature, behavioral dialects of human life, Tamil linguistic traditions, etc., and this portion is termed Porulathikaram."

"According to the tradition that Tholkappiyar followed a grammar is three fold: (1) Ezhuthu (sounds and letters), (2) Col (words), (3) Porul (meaning). Later it was five fold: (1) Ezhuthu, (2) Col, (3) Porul, (4) Yappu (versification), and (5) Ani (beauty of literature)."

"Works dealing exclusively with the science of music were written during the Sangam period, but were lost long ago. The Silappthikaram of the second century AD throws flood of light on the music of the Tamils. Music in Tamil nomenclature is isai. They had five kinds of Pans (specific melody type), namely Mullai, Kurinji, Marudham, Neythal and Palai. Apart from this, they had seven musical notes, viz., Kural, Thuttam, Kaykkilai, Uzhai, Ili, Vilari and Tharam."

"There is a wide gap between spoken and written Tamil. Spoken Tamil is used for face-to-face communication or in informal occasions whereas written Tamil is used during official speeches and other formal occasions. Spoken Tamil is not generally written; thus, while writing, the written form is invariably used. While there is a wide gap between the two forms of Tamil, there are certain rules the use of that help the learner to derive one form of language from another."

"There are number of universities in India and Sri Lanka which have facilities for Tamil Studies."

"Tamil, a language with a long and ancient literary tradition, has been spoken in southern India for several millennia."

"Tamil is a member of the Dravidian family, whose members are nearly all spoken in southern India. Other relatives are Telugu (spoken in south central India to the east coast), Malayalam (in Kerala State on the Malabar Coast of southwest India), Kannada (in Mysore, a region of southern India), Brahui (in southern Pakistan), and several other less well-known languages."

"Tamil linguistic variation cross classifies through three dimensions: geography, caste, and diglossia. Six regional dialects can be classified as: East, West, North, South, Central, and Sri Lanka. Sri Lanken Tamil is relatively conservative, having retained older features while continental dialects have lost them or changed in different directions. Caste dialects mostly distinguish between Brahmin and non-Brahmin varieties. Overlaying all of this are diglossic variants."

"The high status non-Brahmin dialect--which is spoken in the Central dialect area, including the cities of Tanjore, Tirichirapalli and Madurai--is apparently gaining ground as a standard language."