India

"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."

"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."

"...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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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 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."

"Huge bonfires are lit in the evening and sweets and puffed rice are offered to the fire. People sing and dance around the fire to the beat of dholak (drum). The men dance the bhangra dance while the women dance the gidda."

"In North India, apart from Makar Sankranti, Lohri is also celebrated around this time. It falls on 13th January. Primarily is celebrated in Punjab, it is a harvest festival."

"In South India, crops are harvested around this time and w:PongalPongal is celebrated."

"In the west of India, in the state of Maharashtra, sweets made of sesame are exchanged. In Gujarat, kite-flying competitions take place. The sky is flooded with brightly- coloured kites."

"The day begins with a bath in a river or tank, when water is offered to the Sun god. The rivers and tanks are often crowded with people eager to have a bath. An important aspect of Makar Sankranti is giving charity. It is believed that people who perform charitable deeds earn a place in heaven."

"In India with the new year comes the festival of Makar Sankranti, a festival celebrated by Hindus. Makar Sankranti falls on the day of the year when the sun, the king of all planets, is in the rasi (house) of Makar (Capricorn). This is considered to be the most holy festival of the year. Makar Sankranti always falls on January 14. According to the Hindu calendar, it is celebrated in the month of Magha."

"So what day to celebrate? Well, if you want to celebrate Uttarayan, do it on December 21, but if you want to celebrate Makar Sankranti, January 14 is about right. Incidentally, it also means that winter, which is at its peak in January and February, used to be at its peak in February and March at the time of Aryabhata."

"While the exact day on which the winter or summer solstice occurs remains steady (within one day error), there is a slight change in the way the Earth's rotation axis is aligned to the sun. Hence, over a period of a few hundred years, this drift means that even though the sun begins its Uttarayan on December 21, it is not in the Makara rashi as it was about 1,500 years ago. So, 1,500 years ago, during the time of Aryabhata, the Uttarayan and Makar Sankranti coincided. Now Makar Sankranti comes on January 14, but Uttarayan happens on Dhanu Sankranti!"

"January 14 is the day on which the sun begins to rise in the Makara Rashi, Sankranti meaning entering."

"Makar Sankranti is unique as it goes entirely by the solar calendar. The clue to this mystery lies in the fact that Makar Sankranti is also called Uttarayan, or the day on which the sun begins its northward journey."

"On January 14 every year, Makar Sankranti, is the only Indian festival celebrated on a fixed calendric day of the solar calendar."

"Kite flying has become a popular activity in India, and for the more secular minded, it has become the dominant aspect of this day. The city of Delhi holds an annual Kite Flying Day festival on January 14, and the celebration has spread across the country."

"The largest gathering for Makar Sankranti is on Sager Island in West Bengal at the point the Hooghly River, a branch of the Ganges as it spreads out approaching the Indian Ocean and meets the Bay of Bengal. Each January, several hundred thousand pilgrims gather on the island for the beginning of spring. Makar Sankranti occurs in the middle of the lengthy"

"Makar Sankranti is also fraught with implications for the early phases of the agricultural cycle. It is a time to pray for a prosperous growing season and a good future harvest, and a time to bathe one's cows, so essential to all aspects of agricultural production.It is a time to remember [[ancestors and, in the evenings, to celebrate around bonfires."

"A variety of stories are told of Surya, which have implications for observance of this day(s). The sun god, for example, had a number of children, among them the Lord Shani, one the nine primary celestial beings in Hindu astrology; Shani is identified with planet Saturn. When Shanti was born, it is said, an eclipse of the sun occurred. It is also said that Surya and Shani have their differences, but always on Makara Sankranthi, Surya visits with Shani- thus fathers should visit their sons. Food, especially sweets, will be prepared using til sesame seed oil), which is valued for its stickiness or binding quality. Thus, the sweets that people will give those close to them are a symbol of being bound together, whatever differences might arise."

"Makar Sankranti is observed in the month of Magha as the sun enters Capricorn on or near January 14 on the Common Era calendar. It is also celebrated as Uttarayana Punyakala Makara Sankranti (in Karnataka), Uttarayana Punyakalam Pongal (in Tamil Nadu), and Pedda Panduga (in Andhra Pradesh)."

"Makar Sankranti (January 14) is a festival held across India, under a variety of names, to honor the god of the sun, Surya. Though often relegated to a secondary position relative to the three prominent Hindu deities — Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva. Surya was a key figure in the ancient Hindu texts, the Vedas, and is the subject of the most repeated texts of Hindu liturgy, the Gayatri Mantra."

"Makar Sankranti heralds the end of winter and the arrival of spring throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Through the next six months, called the Uttarayana period, the days will become longer and warmer, and the whole period is considered an auspicious time. The day is also tied to the just-celebrated Bhishma Astami, which remembered the death of the hero Bhishma from the ancient Hindu epic the Mahabharata, who chose to die just as the Uttrayana period began."

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

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

"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"

"During 1800s The Nayak Hindu Brahmins dominated the villages and Tamil Religion was Forbidden"

"By encouraging ethnic communities to re-enact and re-experience concentrated versions of a particular ethnic identity in a public (and even ritualistic) manner, tamil religious festivals such as mentioned above exemplify the form of "Tamilism""

"Tamilism - popularly known as Tamil matham ('the Tamil religion')"

"Tamilism is an Ancient and Ethnic Religion of Tamil people. It denotes the religious traditions and practices of Tamil people and also know as Tamil Religion."

"During the medieval period Tamil absorbed many loan words from Sanskrit in the verbal system, but in the 1900s attempts were made to purge Tamil of its Sanskrit loans with the result that modern scientific and bureaucratic terminology is Tamil-based and not Sanskrit-based as in other Indic languages."

"Three stages appear in the written records: ancient (200 BC to 700), medieval (700 - 1500) and modern (1500 to the present). Sometime between 800 and the turn of the millennium, Malayalam, a very closely related Dravidian language, split off and became a distinct language."

"Among the four ancient literary languages of southern India (Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, and Telugu) Tamil has the longest tradition. The earliest records date from inscriptions from 200 BC. Other early works exist which were preserved on manuscripts made by palm-leaf and through oral transmission. Part of this rich and varied literary output includes a Tamil indigenous grammatical tradition independent of that of the ancient Sanskrit grammarians. The earliest text which describes the language of the classical period is the Tolkappiyam (dating from around 200 BC); another dates from the year 1000."

"In both India and Sri Lanka, Tamil has the status of an official language. In India it is one of fourteen official languages, and in Sri Lanka it shares that status with Sinhalese. It is the first official language of India's Tamil Nadu state."

"All Tamil speakers, including the uneducated, use two varieties of the language which only roughly correspond to the difference between literary and spoken Tamil. A high status variety is used in most writing, the media--including radio and television broadcasts--political speeches and other similar occasions. In contrast, a low status variety is used in every day discourse and conversations. It is also used in film and some authors of fiction use the variety as do some politicians and lecturers to create solidarity, or enhance intimacy, with their audiences."

"Besides loans from Sanskrit, and some borrowing from Persian and Arabic, English in modern times has supplied a lot of loan words, but because of the emphasis on linguistic purism in Tamil grammatical tradition loans are assimilated to the phonological system."

"Tamil has a verbal category called "attitude" which is used to indicate the speaker's state of mind and subjective attitude about the narrated event. Verb auxiliaries are used for this purpose; examples of affected states projected are: pejorative opinion, antipathy, relief that a unpleasant event has ended, undesirability about the result of an event, and so on."

"Word order is Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) and even though case and post positions are used to mark grammatical relations, word order is not completely free as it might be in similarly structured languages. Even where variation is allowed the verb in simple sentences must always come to the far right of the sentence."

"Verbs are formally inflected principally for mood and tense by a grammatical particle suffixed to the stem. Most verbs also mark affective and effective "voice" (not equivalent to the notions "transitivity" or "causation") where the former indicates that the subject undergoes the action named by the stem, and the latter signals that the subject directs the action of the stem. Mood is also marked implicitly by grammatical formatives which also mark tense categories. These signal that the verbal event is, for example, unreal, possible, potential, or a real, and actual. There are three simple tenses (past, present, and future), and a series of perfects."

"Modern Tamil has no articles; definiteness and indefiniteness are signaled by other grammatical devices, such as the number "one," used as an indefinite article. Compound nouns are used as deictic pronouns (demonstratives), which are used to indicate objects close by, at a distance, and a kind of neutral; Sri Lankan Tamil has a fourth indicating medial distance."

"Nouns, a broad classification in Tamil grammatical terminology, include common and proper nouns, numerals, pronouns and some so-called adjectives; they inflect for case, person, number (singular and plural), and gender. There are two genders which are based on the referent's natural gender and correspond roughly to the distinction human/nonhuman; they are called "rational" (e.g., nouns referring to men, deities, women in some dialects) and "irrational" (e.g., women in some dialects, children, animals) respectively. There are 8 cases (nominative, accusative, dative, sociative, genitive, instrumental, locative, and ablative)."

"Tamil, like other Dravidian languages, is an agglutinating language in which morphemes are transparently separable and analyzable affixes which are attached to roots or stems; such affixes in Tamil are nearly always suffixal. Words are made up of lexical roots, or stems (roots that have been expanded by a derivational suffix), followed by inflectional suffix(es) which mark such categories as, for example, person, number, mood, tense, etc."

"Tamil is written in an alpha-syllabic system like that of other South Asian languages. It derives from the Ashokan Brahmi script. Vowels have two forms, once used at the beginning of a word, another used following consonant symbols. Each consonant graph symbolizes the consonant plus following vowel "a". When another vowel symbol is used the "a" vowel is suppressed. Consonant symbols with a diacritic are used to represent just the consonant itself."