Etymon: paTTaN, pattan, patan

[DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA]

At 08:43 AM 11/21/97 -0500, Ramalingam Shanmugalingam wrote:
>Greetings Indologists,
>
>In a message dated 97-11-20 15:58:41 EST, you write:
>
><< How does one classify a word as Aryan or Dravidian ??
> >>
>
>       Dr. S. Ilakkuvanar in his book, Thokappiyam in English with Critical
>Studies, refers to A Comparative Grammar of Dravidian Languages by Dr.
>Calswell. "Dr. Calswell lays some conditions for deciding the nativity of the
>words to which they belong. They are as follows.
>      1. When the word is an isolated one in Sanskrit without a root and
>without derivatives, but is surrounded in the Dravidian languages with
>collateral, related or derivative words.
>       2. When Sanskrit possesses other words expressing the same idea whilst
>the Dravidian tongues have the one in question alone.
>       3. When the word is not found in any of the Indo-European tongues
>allied to Sanskrit, but is found in every Dravidian dialect, however rude.
>       4. When the derivation which the Sanskrit lexicographers have
>attributed to the word is evidently a fanciful one, whilst Dravidian
>lexicographers deduce it from some native Dravidian verbal theme of the same
>or a similar signification.
>       5. When the signification of the word is the Dravidian languages is
>evidently radical, physiological whilst the Sanskrit signification, is
>metaphorical or only collateral.
>       6. When native Tamil and Telugu scholars, notwithstanding their high
>estimation of Sanskrit, as the languages of the Gods and the mother of all
>literature, classify the word in question as a purely Dravidian one.
>       When any of these reasons is found to exist, and more especially when
>several or all of them coincide, I concieve we may safely conclude the word
>in question to be Tamilian, not a Sanskritic derivative."
>
>

I hope in the last line you mean Dravidian rather than Tamilian. As somebody
pointed out earlier on this list this appears to be due to the subconscious
identification Tamil with Dravidian.

Regards,

sarma.