linguistics (was: Tamil words in English)

[S Krishna]

Bhadriah Mallampalli:
>Indians of south Indian origin do have dark features, but Indians from
eastern
>states have mongoloid features (a fact conveniently ignored by IE
gang),

There are verses refering to people as  "anAsa"(nAsa,nAsikA =nose)..this
was interpreted as refering to "aboriginals"...now, if one were to go to
Eastern India, the hill tribes were treated as aboriginals by the more
"advanced" races..the word "nAga" for the residents of nAgaland is
derived from the samskrt "nAga:"( snake, cobra) by some people and from
assamese "nOgA"( nude, naked, a reference to their primitiveness) by
others....so there is a minor error in that the translator did not
explicitly say "mongoloids" but this interpretation is backed up IF the
AIT is true....

I thank S.Palaniappan for the interesting examples that he gave and
for the correction inserted regarding puRam 201(I confused this poem
with another one translated by Hart where the king becomes a
"pulavan2"and sings his own praise, mea culpa). Along the lines of the
Kharavela thing (mentioned in Orissa but not in Tamil NAdu), there is
another interesting story in Orissa which to the best of my knowledge is
not mentioned in Tamil NAdu..In Puri,(site of the JAgannatha temple)
there was a king who went to Madurai and fell in love with the local
princess, whose name was padmAvatI . padmAvatI's father agreed to the
match and sent his minister along with the king of pUri( purushottama)
back to pUrI. In the annual ratha yatra of the jagannatha temple,it
was/is the custom for the rAja to come sweep the street in front of the
"ratha"( the symbolic meaning being that the king was a servant of
jagannatha).

  The minister from madurai saw this, felt offended by the thought
of the king being a sweeper and went back to madurai and prevailed upon
the king to cancel the wedding, upon which puruSOttama went to madurai,
defeated the king and married padmAvatI...this story seems
popular in orissa but seems unknown in TN....

Regards,
Krishna






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