Continuing the review of Passions of the Tongue

Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan Palaniappa at AOL.COM
Sat Sep 11 03:52:55 UTC 1999


raja at IFA.HAWAII.EDU asked:

> Could he just have been stating a simple fact,
>  i.e., that ceGkuTTuvan2 was mATalan2's king,
>  rather than "articulating a  case of linguistic
>  nationalism"?

No, because mATalan2's king is a Chola  while ceGkuTTuvan2 is a Chera king.
The conversation takes place on the bank of the river gaGgA.

Now back to the review.

Discussing European scholars Beschi, Robert Caldwell, and G. U. Pope, Sumathi
Ramaswamy writes:

<Indeed, a virtual hagiography has emerged around these figures whose
"missionary" presence in the region is glossed over in favor of their role as
"Christian devotees" of tamizttAy. Adulation of these European missionaries
within devotional discourses contrasts curiously with the powerful critique
of missionary linguistics in Western academic circles in recent years. For
rather than innocently recovering dying languages and lost literatures,
missionaries colluded with colonial power structures in reconfiguring
"native" vocabularies, restructuring  "indigenous" grammars in accordance
with Western categories, superimposing alien ways of conceptualizing
languages over conventional notions, and so on (Cohn 1985; Fabian 1986;
Rafael 1988). However, Tamil's enthusiasts, and even academics in Tamilnadu
today, rarely allege that these missionaries violated Tamil, though they so
accuse other "foreigners," such as Brahmans and Aryans from North India..> p.
190

Ramaswamy's complaint "However, Tamil's enthusiasts, and even academics in
Tamilnadu today, rarely allege that these missionaries violated Tamil, though
they so accuse other "foreigners," such as Brahmans and Aryans from North
India" reveals some logical flaws in her thinking as well as her ignorance of
the history of Tamil grammatical tradition as we'll see.

Missionaries in Tamilnadu did not write grammars for the sake of getting them
published by University presses and getting tenure. Apart from any purely
scholarly reason, their main goal was to help other non-Tamil missionaries to
learn the languages of their future congregations. For this, they had
prepared their grammars based on the expected students' previous grammatical
background. I do not see anything wrong in that.

Regards
S. Palaniappan





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