Dravidian origins

[N. Ganesan]

<<<
"At an early stage in his missionary career, Caldwell became
interested in  a toddy-tapping caste known as the Shanars (today
called Nadars), and in 1849 he published a book entitled The
Tinnevelly Shanars. It earned him considerable repute, but annoyed the
English educated Shanars, who disliked his ascribing a non-Aryan
origin to their group. Some twenty years after the publication of the
book agitation against it was started. There was great controversy,
and some riots occured, and the book was withdrawn from  circulation"
from , Politics and Social Conflict in South India: Eugene Irschilk:
Politics and Social Conflict in South India
>>>

  I read Irschick a while ago. In the 19th century, the
toddy-tapping caste of Nadars were being ill-treated.
In their historic struggle to rise in the caste ladder, the right to
wear blouses by their women in the erstwhile Travancore
kingdom is paramount. A. Sivasubramanian, R. Hardgrave, ...
have written on 'breast-cloth controversy'.

  There were caste wars among Vellalas with two warring factions:
one side (conservative) claimed they are shudras, a (little
liberal) side claimed they are vaishyas. Saiva adheenams
supported shudraship. Because everyone was claiming something
higher in the caste ladder, English-educated Nadars might
have thought it's strategically important to claim Aryanhood.
The 19th century caste tracts and they are sadly withering away.
Irschick, and even Indians work mostly from the 19th century
english newspapers, mostly they know no tamil or other Indian
languages.

Note that these rich Nadars asserted their membership in
the coveted Aryan country club because it was important, but
never opposed the independence of Tamil and Dravidian languages from
Sanskrit and IE family.

It's usually claimed that William Jones invented the idea
of a Language family and thereby led to the beginning of
Linguistics. In the West may be. But there are prehistories for the
Language family idea. Tamil grammarians have always said
that Tamil is independent of Sanskrit, and invented an
alphabet for Tamil. Among all Indian languages, it is
only Tamil that has a diiferent alphabet and order
than that of Sanskrit. Tamils wrote several centuries
before Jones that Shiva taught Tamil to Agastyar, just
as he did to Panini with Sanskrit. Also, even a sub-distinction
within a Language family was known to Tamils 1000 years ago:
In Kalingattup paraNi, JayamkoNTAR notes the close
relations between Kannada and Tamil, but even though
he was frequenting Telugu country and Kalingam,
he does not emphasize the close relations between
Tamil and Telugu which are from South and Central Drav.
families respectively (also, akanAn2URu).

Also, Tamil grammarians while writing/updating tamil
grammar, paid close attention to reading Kannada
and Telugu languages and their properties, so say the ancient
Tamil grammars. To me, the idea of Tamil being independent of
Sanskrit, and Tamil's close relations between Telugu and Kannada
show that the Language family idea was discovered
by those Tamil grammarians.

It was the teachers like Saminathar and Ramacandra KavirAyar
who told Ellis about the independence of Tamil and
its relations between her neighbors. F. W. Ellis wrote in
English about the Drav. family's independence, and
he took Telugu as an example (Tamil was too obvious) and made his
protege A. Campbell write about the Dravidian family
(whic is an isolate family in the whole world).
Of course, there was substantial opposition from
the Calcutta oriental establishment focusing
on Persian and Sanskrit. Ellis wrote about Dravidian
languages being present on the Ganges belt in 1816!

Rev. Caldwell consolidated what Ellis began and it was
he who formulated the three major language families:
IA, Drav., and Munda.


Regards,
N. Ganesan

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