Govala/Golla and tamil KOvalar tribes

[Periannan Chandrasekaran]

--- Lakshmi Srinivas <lsrinivas at YAHOO.COM> wrote:
> --- "N. Ganesan" <naga_ganesan at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:
> >
> > Online Tamil lexicon entry:
> > *kOvalar* = 1) men of the sylvan tract, 2) herdsmen
> >
> > There are 100s of references for "kOvalar" as
> > herdsmen in Sangam poetry and Alvar/NAyanmAr bhakti
> > corpus.
> > An example:
> > kuRuntokai - "pal An2 kOvalar"
> > tEvAram - "kollaivAyk kuruntu ocittuk kuzalum Utum
> > kOvalan2um"
> > (Krishna is the cowherd called Kovalan here.)
>
> kOvalan < gopAla?
> >
> > In old times, Gollas were called "Govalas", usually
> > rendered in English as Goalas. An example:
...

There is a very interesting and directly related DEDR entry:
DEDR #2218:

Te. kOvuramu  ambush, lying in ambush
Pa. kOp- (kOt-) =  to tend (cattle)
Ga. kOp- (kOt-) id.
Go. kOpal, kopAl = cowherd;
 kOpAl = term of abuse applied  to Gaiki graziers;
 kOpe = cowherdess
 koh-  to tend cattle;
 kohval cowherd
Kui. kOpa = to tend, herd (cattle, sheep); n. tending, herding
?Cf. 1416 Ta. kA. DED(S) 1838

where DEDR #1416 is:
Ta. kA = to preserve, shelter, watch, guard...etc.

That the aforementioned entry #2218 is not at all annotated
with any relationship to Skt. gOpAla is puzzling.
This then provides a basis for reasoning that Ta. kOvalan2
is indeed Dravidian nothing to do with Skt. gOpAla, which
raises the question of why did Burrows and Emeneau not
include Ta. kOvalan2 = cowherd in this entry?
What gives?

Regards,
P. Chandrasekaran.







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