Monday, December 10, 2007

Sunday, December 9, 2007

Thamizh Thaai Vaazhthu -1 (as recited in Tamilnadu functions)



Here are the original verses of Sundaram Pillai from which the current edited versions are drawn from:

The Sixty-four Arts (அறுபத்துநாலு கலைகள்)

The Sixty-four Arts

1. Toilet Make-up, toilet and use of beautifying agents
2. Painting the body, and colouring the nails, hair, etc.
3. Decoration of the forehead.
4. Art of hair dressing. Dressing
5. Art of dressing.
6. Proper matching of decorations and jewellery. Music and Dancing
7. Singing.
8. Playing on musical instruments.
9. Playing on musical glasses filled with water.
10. Acting.
11. Dancing. General Education
12. Good manners and etiquette.
13. Knowledge of diffenrent langguages and dialects.
14. Knowledge of vocabularies.
15. Knowledge of Rhetoric or Figures of Speech.
16. Reading.
17. Reciting poems.
18. Criticism of poems.
19. Criticism of dramas and analysis of stories.
20. Filling up the missing line of a poem.
21.Composing poems to order.
22. Reply in verse (when one person recites a poem, another gives the reply in verse).
23. The art of speaking by changing the forms of words.
24. Art of knowing the character of a man from his features.
25. Art of attracting others (bewitching). Domestic Science
26. Art of cooking.
27. Preparation of different beverages, sweet and acid drinks, chutneys, etc.
28. Sewing and needle work.
29. Making of different beds for different purposes and for different seasons. Physical culture 30. Physical culture.
31. Skill in youthful sports.
32. Swimming and water-sports. Games
33. Games of dice, chess, etc.
34. Games of chance.
35. Puzzles and their solution.
36. Arithmetical games. Art of Entertaining
37. Magic: art of creating illusions.
38. Trick of hand.
39. Mimicry or imitation (of voice or sounds).
40. Art of disguise. Fine Arts
41. Painting in colours.
42. Stringing flowers into garlands and other ornaments for decorating the body, such as crowns, clapnets, etc.
43. Floral decorations of carriages.
44. Making of artificial flowers.
45. Preparation of ear-rings of shell, ivory, etc.
46. Making birds, flowers, etc., of thread or yarn.
47. Clay-modelling: making figures and images.
48. The art of changing the appearance of things such as
making to appear as silk. Pet Animals
49. Training parrots and other birds to talk.
50. Training rams and cocks and other birds for mock fight.
Professional Training
51. Gardening and agriculture.
52. Preparation of perfumery.
53. Making furniture from canes and reeds.
54. Wood-engraving.
55. Carpentry.
56. Knowledge of machinery.
57. Construction of building (Architecture).
58. Floor decoration with coloured stones.
59. Knowledge of metals.
60. Knowledge of gems and jewels.
61. Colouring precious stones.
62. Art of war.
63. Knowledge of code words.
64. Signals for conveying messages.

Saturday, December 8, 2007

Statement on the Status of Tamil as a Classical Language- George L. Hart

April 11, 2000

Statement on the Status of Tamil as a Classical Language

Professor Maraimalai has asked me to write regarding the position of Tamil as a classical language, and I am delighted to respond to his request.

I have been a Professor of Tamil at the University of California, Berkeley, since 1975 and am currently holder of the Tamil Chair at that institution. My degree, which I received in 1970, is in Sanskrit, from Harvard, and my first employment was as a Sanskrit professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1969. Besides Tamil and Sanskrit, I know the classical languages of Latin and Greek and have read extensively in their literatures in the original. I am also well-acquainted with comparative linguistics and the literatures of modern Europe (I know Russian, German, and French and have read extensively in those languages) as well as the literatures of modern India, which, with the exception of Tamil and some Malayalam, I have read in translation. I have spent much time discussing Telugu literature and its tradition with V. Narayanarao, one of the greatest living Telugu scholars, and so I know that tradition especially well. As a long-standing member of a South Asian Studies department, I have also been exposed to the richness of both Hindi literature, and I have read in detail about Mahadevi Varma, Tulsi, and Kabir.

I have spent many years -- most of my life (since 1963) -- studying Sanskrit. I have read in the original all of Kalidasa, Magha, and parts of Bharavi and Sri Harsa. I have also read in the original the fifth book of the Rig Veda as well as many other sections, many of the Upanisads, most of the Mahabharata, the Kathasaritsagara, Adi Sankara’s works, and many other works in Sanskrit.

I say this not because I wish to show my erudition, but rather to establish my fitness for judging whether a literature is classical. Let me state unequivocally that, by any criteria one may choose, Tamil is one of the great classical literatures and traditions of the world.

The reasons for this are many; let me consider them one by one.

First, Tamil is of considerable antiquity. It predates the literatures of other modern Indian languages by more than a thousand years. Its oldest work, the Tolkappiyam,, contains parts that, judging from the earliest Tamil inscriptions, date back to about 200 BCE. The greatest works of ancient Tamil, the Sangam anthologies and the Pattuppattu, date to the first two centuries of the current era. They are the first great secular body of poetry written in India, predating Kalidasa's works by two hundred years.

Second, Tamil constitutes the only literary tradition indigenous to India that is not derived from Sanskrit. Indeed, its literature arose before the influence of Sanskrit in the South became strong and so is qualitatively different from anything we have in Sanskrit or other Indian languages. It has its own poetic theory, its own grammatical tradition, its own esthetics, and, above all, a large body of literature that is quite unique. It shows a sort of Indian sensibility that is quite different from anything in Sanskrit or other Indian languages, and it contains its own extremely rich and vast intellectual tradition.

Third, the quality of classical Tamil literature is such that it is fit to stand beside the great literatures of Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Chinese, Persian and Arabic. The subtlety and profundity of its works, their varied scope (Tamil is the only premodern Indian literature to treat the subaltern extensively), and their universality qualify Tamil to stand as one of the great classical traditions and literatures of the world. Everyone knows the Tirukkural, one of the world's greatest works on ethics; but this is merely one of a myriad of major and extremely varied works that comprise the Tamil classical tradition. There is not a facet of human existence that is not explored and illuminated by this great literature.

Finally, Tamil is one of the primary independent sources of modern Indian culture and tradition. I have written extensively on the influence of a Southern tradition on the Sanskrit poetic tradition. But equally important, the great sacred works of Tamil Hinduism, beginning with the Sangam Anthologies, have undergirded the development of modern Hinduism. Their ideas were taken into the Bhagavata Purana and other texts (in Telugu and Kannada as well as Sanskrit), whence they spread all over India. Tamil has its own works that are considered to be as sacred as the Vedas and that are recited alongside Vedic mantras in the great Vaisnava temples of South India (such as Tirupati). And just as Sanskrit is the source of the modern Indo-Aryan languages, classical Tamil is the source language of modern Tamil and Malayalam. As Sanskrit is the most conservative and least changed of the Indo-Aryan languages, Tamil is the most conservative of the Dravidian languages, the touchstone that linguists must consult to understand the nature and development of Dravidian.

In trying to discern why Tamil has not been recognized as a classical language, I can see only a political reason: there is a fear that if Tamil is selected as a classical language, other Indian languages may claim similar status. This is an unnecessary worry. I am well aware of the richness of the modern Indian languages -- I know that they are among the most fecund and productive languages on earth, each having begotten a modern (and often medieval) literature that can stand with any of the major literatures of the world. Yet none of them is a classical language. Like English and the other modern languages of Europe (with the exception of Greek), they rose on preexisting traditions rather late and developed in the second millennium. The fact that Greek is universally recognized as a classical language in Europe does not lead the French or the English to claim classical status for their languages.

To qualify as a classical tradition, a language must fit several criteria: it should be ancient, it should be an independent tradition that arose mostly on its own not as an offshoot of another tradition, and it must have a large and extremely rich body of ancient literature. Unlike the other modern languages of India, Tamil meets each of these requirements. It is extremely old (as old as Latin and older than Arabic); it arose as an entirely independent tradition, with almost no influence from Sanskrit or other languages; and its ancient literature is indescribably vast and rich.

It seems strange to me that I should have to write an essay such as this claiming that Tamil is a classical literature -- it is akin to claiming that India is a great country or Hinduism is one of the world's great religions. The status of Tamil as one of the great classical languages of the world is something that is patently obvious to anyone who knows the subject. To deny that Tamil is a classical language is to deny a vital and central part of the greatness and richness of Indian culture.


(Signed:)
George L. Hart
Professor of Tamil
Chair in Tamil Studies

Thursday, December 6, 2007

A Note on the Muruku Sign of the Indus Script in light of the Mayiladuthurai Stone Axe Discovery - by Iravatham Mahadevan, May 6 2006

Unicorn Seal, Harappa, found 1998There are two near-identical signs in the Indus Script (Nos. 47 & 48, I. Mahadevan 1977) depicting a seated god identified as muruku for reasons summarised in this Note. (For background details, see my 1999 paper Murukan In The Indus Script).

A deity in the Indus script is likely to be an ideogram with a recognizable anthropomorphic form. The sign will also be of frequent occurrence and occur in repetitive passages suggesting some religious formula. Signs 47 and 48 representing a seated human-like figure meet the requirements and are identified as prima facie representing a popular Harappan deity.


The deity is represented as a skeletal body with a prominent row of ribs (in sign 48 only) and is shown seated on his haunches, body bent and contracted, with lower limbs folded and knees drawn up.

The two related but distinct signs of the Indus script seem to have later coalesced into one symbol (resembling sign 47) outside the Harappan region. (For pictorial parallels from later times, see illustrations in I. Mahadevan 1999).

According to the interpretation proposed here, the seated posture is suggestive of divinity and the skeletal body gives the linguistic clue to the name of the deity. The basic Dravidian word mur (Ta. muri, Ka. muruhu, Pa. & Ga. murg, Go. moorga etc., DEDR. 4977) means 'to bend, contract, fold' etc. Applying the technique of rebus, we get mur (Ta. murunku, murukku; Ma.murukka, Kol., Nk. murk, Malt. murke etc., DEDR 4975) meaning 'to destroy, kill, cut'. etc. Thus the name of the deity muruku and his characteristics 'destroyer, killer' are derived.

The skeletal forms in the pictograms suggest that the god was conceived as a disembodied spirit.

Turning to the oldest layer of Tamil Sangam literature, We find that muruku/ murukan was a spirit who manifested himself only by possessing his priest (velan) or young maidens. The priest performed the veri dance to pacify the spirit. The earliest references to muruku in Old Tamil portray him as a 'wrathful killer' indicating his prowess as a war god and hunter (P.L. Samy 1990). Another important clue is the frequent association of the muruku and the load-bearer signs in the Indus Texts, paralleled by the association of murukan with kavadi in the Tamil society. Outside the Indus valley, the muruku symbol has been found on a seal from Vaisali, Bihar, dating probably from ca. 1100 BCE. (for details and previous references, see. I. Mahadevan 1999).

In Tamil Nadu, the muruku symbol was first identified from the pottery graffiti at Sanur, a megalithic site. B.B. Lal (1960) correctly identified this symbol with sign 47 of the Indus script. In recent years the muruku symbol has turned up among pottery graffiti found at Mangudi (TN Dept. of Archaeology, 2003) and at Muciri, Kerala (V. Selvakumar et al, in press).

All these occurrences on pottery belong to the Late Megalithic-Iron Age period overlapping with Early Historic Period (broadly, ca. 3cent. BCE-3 cent. CE). It is likely that the symbol retained the same meaning and sound value as at Harappa, though it occurs only as an isolated symbol on Megalithic pottery and not part of a script. 2

However, the latest discovery of an Indus Text with four signs engraved on a Neolithic polished stone celt (ca. 2000-1000 BCE) from Tamil Nadu is a revolutionary advance with far-reaching implications. Unlike the megalithic graffiti, the text on the Neolithic tool is in the classical Indus script characters. The first and the second signs (signs 48 and signs 342), namely muruku and the 'jar' (to be read as -an) also form a well-known and very frequent combination on the Indus seals and sealings especially from Harappa. The third and fourth signs also occur in the Indus script (signs 367 & signs301), but their value is not yet known.

We can therefore conclude that the Harappans and the Neolithic people of Tamil country spoke the same language, namely Dravidian. It is recorded that the Neolithic people of South India were in contact with the Late Harappan or post -Harappan people of the Deccan. It is known that gold for the ornaments found at Mohenjodaro came from the Kolar gold fields in Karnataka. Finally, reference can be made to the traditional accounts in old Tamil literature tracing the origin of the Velir cheiftains to migration from the Saurashtra region of Gujarat which was at that time part of the Harappan civilization.

It is emphasised that the occurrence of the Indus text on the Neolithic tool and the consequences flowing therefrom are independent of the tentative phonetic values and meanings proposed by me.

Photograph of stone celt courtesy The Hindu.

Rajaraja the Great.


Rajaraja’s great reign is commemorated by the magnificent Siva temple in Thanjavur, the finest monument of this period of South Indian history. The temple is remarkable both for its massive proportions and for its simplicity of design. It is now recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, forming part of the Great Living Chola Temples site.

The construction of the temple is said to have been completed on the 275th day of the 25th year of his reign.After its commemoration the great temple and the capital had close business relations with the rest of the country and acted as a centre of both religious and economic activity. Year after year villages from all over the country had to supply men and material for the temple maintenance.

KALLANAI

The Grand Anicut, also known as the Kallanai, is an ancient dam built on the Kaveri River in the state of Tamil Nadu in southern India.

Kallanai Built By Karikalan, A Chola King. (This image also shows 19th century additions to the ancient dam)
Kallanai Built By Karikalan, A Chola King. (This image also shows 19th century additions to the ancient dam)

It was built by the Chola king Karikalan around the 1st Century AD[1] and is considered one of the oldest water-diversion or water-regulator structure in the world, still in use.[2][3] The Kaveri River forms the boundary between the Erode and Salem districts. The Bhavani River joins the Kaveri at the town of Bhavani, where the Sangameswarar Temple, an important pilgrimage spot in southern India, was built at the confluence of the two rivers. Sweeping past the historic rock of Tiruchirapalli, it breaks into two channels at the island of Srirangam, which enclose between them the delta of Thanjavur (Tanjore), the garden of South India.

The northern channel is called the Kollidam (Kolidam); the other preserves the name of Cauvery, and empties into the Bay of Bengal at Poompuhar, a few hundred miles south of Chennai (Madras). On the seaward face of its delta are the seaports of Nagapattinam and Karikal. Irrigation works have been constructed in the delta for over 2,000 years.

The Kallanai is a massive dam of unhewn stone, 329 metres (1,080 feet) long and 20 metres (60 feet) wide, across the main stream of the Cauvery. The purpose of the dam was to divert the waters of the Cauvery across the fertile Delta region for irrigation via canals. The dam is still in excellent repair, and supplied a model to later engineers, including the Sir Arthur Cotton's 19th-century dam across the Kollidam, the major tributary of the Cauvery. The area irrigated by the ancient irrigation network of which the dam was the centrepiece was 69,000 acres (280 square kilometres). By the early 20th century the irrigated area had been increased to about 1,000,000 acres (4,000 square kilometres).







Gangai Konda Chola Puram

To commemorate his celebrated northern campaign to the Ganges, Rajendra assumed the title of Gangaikonda Chola and had the Siva Temple Gangakkondacholeswaram built. Soon after the capital was moved from Thanjavur to Gangaikondacholapuram. Rajendra probably founded the city of Gangaikondacholapuram before his 17th year.

Most of the Chola kings who succeeded Rajendra were crowned here. They retained it as their capital, reoriented and trained the efficient Chola army. It is not known whether the capital was moved to the new location for strategic purposes, as the old capital Thanjavur had very strong fortifications.

Monday, November 26, 2007

Recognising a classic- S. VISWANATHAN - Frontline

Tamil scholars welcome the recognition of Tamil as a classical language by the Central government but caution against losing sight of the need to modernise the language.

A MID-SEPTEMBER decision by the Union Cabinet to declare Tamil a `classical language' brought cheer to the millions of Tamil-speaking people across the world. For the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the Centre, the unique honour bestowed on the 2,500-year-old language marked the fulfilment of a promise made in the National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP), within six months of coming to power. The government's commitment on this, in fact, found mention in the President's address to Parliament in June.

V. GANESAN

DMK president M. Karunanidhi.

For the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and other UPA constituents in Tamil Nadu this meant the redemption of their pledge to the electorate. And for DMK president M. Karunanidhi it is a personal success inasmuch as he had to employ all his political skills to get this long-time wish of the Tamil community realised. It is celebration time in the State, with political, social and cultural organisations vying with one another to thank him. The ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) in Tamil Nadu had also been pressing the Centre to accept the demand and it has welcomed the decision.

Briefing the media after a meeting of the Union Cabinet on September 17, Information and Broadcasting Minister S. Jaipal Reddy said the government's decision was based on the recommendation of an Expert Committee of the Sahitya Akademi that a category of "classical languages" be created. Since Tamil fulfilled the set of criteria that the Committee had evolved, it won the honour of being the first to get into this prestigious category. Although Tamil and a few other languages such as Greek, Latin and Sanskrit enjoy the status of `classical language' in the academic world thanks to their antiquity and rich literary heritage, Tamil is the first living language to be given the official status of a classical language.

Jaipal Reddy said the government would consider Sanskrit or any other language for inclusion in the category depending on their "heritage and legacy". The Minister said a Committee of Linguistic Experts would consider any future demand for `classical language' status in accordance with the criteria evolved by the Expert Committee of the Sahitya Akademi. The Expert Committee was specially appointed by the government to consider Tamil's case for being given `classical language' status. The criteria, as reported by the media, are: the language should have early texts or recorded history of at least one thousand years; a body of ancient literature or texts, considered a valuable heritage by a generation of speakers; and a literary tradition that is original and not borrowed from another speech community.

Explaining what the honour means in terms of the development of Tamil language and literature and spread of Tamil studies, Jaipal Reddy said two major international awards would be given annually to scholars of eminence in the classical Indian languages. Besides, a centre of excellence for studies in classical languages would be set up and the University Grants Commission would be requested to establish a number of professional chairs for classical languages.

A section of Tamil writers and scholars, however, expresses the view that Tamil already enjoys the status of "classical language" in many universities and academic research organisations in several countries and that chairs for Tamil Studies have been instituted in their departments of Classical Languages. These institutions acknowledge ancient Tamil literature as "classical literature" and treat it on a par with classical literature of Greek, Latin and Sanskrit. The critics describe the entire episode as "nothing but a political gimmick" and are sceptical of the Tamil language making any remarkable gain from the status enhancement.

However, Karunanidhi considers state recognition and patronage as significant factors for the growth of languages. To substantiate this, he explained at a public function in Chennai, held on October 10 to felicitate him, how Sanskrit benefited from the patronage of Tamil rulers such as the Pallavas and the Cholas. Some of these rulers, he said, even leaned more on the side of Sanskrit than Tamil.

The DMK president dedicated his triumph on the issue and the encomiums showered on him to the scores of eminent Tamil scholars, among them Bishop Robert Caldwell (1814-1891, a British linguist who authored Comparative Grammar of Dravidian Languages) and Parithimaal Kalaingar, who contributed in a big way to establish the greatness of Tamil language and literature. He pledged to strive to make Tamil one of the official languages of the Union government.



Manavai Mustafa.

Parithimaal Kalaingar (1870-1903) was a Professor of Tamil in Madras Christian College, in what is now Chennai, from 1895 to 1903. He was the first to stake Tamil's claim for the status of classical language, at the academic level. A scholar in both Tamil and Sanskrit, he was so devoted to Tamil that he changed his Sanskrit name, (V.G.) Sooryanarayana Shastri, into Tamil. Along with M.S. Poornalingam Pillai, a key figure in the Self-Respect Movement, Parithimaal Kalaingar intervened on behalf of Tamil during a crucial period in the educational history of Tamil Nadu.

The 19th century saw the emergence of several colleges in the country. In schools, English was the First Language and the regional language was taught as the Second Language. On the question of choosing a non-English language for study in colleges, there was a suggestion that Sanskrit be selected on the grounds that it was a classical language representing the composite Indian literary and cultural heritage. The colonial government had reservations on this since it considered Sanskrit a religious language and sought the views of the universities. Parithimaal Kalaingar opposed the move claiming that Tamil was better qualified than Sanskrit to serve the purpose and he approached the University of Madras to stake the claim for classical language status for Tamil. The government resolved the issue by allowing universities to have the regional language as the Second Language in colleges.

In 1918, the Saiva Siddhanta Samajam passed a resolution demanding that Madras University grant classical language status to Tamil. This was done at the initiative of Maraimalai Adigal (1876-1950), Professor of Tamil in Madras Christian College and a proponent of the Pure Tamil Movement, whose original name was Vedachalam. Two years later, the Thanjavur-based Karanthai Tamil Sangam petitioned the university to raise the status issue with the Provincial government. Not much was heard of the demand for a long time after that.

The 1970s again saw a champion of the cause in Manavai Mustafa, who was then Editor, UNESCO Courier (Tamil), but he did not have much organisational backing. Since 1975 he has been writing consistently in newspapers and magazines pressing the demand. Mustafa, who is now the Editor of Encyclopaedia Britannica-Tamil, told Frontline that he had the first opportunity to take the issue to a different plane when he addressed one of the sessions of the World Tamil Conference in Madurai in 1980. Chief Minister M.G. Ramachandran, who was present, asked him to send a petition detailing how Tamil qualified to claim the status.

Mustafa said it took him two years to collect the necessary data, which included the features a language should have to qualify for classical status. For this, he looked for the features that were common in the existing classical languages, with the help of experts in those languages. He presented a petition to the Chief Minister in 1982, but no action was taken. Years later, he said, he learnt that the petition was rejected by a top government official on the grounds that if Tamil was given the status on a par with Latin, Greek and Sanskrit, which are no more spoken languages, Tamil would also be considered a `dead' language. Yet, Mustafa continued to champion the cause at all available fora.

Among the others who have pressed Tamil's case in recent years at public fora is Tamil scholar and academic, V.C. Kulandaisamy. In his view, "Tamil and Sanskrit are the two eyes through which one has to look at India's cultural heritage in its totality. The classical status for Tamil will further encourage Tamil studies in Indian and foreign universities and help the language on new lines in new domains."

THE movement to classify Tamil a classical language gained momentum about 10 years ago when major political parties took up the issue. A few months before the 1996 general elections, the DMK adopted a resolution at its Tiruchi conference demanding that Tamil be made one of the official languages of the Union government. The demand was also included in the DMK's manifesto for the Assembly elections held along with the general elections. The party won, defeating the Jayalalithaa-led AIADMK.

In 1998, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) captured power at the Centre, its electoral ally, the AIADMK, pressed for classical language status for Tamil. Many academics felt that the BJP-led government, which declared 1999 as Sanskrit Year and caused a flow of funds to universities and Sanskrit organisations, was not keen to concede the demand of classical status to Tamil. The DMK as a power-sharing ally of the BJP in the 1999-2004 government pressed Tamil's case when it, as also other parties, organised hunger-strikes and demonstrations and thousands of people courted arrest.

When electoral alliances changed for the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, the classical language plea surfaced again. The Tamil Nadu Assembly and the Syndicate of Madras University adopted resolutions pressing the demand. The DMK conference at Villupuram also passed a resolution to that effect. The demand figured in the manifestoes of almost all parties in the State. When the DMK-led alliance made a clean sweep and contributed in a big way to the formation of the UPA government at the Centre, it became easier to have the classical language proposal included in the NCMP. Karunanidhi, aided by Union Ministers and Members of Parliament from the State, gave a further push and a long-cherished dream of the Tamils became a reality.



Parithimaal Kalaignar.

Scholars, academics and writers have welcomed the honour done to Tamil and said this would inspire hundreds of researchers to take up Tamil studies and enrich the language and its literature. It would also help Tamil face the challenges posed by the recent developments in the field of science and technology and benefit from them.

Manavai Mustafa, who was associated with the efforts up to the last stage, said: "But for the political sagacity of Karunanidhi this could not have been achieved. Now, the Tamils should strive to spread Tamil studies across the world and develop the language to suit the modern, technological era."

Dr. R. Balachandran (Bala), a Tamil critic and Member of the Executive Committee of the Sahitya Akademi, said, "We, the Tamils, have to change a lot in attitude, dispensation and performance to be good enough to own the classical heritage." He said only if Tamils learnt other Indian languages also "we can take the greatness of Tamil and its literary heritage to other language groups".

Dr. N. Deiva Sundaram, Professor and Director for Linguistics, University of Madras, hoped that the new status would enable Tamil to increase its areas of function, improve its structure and modernise itself to suit the needs of the language technology in tune with computer and communication technologies. Facilitating machine translation, digitisation and other such efforts were urgently needed, he said. The classical status should not end up only in giving priority to research on classical literature. The urgent need to modernise the language should not be lost sight of, he cautioned.

Writer and scholar Indira Parthasarathy, who was Professor of Tamil in Warsaw University, Poland, also stressed this point. He said the inclusion of Tamil in the classical languages category should not mean that it had to lose the benefits it has been getting as one of the `modern Indian languages'. "I want my language to be categorised not only as a classical language but also as a modern one," he said and added, "To differentiate Tamil from all other languages we can declare Tamil covering a particular period, for instance, from the pre-Christian era to the bhakti period or epic period, that is around A.D 1000, as a `classical language' and Tamil after that period as a `modern Indian language'. He cited the example of the People's Republic of China, which has placed the Chinese language under two categories - `Classical Chinese' and `Vernacular Chinese'. The Classical Tamil, he said, should be declared a part of the common Indian culture and heritage. "This", he said, "is necessary to make all Indians feel that they are the inheritors of not only the Bhagvad Gita, but also the Thirukkural."

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Tamil-Brahmi inscription on pottery found in Thailand


A unique Tamil-Brahmi Inscription on pottery of the second century AD has recently been excavated in Thailand.

A Thai-French team of archaeologists, led by Dr. Bérénice Bellina of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France, and Praon Silpanth, Lecturer, Silpakorn University, Thailand, has discovered a sherd of inscribed pottery during their current excavations at Phu Khao Thong in Thailand.

At the request of the archaeologists, Iravatham Mahadevan, an expert in Tamil Epigraphy, has examined the inscription. He has confirmed that the pottery inscription is in Tamil and written in Tamil-Brahmi characters of about the second century AD. Only three letters have survived on the pottery fragment. They read tu Ra o... , possibly part of the Tamil word turavon meaning `monk.'

The presence of the characteristic letter Ra confirms that the language is Tamil and the script is Tamil-Brahmi. It is possible that the inscription recorded the name of a Buddhist monk who travelled to Thailand from Tamil Nadu. This is the earliest Tamil inscription found so far in South East Asia and attests to the maritime contacts of the Tamils with the Far East even in the early centuries AD.

Prof. Richard Salomon of the University of Washington, U.S., an expert in Indian Epigraphy, has made the following comment on the inscription:

"I am happy to hear that the inscription in question is in fact Tamil-Brahmi, as I had suspected. This is important, among other reasons, because it presents a parallel with the situation with Indian inscriptions in Egypt and the Red Sea area. There we find both Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions and standard-Brahmi insciptions; and we now see the same in Vietnam and South-East Asia. This indicates that the overseas trade between India to both the West and the East involved people from the Tamil country and also other regions."

Iravatham Mahadevan adds: "Already we know of the existence of a touchstone engraved in Tamil in the Tamil-Brahmi script of about the third or fourth century AD found in Thailand and presently kept in a museum in the ancient port city of Khuan Luk Pat in Southern Thailand. There is every hope that the ongoing excavations of the Thai-French team will bring up more evidence of ancient contacts between India and Thailand."

Source: The Hindu

Links between Harappa and Neolithic Tamil Nadu

Significance of Mayiladuthurai find

The discovery of a Neolithic stone celt, a hand-held axe, with the Indus script on it at Sembian-Kandiyur in Tamil Nadu is, according to Iravatham Mahadevan, "a major discovery because for the first time a text in the Indus script has been found in the State on a datable artefact, which is a polished neolithic celt." He added: "This confirms that the Neolithic people of Tamil Nadu shared the same language family of the Harappan group, which can only be Dravidian. The discovery provides the first evidence that the Neolithic people of the Tamil country spoke a Dravidian language." Mr. Mahadevan, an eminent expert on the subject, estimated the date of the artefact with the Indus script between 2000 B.C. and 1500 B.C.

It was in February 2006, when V. Shanmuganathan, a school teacher living in Sembian-Kandiyur, near Mayiladuthurai in Nagapattinam district, dug a pit in the backyard of his house to plant banana and coconut saplings, that he encountered two stone celts. The teacher, who is interested in archaeology, rang up his friend G. Muthusamy, Curator of the Danish Fort Museum at Tranquebar, which belongs to the Tamil Nadu Department of Archaeology. Mr. Muthusamy, who also belongs to the same village, took charge of the two celts from his friend and handed them over to T.S. Sridhar, Special Commissioner, State Department of Archaeology.

When Mr. Sridhar examined one of the two stones, he found some engravings on it. So he asked the epigraphists of his Department to study the particular celt. To their absolute delight, they found fours signs on it - and all four of them corresponded with the characters in the Indus script. When the celt with the Indus script was shown to Mr. Mahadevan, he confirmed that they were in the Indus script. The celt with the script measures 6.5 cm by 2.5 cm by 3.6 cm by 4 cm. It weighs 125 grams. The other celt has no engravings on it.

Mr. Mahadevan, one of the world's foremost scholars on the Indus and the Tamil-Brahmi scripts, is the author of the seminal work, The Indus Script: Texts, Concordance and Tables. It was published by the Archaeological Survey of India, New Delhi in 1977.

First Indus sign

The first Indus sign on the celt showed a skeletal body with ribs, seated on his haunches, body bent, lower limbs folded and knees drawn up. The second sign shows a jar with a handle. The first sign stood for "muruku" and the second for "an." Together, they read as "Murukan." They formed a very frequent combination on the Indus seals and sealings, especially from Harappa. The first "muruku" sign corresponded with the sign number 48, the second with the number 342, the third, which looks like a trident, corresponded with the sign number 367, and the fourth with 301.

These numbers are found in the sign list published by Mr. Mahadevan.

He said: "`Muruku' and 'an' are shown hundreds of times in the Indus script found at Harappa. This is the importance of the find at Sembiyan-Kandiyur. Not only do the Neolithic people of Tamil Nadu and the Harappans share the same script but the same language." In Tamil Nadu, the muruku symbol was first identified from a pottery graffiti at Sanur, near Tindivanam. B.B. Lal, former Director-General of ASI, correctly identified this symbol with sign 47 of the Indus script. In recent years, the muruku symbol turned up among the pottery graffiti found at Mangudi, near Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu, and at Muciri, Kerala. But this was the first time that a complete, classical Indus script had been found on a polished Neolithic stone celt, Mr. Mahadevan pointed out. He emphasised that the importance of the discovery was independent of the tentative decipherment of the two signs proposed by him.

Source: The Hindu

Tamil Brahmi script in Egypt

A broken storage jar with inscriptions in Tamil Brahmi script has been excavated at Quseir-al-Qadim, an ancient port with a Roman settlement on the Red Sea coast of Egypt. This Tamil Brahmi script has been dated to first century B.C. One expert described this as an “exciting discovery.”

The same inscription is incised twice on the opposite sides of the jar. The inscription reads paanai oRi, that is, pot (suspended) in a rope net.

An archaeological team belonging to the University of Southampton in the U.K., comprising Prof. D. Peacock and Dr. L. Blue, who recently re-opened excavations at Quseir-al-Qadim in Egypt, discovered a fragmentary pottery vessel with inscriptions.

Dr. Roberta Tomber, a pottery specialist at the British Museum, London, identified the fragmentary vessel as a storage jar made in India.

Iravatham Mahadevan, a specialist in Tamil epigraphy, has confirmed that the inscription on the jar is in Tamil written in the Tamil Brahmi script of about first century B.C.

In deciphering the inscription, he has had the benefit of expert advice from Prof. Y. Subbarayalu of the French Institute of Pondicherry, Prof. K. Rajan of Central University, Puducherry and Prof. V. Selvakumar, Tamil University, Thanjavur.

According to Mr. Mahadevan, the inscription is quite legible and reads: paanai oRi, that is, ‘pot (suspended in) a rope net.’ The Tamil word uRi, which means rope network to suspend pots has the cognate oRi in Parji, a central Dravidian language, Mr. Mahadevan said. Still nearer, Kannada has oTTi, probably from an earlier oRRi with the same meaning.

The word occurring in the pottery inscription found at Quseir-al-Qadim can also be read as o(R)Ri as Tamil Brahmi inscriptions generally avoid doubling of consonants.

Earlier excavations at this site about 30 years ago yielded two pottery inscriptions in Tamil Brahmi belonging to the first century A.D.

Another Tamil Brahmi pottery inscription of the same period was found in 1995 at Berenike, also a Roman settlement, on the Red Sea coast of Egypt, Mr. Mahadevan said.

These discoveries provided material evidence to corroborate the literary accounts by classical Western authors and the Tamil Sangam poets about the flourishing trade between the Tamil country and Rome (via the Red Sea ports) in the early centuries A.D.

source: The Hindu 21st November 2007