Tamil's elderliness to world languages

Dear F.S.GANDHI AVArkale,

Vungal postings are interesting, but it is really paining that you mostly quote Speculative suspictions held in the past and now clearly rejected as new thing.

You in one of the posting on Tamil is Elder Thread- dated entire Tamil Sangam Lit to 200CE and later. Idiyappam says Sangam Lit extends to Bakthi period means 8th Cen.

The Scholars normally date This to 100BCE to 200 CE and Tirukural and Silapathikaram and Mankmekhalai to 3rd Cen. The Problem is we donot have any Manuscripts earlier than 17th Cen CE.

Now Kindly give as to which of the Universities of India and abroad have similar views as the Authors you quote.

You gave very high Publicity to Dr.Mathiwanan's Alleged Indus Dechiphering. Mr. Aravindan and Mr.Solomon has very clearly explained the methods of improperness in it. Kindly explain please.

Tamil is a Great Language- but we do not need wrong methods and other country's Languages be said as Tamil which are today clearly marked by International Scholars as other Languages.

Tirukural Conference Papers have been linked by K.P.Aravindan and all the Scholars say the reference to Marai and Vedams in Tholkappiyam and Sangam and Kural are Four Vedas. Why should we reject this conclusions and assume or presume un available some thing else.

Please be more specific with Proper International repute Univesity based Scholars please. Otherwise all we do will be just meaningless Gossip.

Devapriya.

Dear Devapriya,

You seem to be reviving the arguments posed by Solomon in 'Tamil is elder to Sanskrit' thread earlier which were explained by me there itself and so visit those old posts.

Mr. Solomon/Ancheneyan's(devapriya's-I guess you could be) dubious's nature & inadquate depthness in arguements clearly put by me. Go through my old posts. Your tone reflects his replica with back to square approach.

I said third sankam span of timeline is in between 600 BCE to 200 CE. Not as you said. Visit my post on 06.08.05 in the same thread. I don't find anywhere Idiappam said about sankam timeline and it seems you are also following mischievious path of Solomon.

Dr. Mathivan's works now is being accredited by world historiens. Your utterings do not have truth. Visit my posts regarding Dr. Mathivanan's decipherments.

'Naanmarai' was misinterupted and all your sayings about this is highly speculative. I may write about this in future.

Whatever I put in this column is World renowned historiens views & findings and references are clearly specified by me. And viewers also will find the truth in the arguements.

Many world Universities made these authors & and their books that I have specified now in this column & earlier in Tamil is elder to Sanskrit Column as references to various courses.

The authors of world renowned have submitted research papers and got Doctoral degrees on these books.

Hence again and again as Solomon put in his old posts don't try(worry) to establish wrong approach of 'Back to square'.

In the forthcoming columns I may write still more about Ancient histories and then come to Indian ancient history which may give you some stuff to argue.

f.s.gandhi

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Originally Posted by devapriya

You in one of the posting on Tamil is Elder Thread- dated entire Tamil Sangam Lit to 200CE and later. Idiyappam says Sangam Lit extends to Bakthi period means 8th Cen.

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When did I say that the "Bakthi period extends...." Don't twist my words. I said, "The Bakti period overlaps the Sangam Period." That means- The Bakti period started the 1st century CE.... That's all!

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The Scholars normally date This to 100BCE to 200 CE and Tirukural and Silapathikaram and Mankmekhalai to 3rd Cen. The Problem is we donot have any Manuscripts earlier than 17th Cen CE.

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Scholars... Scholars... Scholars.... Scholars all over your posts... What has Manuscripts go to do with the date of the Literature..?

Go read 'Huckleberry Finn' now. You would probably be reading a reprint - not Mark Twain's handwriting! Think about that, Mr Priya!

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Now Kindly give as to which of the Universities of India and abroad have similar views as the Authors you quote.

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Now you have narrowed your silly demands to 'Universities of India"? Ealier it was 'world renowned' Universities. What is in your mind??

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Tamil is a Great Language- but we do not need  wrong methods and other country's Languages be said as Tamil which are today clearly marked by International Scholars  as other Languages.

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Wow... 'International Scholars'' - this time, eh?

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Tirukural Conference Papers have been linked by K.P.Aravindan and all the Scholars say the reference to Marai and Vedams in Tholkappiyam and Sangam and Kural are Four Vedas. Why should we reject this conclusions and assume or presume un available some thing else.

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Where is that Sansritic stuff Rig, Sama, Yajur and Atharvan Vedas mentioned in "Tholkappiyam and Sangam and Kural"???

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Please be more specific with Proper International repute Univesity based Scholars please. Otherwise all we do will be just meaningless Gossip

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Now you went back - 'Proper International repute University' - Earlier you wanted Indian University Scholars. - What happened??

Guys, go to Andhra Pradesh or Karnataka and tell people that Tamil is the oldest language or that Tamil is the mother of Telugu/Kannada. You will be laughed at and people will only ridicule you. Heck, you will be ridiculed if you say the same thing anywhere in India outside of TN.

I have not been following the discussion closely but I came from A.P. and do not mind if Tamil is older than Telugu. If one follows some accepted norms of enquiry and comes up with references which are 'acceptable' and if Tamil is older so be it. I think that Aravindhan pointed out in one of the discussions what he considered as acceptable references. Certainly Tamil seems to have much older literature than other Dravidian languages and whether other languages were derived from it or developed seperately will probably come out with more research.
Somewhat tangential topic: I think that Tamilians' fight against the imposition of Hindi has actually helped Andhras in the I.T. boom.
Regards,
Swarup

Swarup,
Here is something that might interest you. This is a letter from Dr.Hart, Professor, South Asia studies, University of California,Berkeley. Interestingly, George Hart studied Sanskrit for his Ph.D and taught Sanskrit.

http://tamil.berkeley.edu/Tamil%20Ch...calLgeLtr.html

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Originally Posted by gaddeswarup

I think that Aravindhan pointed out in one of the discussions what he considered as acceptable references. Certainly Tamil seems to have much older literature than other Dravidian languages........
Regards,
Swarup

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RR,
Thanks for the very interesting reference. I may be getting out of the thread but it is for this kind of references and scholarly comments by various people that I enjoy participating in this forum. I had the pleasure of meeting Velcheru Narayana Rao mentioned in the article. I read his book (with David Shulman and Sanjay Subramaniyan) "Symbols of substance" about the Nayaka period in Tamilnadu and how one can glean history from literature.
It is interesting for me to see how Tamilians have been able to preserve their culture and literature for such a long period , try to see reasons for this and what lessons it has for the future. I read somewhere that eventhough Telugu borrowed a lot of words from Samskrit, the structure of Samskrit itself was influenced by Dravidian languages. At one time, I think that Dravidam used to mean Tamil but one of the early writers (Campbell?) srated using the term Dravidian languages. Apart from the preservation of language and culture, it is also the interaction of cultures that fascinates me. Some of the famous Telugu writers like Srisri, Dasarathi brothers, Arudra and others came from Tamil families settled in Andhra long ago and Dasrathi Rangacharya mentins that his parents used to speak Dravida Bhasha., an old form of Tamil. Regards,
Swarup

Sorry; after talking about references I just mentioned a few things without references. Unfortunately some of them are in Telugu. The main reference is Arudra's "Samagra Andgra Sahityam". In his artcle about Nannaya (Adikavi or first poet), he raises the possibilty that Nannya may be of Tamilian origin and then goes on to mention several recent poets of Tamil ancestry. Dasrathi Rangacharya's story is from his autibiography "Naa jeevana yanam". About the influence of Tamil (Dravidian languages) on Samskrit, I found the reference in the message 13691 of the yahoo group racchabanda. I enclose a passage from the message:

"It appears that what you read from this interview is different from
what I read. To me, David Shulman is talking about "India as a
Linguistic Area" [*see the footnote] - he is talking about the
convergence of syntax in medieval Sanskrit (not Vedic Sanskrit) and other Indo-Aryan languages with the syntax of Dravidian (without going into what created this convergence).

Here I am reminded of Sjoberg's comments (1992) on syntax of Indian Languages:

"Thus the Dravidian grammatical impact on Indo-Aryan has been far
than the Indo-Aryan grammatical impact on Dravidian. How can we
account for this pattern?"

Her hypothetical answer to this question was "agglutinative languages seem highly resistant to syntactic changes". (Note that the Dravidian languages are agglutinative languages).

Also Bh. Krishnamurti, a renowned linguist and an authority on
Dravidian languages, in his recent book on "Dravidian Lanaguages" (2003) says:

"It is the Dravidian which show evidence of extensive lexical
borrowing but only a few traits of structural borrowing from Indo-Aryan. On the contrary, Indo-Aryan (particularly middle and modern) show large scale structural borrowing from Dravidian, but very little lexical borrowing."

To reconcile these facts he says "That Middle Indo-Aryan and New Indo-Aryan have been built on a Dravidian substratum seems to be the only answer.""

The message is by Suresh Kolichala who says that he is not an expert on these topics. Note also that he may be talking of Samskrit of a later period. I must add that even though I am interested in these topics, I know very little about these topics and was just trying to fo learn a little with out too much study. It is possible that some inspired and persistent non-expert may come up with interesting insights. Regards,
Swarup

Swarup: According to my linguist friend, a retired professor in lingustics, there had been considerable lexical borrowing by Tamil from Sanskrit and considerable structural borrowing by Sanskrit from Tamil. This is generally accepted by some other linguists also. If you like I can suggest some books on linguistics. Encyc. Britannica has a good coverage of languages. The late A.K.Ramanujan of the University of Chicago contributed, if I remember correctly. He was a Kannadiga of Tamil origin.

( I am not RR. He is the administrator. I am Raj using the id rajraj, a moderator. You may call me Raj ! :) )

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Originally Posted by Hyderbadi

Guys, go to Andhra Pradesh or Karnataka and tell people that Tamil is the oldest language or that Tamil is the mother of Telugu/Kannada. You will be laughed at and people will only ridicule you. Heck, you will be ridiculed if you say the same thing anywhere in India outside of TN.

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Hmm......donno abt other parts of India but I've come across even *certain* Telugus having the superiority complex abt Telugu, even claiming tat it formed as a base for Sanskrit, altho it has been proved from many sources the other way round! :)
I actually found sum info. on this in the forum of andhranews.com which I'm pasting here:

The word Telugu transformed from the word 'ThriLinga' (like Kalinga).
Telugu language is a direct descent of Sanskrit. Sankrit was the only spoken language in Ancient India (even in other parts of the world). During the last Treta Yuga (Around 2.0 million years ago of Lord Rama's time), Agastya Mahamuni has compiled (from sanskrit) a New Languange/s for Normal usage to humans. I am not sure how they are named but some historians say they are named something similar to Tamil (also probably Telugu or Prakrit as mentioned below).
And from these derived languages came all other world languages such as French, Russian, English. English Alphabets are nothing but 'E-gunitham' of Telugu (Hindi or Any Indian) languange's Alphabets. Similarly Russian/Ukrainian is a 'A-gunitham of Telugu (or Any Indian) language's Alphabets.