Reinhold Rost

“ According to the census of 1901, the total number of Tamil-speaking people in all India was 16,525,500. To these should be added about 160,000 in the French possessions. But as of all the Dravidian languages the Tamil shows the greatest tendency to spread, its area becomes ever larger, encroaching on that of the contiguous languages. Tamil is a sister of Malayâḷam, Telugu, Kanarese, Tulu; and, as it is the oldest, richest, and most highly organized of the Dravidian languages, it may be looked upon as typical of the family to which it belongs. ”

“ The old poetry abounds in verbal forms now obsolete. Adjectives, adverbs and abstract nouns are derived from verbs by certain affixes. All post-positions were originally either nouns or verbal forms. Oratio indirecta is unknown in Tamil, as it is in all the other Indian languages, the gerund enṛu being used, like iti in Sanskrit, to indicate quotation. The structure of sentences is an exact counterpart of the structure of words, inasmuch as that which qualifies always precedes that which is qualified. ”

“ In the 8th century the Vaṭṭel̤uttu existed side by side and together with the Grantha, an ancient alphabet still used throughout the Tamil country in writing Sanskrit. During the four or five centuries after the conquest of Madura by the Cholas in the 11th it was gradually superseded in the Tamil country by the modern Tamil, while in Malabar it continued in general use down to the end of the 17th century. But the earliest works of Tamil literature, such as the Tolkâppiyam and the Kuṛaḷ, were still written in it. ”

“ But, as compared with its literary sister languages, it has preserved its Dravidian character singularly free from foreign influence. Of Tamil words which have found a permanent home in English may be mentioned curry, (kaṛi) , mulligatawny (milagu, pepper, and taṇṇîr, cool water) , cheroot (suruttu) , pariah (paṛeiyan) .
The laws of euphony (avoiding of hiatus, softening of initial consonants, contact of final with initial consonants) are far more complicated in Tamil than in Sanskrit. ”

“ But practically the earliest extant records of the Tamil language do not ascend higher than the middle of the 8th century of the Christian era, the grant in possession of the Israelites at Cochin being assigned by the late Dr Burnell to about 750 A.D., a period when Malayâḷam did not exist yet as a separate language. There is every probability that about the same time a number of Tamil works sprung up, which are mentioned by a writer in the 11th century as representing the old literature (Burnell, loc. cit., p. 127, note) . ”

“ English influence has here, as in Bengal and elsewhere in India, greatly tended to create a healthier tone in literature both as to style and sentiment. As one of the best Tamil translations of English books in respect of diction and idiom may be mentioned the Bâlavyâpârikal, or “Little Merchants,” published by the Vernacular Text Society, Madras. ”

“ There is, besides, a general oblique affix in, which is not only frequently used for the genitive, but may be inserted before any of the above affixes, to some of which the emphatic particle ê may also be superadded. In the old poetry there is a still greater variety of affixes, while there is an option of dispensing with all. Adjectives, when attributive, precede the noun and are unchangeable; when predicative they follow it and receive verbal affixes. The pronouns of the 1st person are sing. ”

“ Literature.—The early existence, in southern India, of peoples, localities, animals and products the names of which, as mentioned in the Old Testament and in Greek and Roman Writers, have been identified with corresponding Dravidian terms, goes far to prove the high antiquity, if not of the Tamil language, at least of some form of Dravidian speech (Caldwell, loc. cit., Introd., pp. 81-106; Madras District Manual, i., Introd., pp. 134 seq.) . ”

“ Of all the South-Indian tribes they are the least sedentary and the most enterprising. Wherever money is to be earned, there will Tamils be found, either as merchants or in the lower capacity of domestic servants and labourers. ”

“ The one nearest akin to it is Malayâḷam, which originally appears to have been simply a dialect of Tamil, but differs from it now both in pronunciation and in idiom, in the retention of old Tamil forms obsolete in the modern language, and in having discarded all personal terminations in the verb, the person being always indicated by the pronoun (F. W. Ellis, Dissertation on the Malayâḷam Language, p. 2; Gundert, Malayâḷma Dictionary, Introd.; Caldwell, Comparative Gr., Introd., p. 23; Burnell, Specimens of South Indian Dialects, No. 2, p. 13) . ”

“ Dr Burnell has a note in his Elements of South Indian Paleography (2nd cd., p. 44) , from which it appears that in 1578 Tamil types were cut by Father João de Faria, and that a hundred years later a Tamil and Portuguese dictionary was published at Ambalakkâḍu. At present the number of Tamil books (inclusive of newspapers) printed annually far exceeds that of all the other Dravidian vernaculars put together. The earliest Tamil version of the New Testament was commenced by the Dutch in Ceylon in 1688; Fabricius's translation appeared at Tranquebar in 1715. ”