Talk:Tamil language/Archive 5

message: Im ready to make a map showing the areas where the language is spoken, but i need data -- PlaneMad|YakYak 07:10, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: done-- PlaneMad|YakYak 15:45, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Nice work. Should the Singapore be added to this distribution. Praveen 16:23, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tamil distribution map 

message: Is there any Inscription in Tamil Brahmi which is completly deciphered? Can anyone Quote it here?
As long as i know it is called tamil brahmi because,even though the script is Brahmi the langauge is tamil itself.
Now this makes sense only when any Inscription is completly deciphered.Is this Tamil Brahmi theory globally recognised? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nrupatunga (talk • contribs) 
:See -> Early Tamil Epigraphy. From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. by Iravatham Mahadevan, the Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA, 2003--Aadal 21:26, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Is Tamil Brahmi Theory Globally recognised ?

message: On a 'unrelated' development, speakers of 'Madras Bashai' demands that all instances of Tamil before 20th century be changed to 'proto-madrastbashai-tamil'. They are also asking for classical language status. In fact recently a scholar has unearthed evidence that there existed a book which was written 2000 years ago. But unfortunately this so called grammar book is not found till now. Praveen 02:43, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Madras Bashai

message: The reference to Tieken's work should be removed because he had followed fundamentally flawed approach. Read the reviews of Hart and others. It is a most outrageous work and his comments in the book are absolutely repugnant such that the people were fools etc. I'll give more details later. See Hart's review in J. Am. Orient. Soc. 124 No.1 Jan/Mar 2004. where he shows the flawed approach.  He says, "Suffice to say that Tieken has not produced one plausible argument to justify his contentions about the dating of Sangam literature." Tieken had taken positions with such abandon to show that Tamil works follow Skt Kavya of later times, it is absolutely ridiculous. He is alone in his strange view. He had such contempt for the Tamil songs and works it is not funny - but it is he who loses credibility. Read Luzzi's review in Asian Folklore Studies, Vol. 60, No. 2. (2001), pp. 373-374. I don't think a reference to his work is needed here (I've no problem if it should remain, but then I would like to add Devaneya Pavanar's assessments as well!). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Aadal (talk • contribs) 23:10, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Aadal, if you have access to references 17 & 20, please cross check. After seeing the Caldwell's statement (I used it one of replies above), I feel that reference 17 might be dubious. Adding to the suspicion is the editor's consistent ignorance of our requests to quote the relevant passage(s). BTW: I have access to two reviews from reputed professors from US universities which questions the Tieken's 'thesis'. They have highlighted his mistakes of ignoring inscription-evidences. Also, they clearly state that Tieken stand to loose the argument that will sure ensue. Thanks.Praveen 23:15, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll try to check. --Aadal 23:23, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

text: The criticism is not only by Hart. If you have references of Tieken's views getting accepted 'world over', please be kind enough to share with us. Praveen 14:01, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

text: Nrupatunga, please stop feeding trolls.  Its just not worth it.  Sarvagnya 15:23, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Tieken's views are isolated or minority view

message: If the influence of Skt on Tamil should be taken as proper and not influence of Prakrit on Tamil, then the influence of Skt is from Tamil unless shown to be otherwise. Remember that Tamil is referred as dramila in Skt works and the demonstration of influence is shown with Tamil as a proto-type.--Aadal 23:23, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Skt-Tamil

message: I think it is not necessary to cite in introduction. Please clarify me & let me know where to move the citations in the introduction. I will do it. Thanks Praveen 15:21, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: References in the Introduction

message: Hi, can we get the Tamil script at the Gottuvadhyam article? And are there other South Indian scripts that should also be given there?  Badagnani 01:29, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Need help at [[Gottuvadhyam]]

message: Instituut Kern University of Leiden, The Netherlands
The reconstruction of the early history of Tamilnadu has been based mainly on the so- called Cankam poetry. This poetry is generally taken to provide descriptions of Tamilnadu by contemporary poets during the period before the rise of the Pallavas and the introduction of Sanskrit culture in the South. However, the argument is basically circular, that is to say, Cankam poetry is dated before the Pallavas because it does not mention the Pallavas and describes a purely indigenous culture which is hardly touched by Sanskrit culture. In the present article it will be argued that Cankam poetry does not describe a contemporary soci ety or the poets' own culture, but a society from the past, or life in small, primitive villages which are far removed from the poets' own cosmopolitan milieu. This means that Cankam poetry is to be dated after the period it describes. On closer consideration, we appear to be dealing with certain literary genres borrowed from the North Indian Kâvya tradition, more in particular with compositions which are typically not written in Sanskrit but in Prâkrit or Apabhramsa. In Cankam literature, the regional Tamil language has been assigned the role of a Prâkrit. This use of Tamil we otherwise meet in the inscriptions of the Pântiyas of the eighth or ninth century and only in the inscriptions of that dynasty. This suggests that Cankam poetry was composed by the same poets who were responsible for the Velvikudi and Dalavaypuram inscriptions of the Pântiyas. As such, it is no longer possible to use this poetry for the reconstruction of the early history of Tamilnadu. On the other hand, Cankam poetry does supply interesting material for the study of the cultural politics of a newly arisen regional dynasty in eighth-century South India. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Nrupatunga (talk • contribs) 08:03, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Old Tamil Cahkam literature and the so-called Cankam period,Herman Tieken 

message: Up to now, Hart's remarks concerning my book Kavya in South India. Old Tamil
Cankam Poetry (Gonda Indological Studies X), Groningen 2001 have been
general. Actually, they had been written before he had seen, let alone read
my book. However, a few days ago Hart was more specific, addressing in some
detail my paragraph on the arrangement of the poems in the anthologies.
Before reacting on Hart's comments I would first like to provide some brief
context to the discussion.
   In the first part of my book I have argued that the villagers who are
made to speak in the so-called love poems (Akam) are not, as has been
assumed by Hart and others, the authors of the poems but characters in the
poems. The authors of the poems do not belong to the village but have to be
sought in a cosmopolitan milieu found in the city. I have done the same for
the historical poems (Puram). The poor, starving bards who in the poems are
wandering from one patron to the other, trying to make a living by their
poetry, are not the authors of the poems but, again, personae in the poems.
   In both the love poems and the historical poems we are dealing with
stock-characters represented in fictional situations. As far as the
historical poems are concerned, they had not been composed by the bards
featuring in them but by later authors who were trying to bring back to life
an earlier bardic poetry.
   In the introduction I have noted that I had been somewhat embarrassed at
having to prove the fictional nature of scenes of Cankam poetry, but the
idea that in, for instance, Puram we are dealing with actual,
"tape-recorded" conversations by historical persons is fairly wide-spread in
Tamil studies. Another idea current in Tamil studies is that the Cankam
poems are extempore, on the spot compositions. The poems do indeed contain
some characteristics which are otherwise typical of such poetry. However,
anyone familiar with Cankam poetry will agree that the poems cannot have
been composed on the spot. In this connection I have mentioned the length of
the sentences and the resultant complex style of the poems, which is a far
cry from the simple adding style of epic poetry. These facts had already
been noted by Hart in his 1975 book, but, as I have tried to show, his
conclusions are a half-hearted compromise between regarding the poems as
oral or written compositions.
   As far as I know, nobody has tried to make clear by whom, in what way,
and to what purpose the poems have been memorized and passed on to be put in
anthologies only centuries later. And this brings me to the compilation of
the anthologies.
   In the majority of the anthologies the poems seem to have been put
together more or less at random. Content does not seem to play any role at
all. However, instead we find that each poem echoes certain words from the
preceding poems. As an example I have quoted Kuruntokai 344 (the
presentation below may not be as clear as the one on p. 96 of my book as it
may well be the case that the tab positions are lost in the transmission):
336                                             pirinticinole
337                                                     mulai   nirai
338 annal eru           punkanmalai
339
340     katalar                                 peyar
341                                     katalar
342             tan     punkan
343 annal eru
344 annal eru   tan     punkanmalai     katalar peyarum mulai   nirai
                                                pirintu
The echoes are not restricted to lexemes. Occasionally, they involve
suffixes, as in aku-mati (Kur. 18) and inai-mati (19) and in un-iiyar (27),
tal-ii (29), mar-iiya (30) and kul-iiya and tal-iiya (31); particles, as in
kuruk-um (25) and katuvan-um (26); and similar phrases, as in varutalum
varuuam (88) and nuvaralum nuvalpa (89). Also some rare instances involving
synonyms have been noted, as in aruntu (26) and un (27).
   According to the current interpretation, the Tamil anthologies contain
merely a selection from a boundless reservoir of floating, orally
transmitted poems. However, the type of concatenation met with in, for
instance, the Kuruntokai introduces a complication. For, while it may be
relatively easy in the case of 344 to find in the vast corpus of existing
poems another one containing the words annal and eru, to find one which in
addition also contained the word punkan(malai) must have been much more
difficult. In addition to that, the poem should not have been shorter than 4
lines or longer than 8.
   My conclusion was, and is, that the idea that the compiler selected the
poems from a reservoir of existing poems has to be abandoned. Instead, I
suggested that the poems were composed for the first time at the moment of
their inclusion in the anthology, if only because it might after all have
been easier, starting from words in the preceding poems, to compose a new
poem that to search one's memory for one.
   This conclusion has been extended to include all eight Cankam
anthologies. I take this opportunity to point to the Kalittokai and in
particular to the inclusion of the kuravai poems in this collection. As I
have suggested, the Kalittokai poems are Tamil counterparts of the lasyas
and catuspadis of the Sanskrit Kavya tradition. The kuravai poems are
hallisaka scenes transplanted to Tamilnadu. How did these hallisakas, which
belong to the category of festival songs, find a place in a collection of
lasyas and catuspadis? As I have tried to show on p. 185 ff., this can be
explained with reference to a misunderstanding in the poetical tradition of
Sanskrit, which misunderstanding is attested for the first time only in the
ninth century, namely in Abhinavagupta's commmentary on the Natyasastra.
This same misunderstanding is also found in Bhoja's Srngaraprakasa (tenth or
eleventh century).
   Hart now argues that the chance of identical words occurring in the poems
is so great that it is actually impossible to find a poem which does not
have one or more words in common with any other poems. In this connection I
would like to note the following. If we turn to the scheme given above, the
word annal occurs only 6 times in the 400 poems of Kuruntokai, the word eru
altogether 9 times, punkan 7 times, and peyar (noun and verb) 25 times. And,
as I have noted in footnote 15 on p. 98, also in the Purananuru "common"
words appear typically in clusters of poems. Take the verb nikku/ninku:
150-153-154, 247-249-250, 392-393-397-398-400 or the verb pay:
23-24-25-30-31, etc.
   Whatever the value of the statistics put forward by Hart, the prediction
which he abstracted from it does not appear to come true.
All the points adduced by Hart in his earlier comment (the one written
before he had read my book) are of course directly or indirectly addressed
in my book. A point I have treated only briefly is the language of the
poems. According to Hart and others the Cankam texts abound in archaic
forms. I am, however, dealing with the language of Cankam poetry in an
article, which is soon to be offered for publication. What I would like to
mention here is that, while the Cankam texts are indeed full of curious
forms, what is unique is not necessarily old. Often the need to prove this
was not even felt by scholars as the occurrence of the forms in question in
Cankam poetry was believed to take care of that. To claim, as Hart does,
that the forms are "demonstrably much more archaic" (than the ninth or tenth
century) is premature.
Finally, I hope that this reaction of mine will not provoke a similar kind
of discussion as we have recently witnessed in connection with Axel
Michaels' book on the subject of the pandit. As far as I am concerned, this
is my last reaction before the publication of the complete version of Hart's
review of my book in JAOS.
Herman Tieken
Instituut Kern
Universiteit te Leiden
Nrupatunga 09:01, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tieken reply to Hart's critiscism