SV: [Y-Indology] Historical truths about Indology

[Guest guest]

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Latin and Greek grammar goes back to Antiquity, so Europe has its own

grammatical tradition. But the Paninian tradition is in an entirely

different universe, far more advanced as scholarly thinking. That is

why European linguists practically grovel in front of Panini's feet on

festive occasions. Panini's grammar is one of the great intellectual

monuments of mankind, far outshining anything of the kind produced in

the Ancient West. Unfortunately, India's etymological tradition is not

held in the same esteem. From a modern linguistic point of view, it

can probably be described as a total miss. Which is why we sometimes

get funny etymological debates on Indology when two traditions that

cannot be united, collide.

 

Lars Martin Fosse

>>>

 

In Indian grammatical galaxy, there is another star like Panini,

he is Tolkappiyar. P. and T. have been compared and contrasted by

P. S. Subrahmanya Sastri, ... Not only TolkAppiyar made Tamil grammar

independent of Sanskrit, he devised a unique set of alphabets

that suits Tamil best. With a short list of 18 consonants and

12 vowels, Tamil is written for 1000s of years, and as you know,

in the whole of India, Tamil alphabets are the only ones different

from Sanskrit. TolkAppiyar captured the rules of phonology

succinctly in the 5 letters - ka, ca, Ta, ta, pa, and their

voicing depends on whether they are intervocalical or not.

Another achievement of his is the "negative letter" called puLLi,

that makes conjunct letters unnecessary and thus all tamil

letters are separated. No samyuktaaksharas in Tamil.

The "puLLi" that gives birth to pure consonants by subtracting

an "a" from ka, Ga, ca, Ja, Ta, Na, ... is comparable with

tilaka/poTTu or third eye of Shiva. The short count of

non-clustered characters made Tamil suitable for printing

with movable types, typewriters, computerization, ... -

a first among Indic languages. OCR when successful will be

far easier to implement in Tamil technically than in Sanskrit,

thanks to TolkAppiyar.

 

T.'s theory on Indian poetics is unparalleld by anyone in India,

thus he is the Aristotle of the East. Tolkappiyam has

1/3rd of the book dedicated to Poetics of love and war. Ideas like

uLLuRai and uTanuRai form the basis of dhvani theory.

 

Unfortunately, TolkAppiyam grammar is not yet studied in detail:

a) V. S. Rajam, A comparative study of two ancient grammatical

traditions: The Tamil Tolkaappiyam Compared with the Sanskrit

Rk-Pratisakhya, Taittiriya-Pratisakhya, Apisali Siksa and

Astadhyayi, PhD doss., U. Penn., 1981

 

b) Takanobu Takahashi, Tamil love poetry and poetics,

E. J. Brill: Leiden, 1995

 

Regards,

N. Ganesan

[Guest guest]

Naga Ganesan rightly reminds Indologists of Tolkappiyam.

 

 

Thanks to the interest of Western scholars (provoked initially by similarity

between

Sanskrit and some European languages) Sanskrit works (Panini, Valmiki, Gita,

Kalidasa, shad-darshana, etc.) are far better known to the Western world, and t

hrough it, to the Macauley-educated Hindus, than Tolkappiyam, Kamban,

Tirukkural, Saivasiddhamtam, etc.

rukkural, or Periyapuranam

 

 

VVRaman