Research on Indian Languages

Languages of the Dravidian family is spoken by 39,400,000 people (1981 est.)
in southern Indian state, also another 2,697,000 in Sri Lanka (Ceylon),
by smallernumbers of people in Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia,
and Vietnam (about1,400,000), in East and South Africa (almost 250,000),
and by still smaller numbers in Guyana and on the islands of Fiji,
Mauritius,Réunion, Madagascar, Trinidad, and Martinique.
 
The earliest literary monuments of the
language belong roughly to the 3rd and 2nd centuriesBC. There exist a
number of local dialects, the major dialect regionsbeing the northern
and eastern areas combined, the western area, thesouthern area (split
into at least four major dialects of Madurai,Tirunelveli, Nanjiland,
and Ramnad), and Sri Lanka (Ceylon).Correlated with the social
position of the speaker are a number ofspeech forms; a major division
occurs between the Brahmin and thenon-Brahmin varieties. In addition,
there is a sharp dichotomy betweenthe formal language and informal
speech. Malayalam, which is closely related to Tamil, is spoken in the
Indianstate of Kerala by some 21,700,000 people. Possessing an
independentwritten script, it also has a rich modern literature. There
are atleast three main regional dialects (North, Central, South)
ofMalayalam and a number of communal dialects. In the Nilgiris and
adjacent regions, several minor tribes speak thefollowing languages:
Kota (1,400), Toda (1,145), Badaga (128,500),Irula (Irula) (6,176).
The less well-known languages of a number ofother tribes may yet be
established as independent members of theDravidian family (e.g.,
Kurumba, Paniya). Kodagu (Kodagu), a non-literary language of a
mountainous regioncalled Coorg, has 119,000 speakers. Kannada
(Kanarese), which is spoken by 25,700,000 people in the Indianstate of
Karnataka, exhibits a dichotomy between educated speech andcolloquial
Kannada; in the latter at least three social dialects arerecognizable
that may be characterized as Brahmin, non-Brahmin, andHarijan
("untouchable"). A number of regional dialects (among them areDharwar,
Bangalore, and Mangalore) also exist. Kannada has anorthography of its
own and an important ancient and modern literature. To the south of
the Kannada territory, more than 1,400,000 peoplespeak Tulu (Tulu), a
South Dravidian language having no developedwritten literature. Telugu
(spoken by 52,986,000 people), the official language of thestate of
Andhra Pradesh, exhibits a dichotomy between the written andthe spoken
styles, in addition to a number of sharply distinct localand regional
dialects (including Telangana, coastal area, Rayalaseema,and a
"transitional" zone) and divisions between Brahmin, nonBrahmin,and
Harijan speech. The language has its own script, closely akin tothat
of Kannada, and an important literary tradition. In extreme northern
Andhra Pradesh and in Maharashtra, the Kolamilanguage is spoken by
approximately 84,000 individuals. Parji isspoken by about 36,000
individuals in Andhra Pradesh and Orissa. TheKonda Dora, a scheduled
tribe of some 23,000, live mostly in AndhraPradesh and speak Konda.
The Gadba, who live mainly in Andhra Pradesh,number approximately
28,000. Pengo is spoken by fewer than 2,000individuals living in
Orissa, and Kui and Kuvi are spoken by a numberof tribes in Andhra
Pradesh and Orissa. In Madhya Pradesh and parts of Andhra Pradesh,
Maharashtra, andOrissa, many groups of Gonds (including about
2,620,000 persons) speaka number of Gondi dialects. To the north, in
Assam, Bihar, MadhyaPradesh, Tripura, and West Bengal, the Oraon tribe
speaks Kurukh(1,700,000), and, near the borders of Bihar and West
Bengal, 100,000tribals speak Malto. The only Dravidian language that
is spoken entirely outside India isBrahui, with about 1,580,000
speakers who live in Sindh andBalochistan provinces of southern
Pakistan. Historical survey of the Dravidian languages Although in
modern times speakers of the various Dravidian languageshave mainly
occupied the southern portion of India, while those of theIndo-Aryan
(Indic) tongues have predominated in northern India,nothing definite
is known about the ancient domain of the Dravidianparent speech. It
is, however, a well-established and well-supportedhypothesis that
Dravidian speakers must have been widespreadthroughout India,
including the northwest region. This is clearbecause a number of
features of the Dravidian languages appear in theRigveda, the earliest
known Indo-Aryan literary work, thus showingthat the Dravidian
languages must have been present in the area of theIndo-Aryan ones.
The Indo-Aryan languages were not, however,originally native to India;
they were introduced by Aryan invadersfrom the north. Several scholars
have demonstrated that pre-Indo-Aryanand pre-Dravidian bilingualism in
India provided conditions for thefar-reaching influence of Dravidian
on the Indo-Aryan tongues in thespheres of phonology (e.g., the
retroflex consonants, made with thetongue curled upward toward the
palate), syntax (e.g., the frequentuse of gerunds, which are nonfinite
verb forms of nominal character,as in "by the falling of the rain"),
and vocabulary (a number ofDravidian loanwords apparently appearing in
the Rigveda itself). Thus a form of Proto-Dravidian, or perhaps
Proto-North Dravidian, musthave been extensive in northern India
before the advent of the Aryans.Apart from the survival of some
islands of Dravidian speech, however,the process of replacement of the
Dravidian languages by the Aryantongues was entirely completed before
the beginning of the ChristianEra, after a period of bilingualism that
must have lasted manycenturies. Finally, the almost universal adoption
of Indo-Aryan in thenorth and of Dravidian in the south has covered up
the originallinguistic diversity of India. The circumstances of the
advent of Dravidian speakers in India areshrouded in mystery. There
are vague linguistic and cultural ties withthe Urals, with the
Mediterranean area, and with Iran. It is possiblethat a
Dravidian-speaking people that can be described asdolichocephalic
(longheaded from front to back) Mediterraneans mixedwith
brachycephalic (short-headed from front to back) Armenoids
andestablished themselves in northwestern India during the 4th
millenniumBC. Along their route, these immigrants may have possibly
come into anintimate, prolonged contact with the Ural-Altaic speakers,
thusexplaining the striking affinities between the Dravidian
andUral-Altaic language groups. Between 2000 and 1500 BC, there was
afairly constant movement of Dravidian speakers from the northwest
tothe southeast of India, and about 1500 BC three distinct
dialectgroups probably existed: Proto-North Dravidian,
Proto-CentralDravidian, and Proto-South Dravidian. The beginnings of
the splits inthe parent speech, however, are obviously earlier. It is
possible thatProto-Brahui was the first language to split off from
Proto-Dravidian,probably during the immigration movement into India
sometime in the4th millennium BC, and that the next subgroup to split
off wasProto-Kurukh-Malto, sometime in the 3rd millennium BC (see the
familytree diagrams,Figure 1, Figure 2, and Figure 3). Compared to the
work done on other language families, the progress incomparative
Dravidian studies has been slow and firm results are stillmeagre.
Considerable knowledge has been acquired in comparativephonology
(sound systems), but correspondences have been worked outonly for the
sounds in the roots of words. Very little comparativework has been
done on grammatical processes, and complete historicalgrammars of the
literary languages are still lacking. Hence thereconstruction of any
feature of the Dravidian protolanguage, with thepossible exception of
some parts of the phonology, must necessarily beconsidered very
tentative. The vowel system of Proto-Dravidian consisted of five
vowels--*i, *u,*e, *o, *a (an asterisk denotes an unattested,
reconstructed,hypothetical form)--each having two quantities, short
and long.Relative stability of root vowels seems to have been the
rule. TheProto-Dravidian consonant system consisted of obstruants
(stops) *p,*t, *t, *t, *c, *k; nasals *m, *n, *n, *ñ; laterals *l, *l;
the flap*r; the voiced retroflex continuant *r; and the semivowels *y
and *v.The most characteristic feature of the consonantal system was
the sixpositions of articulation for obstruants: labial (with the
lips),dental (tongue touching the back of the upper teeth), alveolar
(tonguetouching the upper gum ridge), retroflex (tip of tongue curled
upwardtoward the palate and back), palatal (body of tongue touching
thepalate, or roof of the mouth), and velar (back of tongue touching
thevelum, or soft palate). The retroflex series was very distinctive
andimportant and comprised an obstruant *t, a nasal *n, a lateral *l,
anda continuant *r. No consonant of the alveolar or retroflex
seriesbegan a word. In the final position all of the consonants
occurred,but all of the obstruants were followed by an automatic
release sound,the vowel *-u. Initial consonant clusters did not occur.
There wasonly one series of obstruant phonemes (distinctive sounds);
thesesounds were voiceless (produced without vibration of the vocal
cords)initially and voiced (with vocal cord vibration) between vowels.
AllProto-Dravidian roots were monosyllables. Proto-Dravidian used only
suffixes, never prefixes or infixes, in theconstruction of inflected
forms. Hence, the roots of words alwaysoccurred at the beginning.
Nouns, verbs, and indeclinable wordsconstituted the original word
classes. During the 1st millennium BC, while Aryanization steadily
progressedin north India, the Dravidian-speaking newcomers began to
mix with theNegritos and Proto-Australoids in the south; this process
ofacculturation continued during the period from approximately 1200
to600 BC. A movement of the Aryans into the south of India
begansometime about 1000 BC. Before the 5th century BC,
Proto-SouthDravidian was probably still one language, but with two
stronglymarked dialects. Within Proto-Central Dravidian, a similarly
deeptwo-way division also occurred, and as discussed above,
NorthDravidian must by that time have already been split into
theKurukh-Malto and Brahui subgroups (see the family tree
diagrams,Figure 1, Figure 2, and Figure 3). Apart from a possible
Dravidian word in the Hebrew text of the Bible(tukkhiyim "peacocks";
cf. Tamil tokai "tail of a peacock"), theDravidian languages enter
history in Sanskrit and Greco-Roman texts.The Ceras, a south Indian
dynasty, are possibly mentioned in the earlySanskrit text AitareyaA
ranyaka. Katyayana, a grammarian of the 4thcentury BC, mentions the
countries of Pandya (Tamil pantiya), Cola(Tamil cola), and Kerala, or
Cera (Tamil cera); these lands were wellknown to Kautilya (4th century
BC), the author of the earliesttreatise on statecraft, and mentions of
them also appear in the edictsof the great Buddhist leader Asoka (3rd
century BC). The term dravidaitself is almost certainly a
Sanskritization (with an inserted"hypercorrect" r) of the earlier Pali
and Prakrit terms damilo,damila, davida, which must have been derived
from the Tamil name ofthe language, tamil. A number of South Dravidian
words, almost all ofthem geographic and dynastic names, occur in such
Greco-Roman sourcesas the Periplus maris Erythraei ("Circumnavigation
of the ErythraeanSea") of about AD 89 and in the writing of Ptolemaeus
of Naukratis ofthe 2nd century AD; it is also very probable that
Western-languageterms for rice (compare Italian riso, Latin oryza,
Greek oryza) andginger (compare Italian zenzero, German Ingwer, Greek
zingiberis) arecultural loans from Old Tamil, in which they are arici
and iñciver,respectively. Sometime during the reign of Asoka (3rd
century BC), the two SouthDravidian languages, Tamil and Kannada,
developed into distinct idiomsand the two cultures emerged as separate
entities; a third majorDravidian linguistic and cultural unit, Telugu,
appeared in the Andhracountry. In the period from 300 to 100 BC, one
of the pre-Tamildialects (probably that of Madurai) gained prestige
and became thestandard literary language (centamil), the written form
of early OldTamil, which became established in poetic texts and in its
earliestgrammar, Tolkappiyam. During the same period, about 250 BC,
the AsokanSouthern Brahmi script was adapted for Tamil and was used in
shortcave inscriptions by Jain monks over a period of several
centuries,dating approximately from the 2nd century BC to the 5th
century AD. The earliest inscriptions in Kannada may be dated at AD
450; Kannadaliterature begins with Nrpatunga's Kavirajamarga, about AD
850. Theoldest Telugu inscription is from AD 633, and the literature
beginswith the grammarian Nannaya's 11th-century translation of the
Sanskritclassic the Mahabharata. In Malayalam, the earliest writings
are fromthe close of the 9th century, and the first literary text is
probablythe Bhasakautaliyam, AD 1125-1250. Since these attested
beginnings, the four languages--Tamil, Malayalam,Kannada, and
Telugu--have been used continuously in administration andliterature up
to the present day. In addition to possessing an immensewealth of
epigraphic and literary texts, they all developed pronouncedfeatures
of diglossia, a dichotomy between the standardized, formallanguage and
the informal, colloquial speech, which is divided intoregional as well
as social dialects. In modern times, all of the fourcultivated
languages have adapted quickly to new conditions resultingfrom
economic, social, and political changes. All of these languagesare
used in teaching basic courses in science and the arts; and
newtechnological terminology is coined, sometimes based either on
Englishor Sanskrit models, but often on exclusively indigenous
linguisticmaterial (in Tamil). To date, nothing is known about the
history of the nonliteraryDravidian languages before their
"discovery," which began at the endof the 18th century. The Gonds,
however, are mentioned (as Gondaloi)by Ptolemy of Naukratis, writing
in the 2nd century AD. A tendency toward structural and systemic
balance and stability ischaracteristic of the Dravidian group.
Nevertheless, there is no doubtabout the influence of the other
languages of India. Dravidianlanguages show extensive lexical
(vocabulary) borrowing, but only afew traits of structural (either
phonological or grammatical)borrowing, from the Indo-Aryan tongues. On
the other hand, Indo-Aryanshows rather large-scale structural
borrowing from Dravidian, butrelatively few loanwords. There is indeed
a possibility of Dravidianand Indo-Aryan drawing even closer together
in the future; but it ishighly doubtful that a new family of languages
will develop in such away that the bases of the contributing groups
(i.e., Dravidian andIndo-Aryan) will be completely eliminated through
the phenomena ofborrowing.