KAMALIKA PIERIS
Language became
an important element in the formation of new states in Europe in the 19th
century. The emphasis was to be on the mother tongue, the language spoken in
the home. The first International
Statistical Congress of 1853 raised the question of including language in
the Census and the 1873 Congress
recommended that language be included. Analysts observed that asking
such a question would itself generate linguistic nationalism. It forced people
not to select just a nationality, but a nationality connected to language.
Hobsbaum pointed out that in Europe national language was almost always
an artificial construct. Most of the time people spoke dialects, not
standardized language. French was the language of administration from about
1853 but even in 1789 it was spoken mainly in the central regions. It was not
spoken at all in the north and south of France. Only 18% spoken high French. The same applied to German and Italian. In
Germany there was High German which included local dialects such as Schwabisch. When Italy was formed only 3% spoke
sophisticated Italian. Israel rejected
Yiddish and created a new variant of Hebrew as the national language of Israel.
Language was thereafter used as a unifying and emotional symbol of these
new nation states of Europe. The Tamil Separatist Movement latched on to this. The Tamil Separatist Movement announced The Tamil-speaking
people in Ceylon constitute a distinct nation with its own language.
The Jaffna Peninsula was a part of the Rajarata during the Anuradhapura
kingdom. It was known as Nagadipa. The language was Sinhala. The Tamil language
was introduced to Jaffna much later, in the 18th and 19th centuries. Landless,
low caste laborers, from Tamilnadu, were brought into Jaffna Peninsula by the Dutch
and British in the 18 and 19 century to work on the tobacco plantations in Jaffna.
The Tamil settlements in Jaffna started then. It is unlikely that they were Tamil scholars.
The Tamil language was
entrenched in Jaffna by the
American Missionaries
who descended on Jaffna in 1816.
The American Board of Commissioners for
Foreign Missions, based in Boston, started Christian missionary
operations in Jaffna in 1816. They
encouraged Tamil studies with special emphasis on Tamil literature. They wanted also to upgrade the Tamil
language used by the inhabitants of Jaffna.
The American Mission in Boston therefore
wanted all subjects taught in Tamil in the mission schools of Jaffna. Batticotta seminary, Vaddukoddai, the
flagship school of the American Mission, placed much emphasis on Tamil language
and literature. Tamil composition was encouraged and there were exams on Tamil studies.
Batticotta set up a Tamil class in 1828 to train Tamil teachers. The Batticotta seminary, it is held, was
responsible for the emergence of a Tamil intellectual elite and a Dravidian
identity in Jaffna.
The teachers were American. Christian missionaries
trained in biblical Hebrew arrived and began learning Tamil, observed Shulman. There
was G.Dashiel for Sanskrit and P.K.Haselltine for Tamil. H.R.Hoisington, a graduate of Cambridge
University, who arrived in 1836, and became principal in 1845, mastered Tamil
and Sanskrit, [presumably after he arrived in Jaffna] A system of Tamil shorthand for the Tamil
language was invented by Rev Fr P Dunne, principal of St Patrick’s College(1889-1901) in 1900, he published a concise Tamil –
English Dictionary.
Ancient Tamil texts were printed for the first
time in the Mission press in 1835. The Mission started a newspaper ‘Morning
Star’ in 1841. It had four pages, two each in English and Tamil. In 1853 there
was the ‘Vithyatharpanam’ with two equal sections in Tamil and English.
Arumuka Navalar
(1822-1879) was known for reforming Hinduism, not Tamil language but he contributed to the revival of Tamil by
making Tamil the language of the Saivite revival. He promoted literacy and
Tamil studies. This was an important
contribution to the development of modern Tamil studies both in Ceylon and
South India, said K.M. de Silva. He
was one of the early adaptors of modern Tamil prose, introducing Western
editing techniques. He
adopted a simple and lucid style of Tamil prose writing, added de Silva.
According to
information held on the internet, Arumuga Navalar produced approximately
ninety-seven Tamil publications
of which twenty three were original writings. There were also forty edited versions of works on grammar,
literature, liturgy, and theology that were not previously available in print, as well as
eleven commentaries. Commentaries on grammars included Kandihai Urai on the
Nanool. With this ‘recovery, editing, and publishing’ of
ancient works, Navalar laid the foundations for the recovery of lost Tamil classics.. However, Jane Russell stated that Tamils were not
conversant with classical Tamil even at 1946.
The Tamil language, in the meanwhile was in difficulties in its
home state of Tamilnadu. By the end of the 14th century, Tamil had lost its dominant position in
Tamilnadu. Tamil
never regained that sovereign position.
Around 1364,
the Tamil kingdom in South India was conquered by the Vijayanagara kingdom of
Karnataka. Tamil kingdom was thereafter
administered by Vijayanagara officials from present day Andhra Pradesh. Tamil was displaced by Telegu, the language
of Andhra Pradesh. The kingdom
was thereafter administered in Telegu. The Nayakkar kings of the Udarata
kingdom who came from Tamilnadu spoke Telegu, not Tamil and were known as
Andhras.
The Tamil kingdom later splintered into small,
weak kingdoms, known as the kingdoms of Madura, Trichinopoly, and Tanjore, with
Madura going under the Muslim Nawab of Arcot in 1734. Telegu continued to dominate. There was a
Telegu literature in Madras in the 19th century and
the British rulers recognized Telegu.
Telegu manuscripts numbering 3335 collected during British rule were sent to
Hyderabad in 1960.
The Tamil language was rescued and re-instated
in Tamilnadu by the Christian missionaries who arrived in Tamilnadu from the
17th century onwards .They had to learn Tamil to convert the natives to
Christianity and in the process they helped to revive Tamil language and
literature.
The leading personalities in this were two
Italian Jesuit priests, Roberto de Nobili (1606-1656) and Constanzo Beschi
(1680-1742) also German Lutheran priest B. Ziegenbalg
(1682-1719). They collected Tamil manuscripts,
made translations and compiled grammars. G.U.Pope (1830- 1857) a Wesleyan
priest, translated many Tamil texts into English and British Civil Servant
F.W.Ellis (1810-1819) made a large collection of Tamil manuscripts. Rev. Robert
Caldwell introduced the notion of a separate group of Dravidian languages in
his
‘A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages, ‘(1856).
Madras also had it native researchers, notably
Caminat Aiyar, who spent a good part of his life scouring the Tamil country for
more manuscripts and editing them. Caminat Aiyar brought to light ancient,
largely forgotten master works of Tamil literature.
The British administration in Madras helped in
the recovery of Tamil. From 1820 onwards they supported the campaign to foster
and reform Tamil language and literature. Publications of lost classics was a
valued colonial period activity, observed Shulman. Language teachers were given secure jobs. The first section of Tolkapiyam was
published in 1847 in Madras. But most
of the manuscripts found could not be dated. Some would have been recent, said Shulman.
Rev. P.Percival (Wesleyan then Anglican)
was appointed first Professor of Vernacular Literature at Madras University in
1857. He knew both
Tamil and Telegu. The first section of Cilapattikaranam was printed by Bower and Muttiaya
Pillay in 1868 and was part of the curriculum for students of Tamil in
government colleges.
The American mission in Jaffna went to Tamilnadu to help revive the Tamil language
there. Tamils scholars trained at Batticotta were sent to help upgrade Tamil
literature in Madras. The very early texts had gone out of circulation by the
middle of the 19 century and were in need of ‘recovery. Manuscripts of Manimekalai, Cilapattikaranam
for instance were missing. A bundle of palm leaf manuscripts were discovered in the
library of the Tiruvavatutirai mutt in 1883.
The Jaffna Tamil
who was most active in this was C.M. Thamotharampillai (1833-1901)
Thamotharampillai learnt Tamil under his father, a first generation Christian,
who had briefly attended Batticotta. Thamotharampillai also studied at
Batticotta where he did a Tamil translation of the Book of Genesis from the
Bible. He graduated from Batticotta in
1852.
Thamotharampillai advertised in Madras for
Tamil manuscripts, obtained them, edited and published them, using his earnings
to do so. He collated manuscripts,
noting variant readings. He
published around 13 Tamil manuscripts including ‘Veerasoliyan’. He published several works which were
considered lost, where only parts of the manuscripts were found in olas here and there. These included ‘Ilakkana vilakkam’ and, more importantly, the third part of
Tholkayam, the ‘Porulathikaram.’ Thamotharampillai ‘searched high and low’ and
brought this manuscript to light in 1885.
He handed over manuscripts that he was not
using to others to process. Thamotharampillai’s
contribution to the Tamil language in discovering and publishing lost
manuscripts is well recognized in Tamilnadu.
In Sri Lanka, on the other hand, Sinhala maintained its status as a sovereign
language up to 1815. Sinhala continued in use thereafter, throughout British
rule. Sinhala literature and Sinhala
grammar were carefully preserved and looked after by generation after generation
of bhikkus and laymen during this period. Complete manuscripts of major Sinhala
writings, such as Mahavamsa, Jataka pota, Vittipot, and Kadaimpot
were available in plenty, in good condition, in personal and temple collections
in the 1930s. Unlike Tamil, Sinhala
language, Sinhala grammar, Sinhala literature did not collapse.No outside
intervention was needed. The Christian missionaries only had to prepare
Sinhala-English dictionaries for their own use.
Rasmus Rask (1787-1832) was a Danish specialist on languages. In 1816, Rask left Denmark to
learn about languages in the East and to obtain manuscripts for the Royal
Library, Copenhagen. He went to Sweden, Finland, Russia, Persia, India and then Ceylon. Godakumbura says that
Rask learnt Sinhala in the three months he stayed in Madras. From Madras Rask
arrived in Jaffna in November 1821 and learned Sinhala from C.E.Layard, the CCS
officer stationed there, using the Sinhala version of the New Testament of the
Bible. He came down to Colombo and collected
Sinhala manuscripts to take back to Denmark. There is no mention of Tamil.
The fact that Rask did not study Tamil, though he was
in Madras and Jaffna, indicates that Tamil did not have a high position at the
time. The
South Asian collection of the Royal Library, Copenhagen, today has 1127 manuscripts in Sanskrit, 310 in Pali, 169 in Sinhalese, 97 in
Tamil, and 13 in Urdu. It has 2640
printed books in Sanskrit, 860 in Hindi, 690 in Urdu and 180 in Sinhalese.
There is no mention of Tamil.
The Tamil Separatist Movement declared that
the Tamil language had an unsurprised classical heritage. The Ceylon Tamil of the British period held that there was a wonderful
Tamil literature. Tamil is seen as the classical language which produced the
oldest literature of the Dravidian languages, they said.
Ceylon Tamils announced that Tamil is one of
the longest-surviving classical languages in the world. It was described it as
“the only language of contemporary India which is recognizably continuous
with a classical past.” The variety and quality of classical Tamil
literature has led to it being described as “one of the great classical
traditions and literatures of the world”.
In
Sri Lanka, Simon Casie Chetty produced ‘The Tamil Plutarch’ (1859) A Summary Account
of the Lives of the Poets and Poetesses of Southern India and Ceylon. In this
book Casie Chetty said that Tamil is peculiar to part of India, which was
formerly under Chera, Chola and Pandiya kings and of those of the eastern and
northern provinces of Ceylon.
Tamil occupies the most distinguished
rank. It is one of the most copious, refined, and polished languages spoken by
man. Few nations on earth can perhaps boast of so many poets as the Tamils.
Poetry appears to have been the first fixed form of language amongst them; they
have not a single ancient book that is written in prose, not even the books on
medicine. There were three different Sangams, or Colleges at three different
periods, for the promotion of literature, concluded Casie Chetty.
But the reality is
different. Actually, we don’t even know the original
name for the two greatest Tamil literary works – Tolkappiyam (just means
“an ancient classic”) and Thirukural (“divine verses”),
said analysts. Like most of Indian history, we just know these things from
secondary works written by others, but a lot of things are unknown. The Sangam
texts were lost or became irrelevant in the mediaeval times and came to be
rediscovered in the 19th century.
Today, Hindi and English are the two official
languages of India .In Tamilnadu, the home of the Tamil language, Tamil ranks
third, below Hindi and English. The rank order of the most spoken languages in
India is Hindi, Bengali, Telegu, Marathi and Tamil.
Tamil is recognized as an official language
only in Sri Lanka and Singapore. Tamil
is recognized as a minority language in
South Africa, Malaysia and Mauritius. Tamil is used as one of the languages
of education in Malaysia, along with English, Malay and Mandarin. (Continued)
