From a posting in 1997 by
George Hart, Professor of Tamil, University of
California, Berkeley on Tamil, Brahmins, &
Sanskrit:
1. Neither Sanskrit nor Tamil are particularly old in
the world scheme of things. Sanskrit is documented
earlier than Tamil.
2. Sanskrit has borrowed quite as much from Dravidian
as Dravidian has from Sanskrit. Tamil has borrowed more
words from Sanskrit than Sanskrit has from Dravidian.
It is a trivial thing for a language to borrow
vocabulary. But when it uses another language's syntax
to form the way it expresses things, and uses another
language's phonology for its sounds, that is really
profound influence. The fact is, Sanskrit HAS been
influenced in this way by Dravidian. Of course, some
Dravidian languages have also borrowed Sanskrit sounds
(bh, etc.) But none of the four Dravidian languages I
have read has borrowed anything from Sanskrit syntax
that I can identify. Much of the syntax of Sanskrit is
Dravidian, and it has a large Dravidian vocabulary. Its
system of phonetics is profoundly influenced by
Dravidian -- Indo-Aryan is the only IE family with
retroflexes.
3. Sanskrit also lacks some sounds that are available
in Tamil. Tamil has short e and o, zh, R, n, and many
permutations of stops -- e.g. k in akam -- which are
not found in Skt. Actually both languages have about
the same number of phonemes.
4. The word Dravidian clearly comes from the word
Tamil. This has been demonstrated time and time again
-- the earliest occurrences of the word in IA are
dramiDa ==> draviDa.
5. I can attest that the grammar of Sanskrit is no more
elegant or perfect than any other IE language. It very
much resembles Russian, Latin, and Greek (which I have
also read) -- to which it is closely akin. To my mind,
Tamil and the other Dravidian languages have much more
elegant and logical structures. Consider this: in
Dravidian, you can take any sentence and turn it into
an adverb, adjective, or noun by simply changing the
ending on the verb. Then you can embed that sentence in
any other sentence. The Dravidian relativizing system
is extremely straight-forward and logical; the IE one
-- shared by Sanskrit (and English) -- is quite messy
and verbose. One could go on and on. I love Sanskrit,
but I would never claim its zillions of nit-picking
rules make it somehow an epitome of order and perfect
structure. Sorry, but it's just not.
6. I do agree with Sridhar Srinivasan about the
symbiotic nature of Sanskrit and Tamil (and also other
Indian languages). The fact is, Sanskrit and Tamil,
while originally independent traditions, have from the
earliest times formed one cultural stream, much as the
Latin and the languages of Western Europe have.
7. Sanskrit, like Tamil, is a very rich language and
tradition. It has an enormous variety of writings, some
of which are of great quality (which is true of most
rich languages). It has been a carrier of cultural
tradition, and it is endlessly interesting. But why is
it that it is mindlessly glorified for all the WRONG
reasons?
8. Both languages are carriers of wonderful and rich
intellectual and literary traditions. The only way to
appreciate either language is to read these literatures
and spend a lot of time pondering them.
Albiruni on Sanskrit, a
thousand years ago:
"...First, they differ from us in everything which other
nations have in common. And here we first mention the
language, although the difference of language also exists
between other nations. If you want to conquer this
difficulty (i.e. to learn Sanskrit), you will not find it
easy, because the language is of an enormous range, both
in words and inflections, something like the Arabic,
calling one and the same thing by various names, both
original and derived, and using one and the same word for
a variety of subjects, which, in order to be properly
understood, must be distinguished from each other by
various qualifying epithets. For nobody could distinguish
between the various meanings of a word unless he
understands the context in which it occurs, and its
relation both to the following and the preceding parts of
the sentence. The Hindus, like other people, boast of
this enormous range of their language, whilst in reality
it is a defect.
Further, the language is divided into a neglected
vernacular one, only in use among the common people, and
a classical one, only in use among the upper and educated
classes, which is much cultivated, and subject to the
rules of grammatical inflection and etymology, and to all
the niceties of grammar and rhetoric. Besides, some of
the sounds (consonants) of which the language is composed
are neither identical with the sounds of Arabic and
Persian, nor resemble them in anyway.
Our tongue and uvula could scarcely
manage to correctly pronounce them, nor our ears in
hearing to distinguish them from similar sounds, nor
could we transliterate them with our characters.
It is very difficult, therefore, to
express an Indian word in our writing, for in order to
fix the pronunciation we must change our orthographical
points and signs, and must pronounce the case-endings
either according to the common Arabic rules or according
to special rules adapted for the purpose.
Add to this that the Indian scribes are
careless, and do not take pains to produce correct and
well-collated copies. In consequence, the highest results
of the author's mental development are lost by their
negligence, and his book becomes already in the first or
second copy so full of faults, that the text appears as
something entirely new, which neither a scholar nor one
familiar with the subject, whether Hindu or Muslim, could
any longer understand.
It will sufficiently illustrate the
matter if we tell the reader that we have sometimes
written down a word from the mouth of Hindus, taking the
greatest pains to fix its pronunciation, and that
afterwards when we repeated it to them, they had great
difficulty in recognising it.
As in other foreign tongues, so also in
Sanskrit, two or three consonants may follow each other
without an intervening vowel-consonants which in our
Persian grammatical system are considered as having a
hidden vowel. Since most Sanskrit words and names begin
with such consonants without vowels, we find it very
difficult to pronounce them.
Besides, the scientific books of the
Hindus are. composed in various favourite metres, by
which they intend, considering that the books soon become
corrupted by additions and omissions, to preserve them
exactly as they are, in order to facilitate their being
learned by heart, because they consider as canonical only
that which is known by heart, not that which exists in
writing.
Now it is well known that in all metrical
compositions there is much misty and constrained
phraseology merely intended to fill up the metre and
serving as a kind of patchwork, and this necessitates a
certain amount of verbosity. This is also one of the
reasons why a word has sometimes one meaning and
sometimes another. From all this it will appear that the
metrical form of literary composition is one of the
causes which make the study of Sanskrit literature so
particularly difficult..."
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