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Re: The Glory of Tamil

From the Bhakti List Archives

Pradeep Janakiraman • October 16, 2002 


In addition to the posts on the glory of tamil, an awareness needs to 
be created that Tamil is the only language that descended to us 
without a common Sanskrit ancestor. 

All the languages spoken in India and in the Indo-European (Hindi, 
Greek, Gothic, Latin, English etc.) are all estimated to have 
descended from one common ancestor which western scholars seem to 
call the Pan Indo European Language. 


Tamil has the glory of evolving independently as a divine language, 
given by Sage Agastya. 

It is much older than our national language or any other of those 
spoken in the north. east or west, contains the Prabhandams which are 
glorified as much as the Vedas, contains the works of our Acharyas 
and the Kamba Ramayanam.

The older version of Tamil has been the ancestor for all the Pancha-
Dravida languages today - Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, Tulu. 
This older version of Tamil font resembles all the scripts in these 
dravidian languages. 

-- pradeep 
 
[ If I recall my Indology correctly, the "older version of Tamil"
  Pradeep mentions is more properly called proto-Dravidian, being
  the common ancestor to all the modern Dravidian languages,
  Tamil included.  The "older version of Tamil font" is ostensibly
  the Brahmi script in which some old Tamil inscriptions are found,
  and which was used for scripts all over India and not exclusively
  for Tamil.  The Brahmi script is the forerunner to all the Indian
  scripts in use today (save Urdu), both north Indian and south
  Indian. Pradeep's points about the antiquity and literary glory
  of Tamil vis-a-vis other modern Indian languages are right on
  the mark, IMHO. -- Mani ]


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