Short Essay on the Pre-History Part-II of South India

We have seen in the previous section that the Dravidian-speaking people of South India were the second important layer in the composition of the cis-Vindhyan population, the first being the Negrito, Australoid element. The Dravidian speakers however spread themselves out over the whole of the southern part of the peninsula.

The only area in which a non-Dravidian language is spoken is Maharashtra in the west, Marathi being a Prakrit of Sanskrit. Telugu in the central and eastern parts of the Deccan is spoken by more than 40 million people; Tamil in the southeastern parts is the language of near 40 millions. Kannada in the Mysore and South Maharashtra regions is the mother tongue of about 30 millions while Malayalam the youngest of the Dravidian language groups is confined to a narrow strip of territory along the south-western coast.

Because these language forms are adopted by different people who had long ago stabilized themselves in particular parts of South India and communication among them was neither frequent nor effective till advanced historical times, these language forms tended to deviate from the original proto-Dravidian form and developed their own linguistic peculiarities. Of these languages Tamil is spoken not only in Southeast India but also in north and east Ceylon.

There is evidence of its being the first to acquire literary form; and it developed more than a functional vocabulary and grew grammatical rules and literary conventions nearly 25 centuries ago so that by the beginning of the Christian era or even a couple of centuries earlier it possessed a literature which the Tamils of later centuries had not found it possible to surpass. This language has within it the capacity to function independently of aid either as vocabulary or as structural I rules from any other language.

It is well- known that there is no language in India which is truly ancient and which has not been in greater or lesser measure affected by Sanskrit. But of all these languages Tamil was the least affected though it is not necessary to imagine that it is some sort of virture not to be so affected.

The geographical isolation and distance which their land gave to the people practically kept them away from non-maritime influences and they were the last to be touched by any cultural influence percolating from the north. So that both in their way of life and in the language whose main purpose was to express it they were a class by themselves.

From the earliest stratum of their literature they had also tended to look upon themselves with great favour and to mention non-Tamil speakers with a sneer almost like the Greeks calling non-Greek speaking peoples ‘barbarians’. The Telugus and the Kannada speakers were the next to follow and in spite of a number of basic roots and word forms being Dravidian the individuality that these languages developed is unmistakable.

The Tamil language, which about 15 centuries ago was spoken by all the cis- Nilgiris peoples, splintered off into two, developing a language group, Malayalam, called after the hilly country which separated the western coast from the eastern plains. Even before this happened, Tamil spoken at the western and northern periphery had individualistic elements which obliged the Tamils to distinguish between Sentamil spoken at the core of the Tamil country and Koduntamil spoken at the frontiers.

It is out of the western Koduntamil that Malayalam developed, in course of time, into a practically autonomous language. Apart from these major languages there are minor ones like Tulu, Badaga, etc. These have no scripts but belong to the Dravidian family. Tulu is spoken in South Canara and parts of North Canara. The Badaga and the Toda languages are confined to the Nilgiri ranges and are spoken by a small number of people and these languages have not developed literary forms.

The influence of Marathi has created Konkani; the language of the Parsis in Bombay and its neighbourhood came with them from Persia. Persian is spoken by the more aristocratic among the Muslims; Urdu is familiar to most of the Muslims; and English is the mother tongue of a small group namely the Anglo-Indians; these came to be spoken by different groups in the course of our history and of these Parsi and Urdu are not comparable to the more ancient and the more respectable (from the literary point of view) of South Indian languages.