Eternal India Encyclopedia

EXPRESSIONS OF INDIA

Eternal India encyclopedia

Marathi developed rapidly after it had been adopted by Mahar- ashtrian saints and reformers like Ekanath, Tukaram and Ramdas. Chaitanya did the same for Bengali. The Dravidian Languages The Dravidian languages spoken in the south, eastern and central parts of India have remained an isolated group distinct from the Indo-Aryan tongues of the north. Some authorities believe that they are related to the Uralic (Hungarian, Finnish) and Altaic (Turkish, Mongol) language groups. Another theory tries to establish a link between the Dravidians and the peoples of the Indus Valley Civi- lisation. The term Dravidian was first used by Robert Caldwell in his A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South India Family of Languages published in 1856. The word Dravida is a Sanskrit word meaning Tamil and had been used in a 7th century Sanskrit text. The major Dravidian languages are Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam which are the official languages of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala, respectively. A sizeable number of people speak Tulu, a language without a script of its own which is spoken in the coastal districts of Karnataka. Coorgi, another non- literary language, is spoken in the mountainous Coorg district of Karnataka and Gondi is spoken in the tribal areas of Madhya Pradesh. It should be surprising to know that Brahui which is spoken in the Baluchistan province of Pakistan is a Dravidian language! Tamil is the oldest Dravidian language and one of the oldest spoken languages in the world. It absorbed a number of Sanskrit words but it was less strongly influenced by Sanskrit than were Telugu and Kannada. At the present day, under the influence of the. Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, there is a conscious attempt to eschew Sanskritised words and use pure Tamil in writing and speech. There are a number of local dialects. There is a sharp difference between the written language and the spoken form of Tamil. Telugu is the most widely spoken of the Dravidian family. In terms of speakers, it ranks second to Hindi among the Indian lan- guages. Telugu was exposed to the influence of Sanskrit and the Prakrit as early as the 3rd century B.C. The first Telugu inscription belongs to about 575 A.D. The Telugu script is akin to Kannada being different in only six letters. It has a number of local dialects. The oldest form of Kannada available is documented in the Halmidi inscription of 450 A.D. This is a record put up by the Kadambas whom historians consider to be the first Kannada kings to rule Karnataka. Kannada separated itself from the southern branch of the Dravidian language family much earlier and developed into a separate language. According to an eminent scholar, T.N. Sreekan- tayya "it is not known when exactly Tamil and Kannada separated from each other and became distinct languages; but the middle of the first millennium B.C. may not be wide of the mark." Kannada was influenced by Sanskrit and Prakrit because of the dominant position accorded to these languages by the dynasties that ruled Karnataka. Indeed the development of Kannada was impeded because of this. During the reign of the Satavahanas who ruled Karnataka in the early century of the Christian era Prakrit was the official language. Poets and Kings composed their works in Sanskrit or Prakrit. Prakrit was also the official language during the Kadamba

From the time of Panini onwards the language came to be called Samskrata, ("perfected or refined") in contrast to the Prakratas ("natural"), the popular dialects which had developed naturally. Around the 6th century B.C., the use of classical Sanskrit began to be restricted to a limited circle — the Brahmins who employed it during Vedic ceremonies, the learned people and in proclamations and official documents. In towns and villages the common people spoke popular forms of Sanskrit called Prakrits which were simpler than Sanskrit, both in sound and grammar. Several Prakrits emerged. Shauraseni was spoken in the western part of modern Uttar Pradesh. Ardhamagadhi was spoken in eastern Uttar Pradesh and modem Madhya Pradesh. Magadhi in Bihar was the language used by the Buddha. It was also the official language of the Mauryan courts and the edicts of Ashoka were composed in it. Maharashthri was spoken in the north-western Deccan. There were several other Prakrits of lesser importance. Women and the humbler characters of Sanskrit drama were made to speak in one Prakrit or other. An important early literary Prakrit was Pali (meaning "Text or Sacred Text") which became the language in which the canon of Theravada Buddhism is written. Sinhalese, the language of Ceylon (Sri Lanka), began as an Indo- Aryan Prakrit in the second century B.C but it developed independ- ently, influenced by the local language and Tamil, and came to bear no resemblance to Sanskrit. Pali is still the religious language of the Buddhists of Sri Lanka as well as those of Burma and South-East Asia. A later stage in the development of the Indo-Aryan languages was Apabhramsha which means "falling away" (from an established standard), the acceptance of corrupt forms ( apabhramsha ) in the place of a standard word form. Apabhramsha, a corrupt form of Prakrit, originated in western India. Its chief characteristic is an increasing use of post-positions and verbal compounds as in mod- ern Indian languages. Several new constructions in the syntax of case and tense emerged which later on became widespread in the modern Indo-Aryan languages. From about 1600 A.D., works began to be composed in increas- ingly more colloquialised Apabhramsha which eventually was re- placed by various regional languages with decreasing vestiges of Apabhramsha. Gujarati evolved around the 10th century from Guijara Apabhram- sha which was prevalent in that part of India ruled by a nomadic tribe by the name of Gurjara. The Shauraseni, Ardhamagadhi and Magadhi Apabhramshas were the sources for the development of Hindi and its dialects - Khariboli (Delhi and.some parts of Western U.P), Brajbhasha (Western U.P), Bundeli (M.P), Awadhi (Eastern U.P), Maithili (Eastern Bihar), Bhojpuri (Eastern U.P. and Western Bihar), Magadhi (Central Bihar) and Rajasthani. Khariboli, spoken in Delhi and the surrounding areas, was recognised as the represen- tative vernacular by the Mughal rulers. The standard Hindi approved in the Indian Constitution as the official language of the Union is based on the Khariboli dialect, Bengali, Assamese, Oriya and the dialects of Bihari (Bhojpuri, Maithili and Magadhi) evolved from the Prakrit and Apabhramsha spoken earlier in Magadh. The new religious sects helped in promot- ing the growth of the vernacular languages as they wished to com- municate with the common people in their own language. Thus