The first to propose Dravidian Language family [ was: [Y-Indology] Book-Burning in India ]

[naga_ganesan]

--- In INDOLOGY, "Narayan Prasad" <prasad_cwprs@y...>
wrote:

>> (Ellis, btw, was the first to propose Dravidian language family).

>But Grierson recognizes Brian Hodgson as the first to propose
>Dravidian Language family [Ref 1, p.281]:

Dear Dr. Narayana Prasad,

F. W. Ellis is usually recognized as the one who first proposed
the idea of Dravidian language family. For example. Bh. Krishnamurti,
The Dravidian languages, Cambridge univ. press, 2003. p. 16-17:
"As early as 1816, Francis Whyte Ellis, an English civil servant,
in his Dissertation on the Telugu language" [...]. His purpose was
to show that Tamil, Telugu and Kannada 'form a distinct family
of languages' with which 'the Sanscrit has, in later times, espcially,
intermixed, but with which it has no radical connection'. He presented
considerable illustrative material, mainly lexical and grammatical,
from Telugu, Kannada and Tamil in support of his hypothesis
(Krishnamurti 1969b: 311-312). Ellis recognized the Dravidian languages
as a family, thirty years after Sir William Jones had floated the
concept of the language family in his famous lecture to the Asiatic
Society of Bengal in Calcutta, on 2 February 1786." BhK's book - I
chapter is at:
http://assets.cambridge.org/05217711...21771110WS.pdf

Susan Okeksiw, "Francis Whyte Ellis: A Brief Review of his Work,"
Adyar Library Bulletin 51 (1987: L. Rocher Festschrift vol.), pp. 267-75.

There is lot of info about Ellis, Hodgson, Calwell in a paper
by Thomas Trautmann in M. Deshpande & J. Bronkhorst, Aryan and Non-Aryan
in India. In fact, it was Trautmann who told about Ellis to Ed Bryant.
May be worth checking to see if it was Hodgson's idea.

Prof. Trautmann sent me his 2 papers about Ellis. One is about (pre)
vaccination debates in Madras. It was written as a samvAdam between
Mariyamman and Danvantri. Unfortunately,the Tamil original may be lost
now, but Trautmann uses the English translation from London archives.
Second is on the debates about including Telugu in the Dravidian
languages, elite pundits' opposition etc., The title is something
like "haloo-baloo about Teloogoo". Have seen Ellis' poems, "paJcAkkara
mAlai" (on namasivaya mantram), there are two long inscriptions in
akaval, one in Chennai and another from Dindigul (on his tombstone).
They extensively quote tirukkuRaL.
http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa...ology&P=R17865
http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa...ology&P=R12772

I think it was his Tamil teachers like Saminathan, Muttusamy,
Ramachandra Kavirayar who told Ellis that Tamil does not derive from
Sanskrit. This must have raised his curiosity against the Calcutta
Orientalist scholars and pundits who said every Indian language comes
from Sanskrit. Medieval Tamil grammarians, much before Ellis, paid
close attention to studying Kannada and Telugu. There is a long
tradition comparing and contraisting Tamil and Sanskrit
in southern literature.
http://www.services.cnrs.fr/wws/arc/.../msg00002.html

Regards,
N. Ganesan

[Robert Zydenbos]

Am Freitag, 30. Januar 2004 14:25 schrieb Narayan Prasad:

> > (Ellis, btw, was the first to propose Dravidian language family).
>
> But Grierson recognizes Brian Hodgson as the first to propose
> Dravidian Language family [Ref 1, p.281]:
>
> --------QUOTE-----
> B.H.Hodgson ivana kAladavaregU dakSiNabhAratada bhASegaLu [...]

We would have to find out when Hodgson proposed that.

Zvelebil notes that Francis Whyte Ellis asserted a «"family of languages which
may be appropriately called the dialects of South India", and that it
included "the high and low Tamil; the Telugu, grammatical and vulgar;
Carn'at'aca or Cannad'i, ancient and modern; Malayalma or Malayalam", further
"the Tuluva", "Cod'ugu", and "the language of the mountaineers of Rajmahal".
Thus, Ellis enumerated seven DRavidian languages (Tamil, Telugu, Kannada,
Malayalam, Tulu, Kodagu and Malto) and recognized their genetic
relationship."» (K.V. Zvelebil, _Dravidian Linguistics. An Introduction_.
Pondicherry: Pondicherry Institute of Linguistics and Culture, 1990, p.
xviii.) Ellis wrote his thoughts in his introduction to A.D. Campbell's _A
Grammar of the Teloogoo Language Commonly Called the Gentoo_ (Madras: College
Press, 1816).

--
Prof. Dr. Robert J. Zydenbos
Department für Asienstudien - Indologie
Universität München
Deutschland