Meluhha and tamiZ miZa-

[Guest guest]

In his latest book, The Dravidian languages (Cambridge Univ. press,

2003), prof. Bh. Krishnamurti talks about the word, tamiZ in page 2.

"It appears that damiLa- was older than draviDa- which could

be its sanskritization. It is not certain if tamiZ is derived

from damiLa- or the other way around."

 

Tamilists have discussed about the language name, tamiz.

An example is the first section in Zvelebil's Companion studies to

the history of tamil literature. Given the fact that BhK

himself has written in his book that not even a single

protostem can be found in PDr with a voiced initial,

Jules Bloch's suggestion that draviDa is original for tamiZ

needs to be abandoned. tamiZ has the prefix, "tam" (='their own')

is used as a prefix in the word - tamiZ. This prefix

also is found in tampi 'younger brother', tantai 'father'

and is never voiced. tamiz(i) is usually split as "tam"

plus a word with the meaning "language" ("mizi/mozi"),

and Parpola has suggested that Meluhha, a Mesopotamian toponym

for Indus area itself is related to (ta)miLaka (cf. mleccha/miLakkha).

 

"1.7.6 Caldwell (1857) correctly assumed that there were no

initial voiced stops in PDr - a situation reflected in modern

Tamil-Malayalam. This was accepted by Subbayya (1909) but rejected

by Bloch (1914, 1919) on the basis of few items like Skt. ghoTaka-

horse or drAviDa-, presumably of Dravidian origin. This view

of Bloch received support from Goda Varma (1935-1937), FBJ Kuiper

(1938), A. Master (1938) and S. K. Chetterji (1954), but was

opposed by others, notably T. Burrow (1938) and Bh. Krishnamurti

(1961). Zvelebil (1970) fully accepted the view of Caldwell, Burrow

and Krishnamurti. As Krishnamurti rightly says, "not

even a single protostem" can be discovered from the mass of

Dravidian vocabulary "with a widespread distribution of initial

voicing to merit the assumption of a PDr voiced initial even

to a small extent." [41]

 

[41] Telugu verbal bases, p. 29" (K. Zvelebil, Dravidian linguistics,

p. 9)[from

http://www.services.cnrs.fr/wws/arc/ctamil/2002-06/msg00027.html

]

 

Words like tamil pommai, palli are voiced as bommai, balli in telugu

which are late in time. so is tamiz ? damiLa/dravida.

http://www.services.cnrs.fr/wws/arc/ctamil/2002-06/msg00022.html

 

 

Regards,

N. Ganesan

[Guest guest]

Earlier discussions about Meluhha and Dravidian connections

by R. Thapar and replies by A. Govindankutty and Bh. Krshnamurti

are in JESHO. Thapar, Romila, 1975, A possible identification of

Meluhha, Dilmun and Makan, Journal of Economic and Social History of

the Orient, Leiden, 18(1): 1-42. The JESHO suggestion that meluhha

and mERku 'west' in tamil are related, may not hold good,

http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9811&L=indology&P=R224

 

Some more ref.s:

 

i) Parpola, Asko, 1997. Dravidian and the Indus script: On the

interpretation of some pivotal signs. Studia Orientalia 82: 167-191.

 

ii) Parpola, Asko, 1986. The relative size of the seals and other

clues to the royal titles of the Harappans.

Tamil Civilization 4 (3-4: Seminar on the Indus script,

edited by I. Mahadevan): 144-156. Thanjavur.

 

iii)Parpola, Simo & Asko Parpola & Robert H. Brunswig, Jr., 1977.

The Meluhha village: Evidence of acculturation of Harappan traders

in late third millennium Mesopotamia? Journal of the Economic and

Social History of the Orient 20 (2): 129-165. Leiden.

 

iv)Parpola, Asko & Simo Parpola, 1975. On the relationship of the

Sumerian toponym Meluhha and Sanskrit mleccha.

Studia Orientalia 46 (Festschrift Armas Salonen): 205-238. Helsinki.

 

v) Asko Parpola; Interpreting the Indus Script- II; Studia

Orientalia vol. 45 (1976); pg. 125-160; Published by Societas

Orientalis Fennica; Helsinki

p. 137: "Here it is suggested that the Sumerian (= Meluhha) as

well as the Pali Milakkha reflect the ancient Dravidian name of

the Indus Civilization surviving in Old Tamil (Ta)mil-akam [-axam]

'Tamil country', while Sanskrit mleccha < *mleksha [mle:xa} is

borrowed from a Central Dravidian form of this name with a

metathesis and vowel contraction. The Dravidian root underlying

the first part might hence be DED 4457".

 

vi) A. Parpola, Deciphering the Indus script, (Cambridge, 1994)

p. 170, "The most important single piece of actual linguistic

evidence relating to the Indus civilization is the toponym Meluhha,

mentioned as a distant foreign country engaged in sea trade [...]

The cognate Pali word milakkha 'barbarian' suggests taht Sanskrit

mlEccha goes back to *mlekSa, which in turn may, as Sir Harold

Bailey has pointed out, represent *mlEXa, where X stands for

a velar spirant not found in Indo-Aryan. With the metathesis

characteristic of Central Dravidian and with the normal

(Proto-)Dravidian spirantization of *-k- in the intervocalic

position, this word could go back to PDr *mElakam 'highland'.

This compound, however, is not known from any Dravdian language.

The second element does figure in the Old Tamil toponym tamizakam

'Tamil country'; the question of a possible relationship between

this toponym and Meluhha is bound up with the problem concerning

the etymology of the ethnic name Tamil and its Sanskrit form

Dravida or Dramila.

In early cuneiform texts, Meluhha can also be read as

Melahha (me-laH-Ha) which is closer to *MElakam or even

(Ta)mi_lakam."

 

I tend to agree with I. Mahadevan that meluhha is not probably

PDr *mElakam. http://www.harappa.com/script/maha3.html

" Survival of place-names is generally a good indicator of

the linguistic pre-history of a region. Parpola points out

several place-names in the northwestern region like nagara,

palli, pattana and kotta with good Dravidian etymologies.

I am not however convinced by his attempt to derive Meluhha

(the name of the land of the Indus in the [Mesopotamian]

cuneiform texts) from Dravidian mel-akam, 'High country',

not actually attested, as Parpola himself points out, in

any of the Dravidian languages. "(I. Mahadevan).

The -h- in Meluhha represents the intervocalic -k-

found also in Tamil.

http://www.services.cnrs.fr/wws/arc/ctamil/2002-11/msg00025.html

As kAviri, the only name for that river attested in sangam

anthologies,

is pronounced as kAveri colloquially, "miZakam" might

have a colloquial pronunciation melahha, with -e-, a rounding

of -i- in miZakam (Cf. milakkha/miLakkha in MIA).

 

F. C. Southworth reconstructs

PDrav. *mu.z.i/mi.z.i 'say, speak, utter', DEDR 4989,

tami.l. 'Tamil' < 'own speech'. (p. 223 in Southworth,

The reconstruction of Prehistoric South Asian language contact,

in E. H. Bendix (ed.), The Uses of Linguistics, New York Academy

of sciences, 1990, p. 207-234).

 

----------

 

This reconstruction, melahha < PDr *miZakam has

support from old Tamil data.

 

The language name, tamiZ is derivable from

tam- + (m)iZ-. The first part, tam- "their/our own"

is the oblique form of the pronoun of the

third person plural reflexive, tAm 'they (themselves)'.

The first part tam- is found also in tampi 'younger brother',

tantai 'father'.The second part in the word, tamiZ,

seems to do with miZ-. It's possible that in the ancient grammar

tolkAppiyam poruL. 539.1 mentioning "iZum en2 moZi",

the word-initial m- in miZ- is lost to produce "iZum".

Here in tolk., "iZum" means "sweet words"

(S. V. Subramanian, The word Tamil, p. 7-12,

Heritage of the Tamils: Language and Grammar,

Madras, 1980). miZ- > iZ, with parallel examples

such as malar:alar 'flower', mOTu:OTu 'tile'and so on.

 

miZa- "soft, sweet sound/speach" is attested many times

in old Tamil. miZaRRi- is used for the speech of

parrots and young girls in old Tamil. Interesting that

a section of Chola country is called, "miZalai",

and there is a medieval prabandham poem, miZalai catakam

on this miZalai region. miZalai is not only "lisp,

child's soft speech", but also a toponym in Tamil.

 

Hence, melahha (Sumerian toponym for the Indus area)

can be considered with PDr *miZakam. Compare it to

i) Old tamil toponym - tamiZakam, ii) the meaning of tamiZ "our

sweet speech", iii) miZalai as toponym are leads in this.

 

tamiZ = tam "our own" + (m)iZ-"sweet speech" can be

looked from a different angle. The verb, miZa(RRu) is

used for soft speech of parrots and girls.

There is a long literary tradition

where tamiZ just means "love" poems. The culture-specific

manner in which tamiZ is equated with love,

and miZa- "soft/sweet speech" notions are semantically connected.

Zvelebil, Companion studies to the history of

tamil lit., provides translation of data from mayilai cIni.

vEGkaTacAmi, tamiZ-akam, J. of Tamil studies, 3,

1973, p. 1-3. KZ, p. XVI

"As mentioned above, the word tamiZ in the meaning of

'love matter' of literature is most probably used

as such in the colophon to KuRiJcippaaTTu (ca. 15-200AD).

[...]

 

Acc. to ParipATal 9.14, kAtal 'love' is to be preferred

to kAman2 'lust' and spontaneous love is paraphrased

as tamiZ in the text 9.25-6. MaaRan2 PoRaiyan2Ar composed

his aintiNai aimpatu in the 5th-6th century. In this

little work's preface, centamiZ designates its matter,

ie., love in the five tiNais. The famous commentary

on iRaiyan2Ar's akapporuL by NakkIrar (8th century AD)

is quite explicit: it says that the book, the subject

of which is akapporuL (love-matter) deals with tamiZ

as its subject-matter. In Manikkavacakar's TirukkOvaiyAr

(10th cent.), tIn tamiZ also designates the 'topic of

love'. The grand epic cIvakacintAmaNi, in its patumaiyAr

book 163, uses the term ten2 tamiZ as referring to

akapporuL (cf. U. V. Swaminatha Iyer's edition, Madras

1969, p. 675). The grammar TamiZneRi viLakkam (9th cent.

or latter), of which we have only a fragment (ed. by UVS

in 1937), states explicitly that the manner of love in the

five tiNais (anpin aintiNai) equals tamiZ neRi, ie., the Tamil

way (of life), the Tamil 'method' (of love)."

 

Regards,

N. Ganesan