Kamil V. Zvelebil

PAḶḶAR SPEECH: A CONTRIBUTION TO TAMIL DIALECTOLOGY

0.1. The most interesting and perhaps the most important from the point of comparative Dravidian philology are those dialects of Tamil whose exact position in the Southern sub-family of Dravidian is rather unsettled, uncertain, and shifting, that is, those which are, as far as our present knowledge goes, on the border between dialects of Tamil proper and separate languages of the SDr sub-family. We may suspect the existence of more than one speech-forms like this. One of these speech-forms seems to be the TAMIL DIALECT of the PALLAR, an agricultural community of Eastern and Southern Tamilnad. 0.2.1. This being a (limited) linguistic analysis of Pallar speech, the data concerning the ethnic and social situation of the Pallar are given only as an elementary and introductory information. The Pallar are a class of agricultural labourers found chiefly in Tanjavur, Tiruchirappalli, Madurai, Tirunelveli, and Ramanadapuram districts of Madras. They are also fairly numerous in parts of Salem and Koyambattur, but in the remaining Tamil districts they live only in very limited number. According to Oppert, Eickstedt, and Guha, they have a TRIBAL origin; the tribe had been assimilated early into the Hindu caste system, as is the case with many ethnic groups of South India. The designation

Toga:ndra Name Ka:ppa:ttano: May the Gods Protect Us a Contribution to Nilgiri Religious Infrastructure

An Irula informant comments on the tribes religious observances. Text in Irula, with translation and extended commentary by Kamil Zvelebil.

ANOTHER NILGIRI LANGUAGE TREATED IN DEPTH

In his paper on the languages of the Nilgiris (in Blue Mountains: The Ethnography and Biogeography of South Indian Region [Delhi, 1989], 133-43), M. B. Emeneau writes: Once the linguistic area (or microarea) has been established by the identification of structural traits-and I think it is now established, at least in a preliminary way-it may be bolstered by examination of lexical items. The work discussed in this review article does precisely that, examining Badaga lexical items in as many contexts as possible (etymology, semantics, phraseology, cultural significance). In addition, its authors offer much more. It is in fact a linguistic and cultural encyclopedia of the Badaga language, an independent formation in its details, and of the Badaga community, the most important of the Nilgiri communities, both as to their number (at least 125,000 today) as well as to their growing economic, administrative, linguistic, and even political influence.

Tamil and Japanese—are they related? The hypothesis of Susumu Ohno

There has to be something deeply unsatisfactory, disturbing and provocative about a linguistic family which is ‘isolated’, particulary when the family is as large as the Dravidian group of languages (spoken by almost 150 million in India), or when the language is so politically, economically and culturally interesting and important as Japanese.

The Poems of Ancient Tamil. Their Milieu and Their Sanskrit Counterparts

This text presents a study of the earliest poems (written between the 1st and 3rd centuries AD) in the Tamil language, and also contains translations of many classic Tamil poems. It is intended for students of Tamil and Sanskrit, and those interested in Indian literature and South Asian culture.