Essays on the History of Malayalam

Essays on the History of Malayalam - Prof.S.V.Shanmugam Professor S V Shanmugam is a distinguished comparative Dravidian linguist, sociolinguist anda leading scholar in Classical and Modern Tamil, Grammar and Poetics. Dravidian Nouns: A Comparative Study, (1971) is the classical work on Dravidian linguistics by Shanmugam. He has been substantially contributing for five decades to the comparative study of Dravidian languages. His sociolinguistic work on ‘Indonesian Studies’ (1971) published by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, ‘Modernization in Tamil’ (1975) which appeared in Anthropological Linguistics, and ‘Dental and Alveolar Nasals in Dravidian’ (1972) which appeared in the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies are his most cited works. In addition to the comparative studies, he contributes to the advancement of linguistic studies and grammaticography of Malayalam language. His sociolinguistic studies on Lilatilakam (1995) and Kéralapaniniyam (2012) have transformed the studies on Malayalam grammatical tradition. This collection of Essays on the History of Malayalam comprises his seven articles about Malayalam published during 1977 to 2007. The State Institute of Language, Kerala has included S. V. Shanmugam in the biographic _ volume of Malayalam Linguists in 2015. The seven essays in this collection deal with the origin and development of Malayalam language and the grammaticog- raphy of Malayalam.

"Professor S. V. Shanmugam has over a period of research spanning almost half a century made a major contribution to the study of Dravidian linguistics, mainly in the form of articles published in the standard European and Indian journals devoted to Asian and Indian languages and literatures. [...] The publication ofa selection of these articles within the covers of one book will make them more readily accessible to an enthusiastic world-wide readership. Dravidian University is to be congratulated on the decision to publish these seven essays as a single volume". (Prof.R.E.Asher, University of Edinburgh) cos!

Professor S. V. Shanmugam has over a period of research spanning almost half a century made a major contribution to the study of Dravidian linguistics, mainly in the form of articles published in the standard European and Indian journals devoted to Asian and Indian languages and literatures. The publication of a selection of these articles within the covers of one book will make them more readily accessible to an enthusiastic world-wide readership.

An important subset of these articles concerns the place of Malayalam within the Dravidian family, and these are reproduced here to form a book with a coherent theme. This has been a major preoccupation within Professor S. V. Shanmugam’s principal field of research and he has significantly increased our understanding of the issue.

His discussion of the place of Malayalam in Dravidian accepts that the language belongs to the South Dravidian group along with Tamil but rules out the argument that it is a direct offshoot of Tamil. This theme is further developed in the subsequent articles. An important part of the discussion is that concerning the innovations common to the two languages and the ones that are part of Malayalam alone. Of particular interest and importance is the discussion of the way in which the spoken language of southwest India became the language of literary composition.

Recognized as one of the major differences between Malayalam and Tamil is the lack of agreement in the former between the subject and predicate of a sentence. The loss of the feature of subject-verb concord is traced in interesting detail. Shanmugam demonstrates the nature of the gradual change through which this agreement was lost in Malayalam.

Under the thematic heading of "bimodel analogy" there is a complex discussion of the development of four major Malayalam verb suffixes, namely optative, conditional verbal participle, infinite verbal participle and imperative plural.

Shanmugam not only in this way discusses in a sophisticated fashion some of the important distinguishing features of Malayalam grammar, he shows an interest in the development of grammatical discussion in the language through his account of aspects the two of the major treatises in the history of Malayalam grammatical analysis, namely Lilatilakam and Kéralapaniniyam.

Altogether Dravidian University is to be congratulated on the decision to publish these seven essays as a single volume.

That the foundations of Indian culture were deeply embedded in Dravidian culture is now an incontro-vertible fact. Dravidian culture is one of the most ancient cultures of the world. Those cultures, slightly contemporaneous to one another, slowly started fading out. However, the primordial Dravidian culture continues to thrive without losing its quintessence despite the apparent changes in systems of dress and adress.

Dravidian University was established in 1997 to mirror the real and rich picture of Dravidian culture not only in its linguistic, literary, cultural and philosophical faces but in science and technological angles also.

At a time when no special attention worth its name was paid by the Centre with regard to language, the Southern states except Kerala. had established all by themselves their own Universities - Telugu, Tamil and Kannada - to research on their languages and cultures.

The Government of Andhra Pradesh took a step ahead and started Dravidian University, with the cooperation of the sister states, to research and reflect on the inherent oneness of the cultures of the four states whose languages number up to twenty seven. Its endeavour is to promote unity and amity in the family of several langauges. The main objectives of Dravidian University are to augment the common weal and social well being of the communities of marginal languages and to build bridges among the Southern states. While working on each language separately in varied areas, it aims ata synthesis and a discovery of the common heritage through Comparative Studies. Centre for Publications and Extension Services (Prasaaraanga) is an important wing of the University.

It is a great privilege for Dravidian University to publish the Essays on the History of Malayalam by Prof. S V Shanmugam. Iam sure that this will bea landmark in the history of the linguistic studies of Malayalam. I place on record our sincere gratitude to Prof. S V Shanmugam for choosing Dravidian University to publish this significant work. Prof. R. E. Asher of the University of Edinburgh, the renowned linguist and a scholar of Tamil and Malayalam wrote a preface for this volume. It is a great recognition for Dravidian University and the author. It is fervently hoped that the book will be a land mark in Malayalam.

I express our indebtedness to Prof. R. E. Asher.