As Kamal row rages on, linguists say Tamil, Kannada are daughters of long-lost ‘mother’
Even though there is no clarity on origin of Dravidian languages, Tamil and Kannada are said to have originated from a proto-language called South Dravidian 1, spread in India during second millennium BCE
Even as veteran actor Kamal Haasan remains defiant about not apologising for claiming that Kannada language originated from Tamil, linguists and scholars say there is no basis for any current Dravidian language to be seen as the “mother” language, as they are all born out of Proto-Dravidian, thereby making them more like sisters.
Raging row
The Tamil-Kannada row erupted when, during the audio launch of his film Thug Life, Kamal said that Kannada was born out of Tamil. Pro-Kannada groups and the Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce (KFCC) demanded an apology, threatening to ban the film's release in the state.
Kamal refused to apologise and, in a letter to KFCC, said that his comments were “misunderstood” and “taken out of context”. The Karnataka High Court also slammed Kamal, saying a “single apology could have resolved the situation”. As Kamal remains defiant, the movie will not be released in Karnataka for now.
Watch | Kannada is not Tamil’s daughter: Linguistic expert Deiva Sundaram
Kamal’s statement became even more controversial, as it came against the backdrop of the DMK allotting him a Rajya Sabha seat. It has revealed the deep-seated linguistic sensitivities in southern India and highlighted the complex interplay between language, culture, and regional identity.
‘Daughters of imagined mother’
Although linguists assert that Kamal’s statement isn't malicious, they believe it is incorrect.
Raghavachari Amritavalli, former professor of Linguistics at the English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU) said that “no current language is directly derived from another current language.”
“Genetic relationships between languages are postulated by historical linguistics on the basis of shared cognate vocabulary found in the current languages (words similar in meaning and sound). For e.g. milk is paal in Tamil, and haal in Kannada. Linguists postulate an imaginary (hypothetical) mother language, called a ‘proto’ language, for such related languages. In this sense, such languages are sisters, daughters of an imagined mother language now no longer extant; and no current language is directly derived from another current language,” she told The Federal.
In the case of Tamil and Kannada, she said, they belonged to a proto-language called ‘South Dravidian 1’.
Watch | 'Tamil and Kannada are sisters': Badri Seshadri on Kamal Haasan’s language row
“In the case of Dravidian, it is thought that Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam (and some other languages) are daughters of a proto-language called South Dravidian 1. Linguists hypothesise that Proto-Dravidian has three branches: Proto-South Dravidian, Proto-Central Dravidian, and Proto-North Dravidian; and that Proto-South Dravidian split into ‘Proto 1’ (South) and ‘Proto 2’ (South-Central) Dravidian,” she said.
What is South Dravidian 1?
In a chapter called ‘The Dravidian Languages: An Overview’ by Suresh Kolichala, which is part of The Oxford Handbook of Dravidian Languages (currently under development), the South Dravidian 1 language is shown to have the most languages of all branches – 11 – including Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam. Of the four main South Indian languages, Telugu belongs to the South-Central Dravidian branch.
Ajith Kanna, professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU)’s School of Language, Literature and Cultural Studies, said linguists had been “struggling to find the origin of every language”, and therefore Kamal’s statement could not be seen as correct.
“There is something called a Proto-Dravidian language. Proto is nothing but 'origin'. The root word from here may have gone to many languages, which is inevitable,” he told The Federal.
Also read: Your understanding of Kannada is incorrect, no language as tolerant as Kannada: Banu Mushtaq
More the distance, greater the difference
Kanna said that as languages grow apart, the differences grow, but some vocabulary remains, like po (go) in Tamil becomes ho in Kannada.
“People of Telangana and Andhra still speak Telugu. So, how does the language differ? It differs over a period of time. As you can see in Korea, it’s been 75 years since North Korea and South Korea separated. North Korea’s Korean is now quite different from South Korea’s Korean,” he said.
The link between Proto-Dravidian and current Dravidian languages is drawn in the chapter by Kolichala, too, where he says the Proto-Dravidian word āṭṭa-m (play, game) became āṭa in Kannada, and mar-u-ntu (medicine) became mardu in Kannada.
He writes that the “origins of the Dravidian languages and people are shrouded in mystery”.
“While there have been claims that the speakers of the Dravidian languages entered mainland India from the northwest about 5,000 years ago (i.e. a few millennia before the speakers of Indo-Aryan languages did so), other scholars have maintained that the Dravidians were native to India (presumably peninsular India) from a distant past, prior to recorded history,” he writes.
Also read: Outrage against celebrities not over Kannada, it is about respecting the local
Two waves of Proto-Dravidian spread
He cites VM Narasimhan to say that “there is a strong correlation between the IVC (Indus Valley Civilisation) ancestry and present-day speakers, and they posit a possible scenario where peoples of the IVC spread Proto-Dravidian as they moved south and east”.
Kolichala posits two major waves of Dravidian speakers in mainland India. The first wave, he says, was in the “late fourth millennium to early third millennium BCE, coinciding with an opening of the woodlands of the Deccan plateau due to aridication, leading to the spread of pastro-agriculturalism from Saurashtra to the Southern Ashmounds in Deccan”.
The second major wave, according to Kolichala was “after the collapse of the IVC in the second millennium BCE”. This wave, he says, saw the “exclusive spread of the speakers of South Dravidian 1 along the west coast”. This is the language branch to which Tamil and Kannada belong.
“The curious case of the word for sesame, eḷḷu (DEDR 726), found only in SD-I (South Dravidian 1), and yet linked to the Akkadian ellu (and Sumerian illu) for sesame oil, hints at the involvement of SD-I (South Dravidian 1) speakers in the Indus-Mesopotamian trade of sesame and other commodities (Bedigian and Harlan 1986),” he writes.
Watch | 'Tamil not mother of Kannada': Scholar debunks Kamal Haasan's claim
Kolichala says this is supported by “Dravidian loanwords in Indo-Aryan languages”, like phala (fruit) and mayūra (peacock), which are “closer to SD-I (South Dravidian 1) forms than to Proto-Dravidian forms”.
No clarity on origin
However, he argues that even now, there is no clarity about the origin of the Dravidian languages.
“…questions of the origin of the Dravidian languages cannot be satisfactorily answered based on currently available archaeological or linguistic evidence. Most of the theories are tenuous, at best,” he writes.
“Further research across various disciplines, including connections with linguistics, population genetics, and archaeology, is crucial to determine the pre-history of South Asia and the possible origins of the Dravidian languages,” he says.
