Krishnamurti Bhadriraju. The Dravidian Languages
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10.2
Indo-Aryan loanw
ords in South Dr
avidian I and
II
471
Dravidian II (of which Telugu is an offshoot) must have preceded this (the break-up of
SD I) by at least three or four centuries, because of atypical shared innovations in SD II,
not found in SD I, namely initial apicals and consonant clusters through metathesis and
vowel contraction, distinct oblique stems in personal pronouns (section 6.4.1.1–2), dif-
ferent non-animate plural suffix
∗
-nk(k)- (section 6.2.6), generalization of
∗
-tt- as past
marker (section 7.4.1.2) etc. It is, therefore, not possible for Tamil–Kanna
.
da and Telugu
to have borrowed from Sanskrit at a common undivided stage. Most probably Telugu
borrowed from Sanskrit and Prakrits (Middle Indic) independently. A good example is
the word for the numeral ‘thousand’:
(1) Skt. sah´asra-, Pkt sahasira->Ta.Ma.¯ayiram,Ko.c¯avrm,To.s¯ofer, Ka.
s¯avira, s¯asir(a), Ko
.
d. ¯air¨e,Tu.s¯avira [DEDR Appendix 11].
It appears that Toda and Kota borrowed the item from Kanna
.
da, while Ko
.
dagu bor-
rowed it from Malay¯a
.
lam. The initial sibilant remains in Kanna
.
da, while Tamil and
Malay¯a
.
lam merge it with Ø- (see section
4.5.1.3). Telugu has a native
item
w¯eyi here
and not a borrowed one from Indo-Aryan. This points to the fact that Telugu did not
share a common stage of borrowing from Sanskrit with Early Tamil and Kanna
.
da. Since
the formation of the Prakrits already showed tendencies of a Dravidian substratum (see
Bloch 1930), items borrowed from Middle Indic into the literary Dravidian languages
already were close to the Dravidian phonological system and would thus give the im-
pression that they were shared borrowings; one such item is Ka. ¯ama (< ¯awa-), Tu. ¯ave,
Te. ¯awamu [< Skt. ¯ap¯aka- ‘potter’s kiln’; DEDR Appendix 12].
In 1962 Emeneau and Burrow published a monograph, Dravidian Borrowings from
Indo-Aryan (DBIA), with 337 entries as a Supplement (actually a Complement) to DED
(1961). The DEDR has an Appendix of 61 items, which is a Supplement to DBIA. In the
introduction, the authors (1962: 1) say:
The Dravidian languages at all periods in the record show borrowings from
Sanskrit, and there is a tendency for all four of the literary languages in the
south to make literary use of the total Sanskrit lexicon indiscriminately,
a tendency, seen at its most extreme in Kittel’s lexicon of Kanna
.
da. The
present volume does not record such wholesale borrowing. An attempt has
been made to restrict the items to those that have a wide popular, as well
as literary, usage. Criteria that are used to determine this are extensions of
meaning or far-reaching phonetic changes, or both. Another criterion that
has been followed is the penetration of Indo-Aryan words into the non-
literary languages of the south (through the intermediacy of the literary
languages, of course), whether or not special meaning developments are
found.
472 Lexicon
The items include not only the historically oldest assimilated loans from Middle Indic
sources in South Dravidian I, like [55] ¯e
.
ni ‘ladder’ (
∗
he
.
ni-< Pkt. se
.
ni < Skt. ´sre
.
ni-),
1
but also some recently borrowed Sanskrit words, which are assimilated later in popular
usage with occasional semantic shifts, e.g. [1]:
(2) Skt. aha
.
m-k¯ara- ‘pride, haughtiness’ > Ta. aka˙nk¯aram n. ¯a˙nk¯ari- v.i. ‘be
arrogant’, Ma. aha
.
m-k¯aram/¯a˙n-k¯aram n, Ka. aha
.
m-k¯ara n, Tu. aha˙n-k¯ara,
¯a˙nk¯ara- ‘self-consciousness’, ¯a˙nkariyuni ‘be proud, arrogant’, Te. aham-
k¯aram,
˜
¯
akaramu n. ‘pride, arrogance’.
Items such as [3] akrama- ‘confusion’ (→ ‘injustice’ in Dravidian), [8] ati´saya- ‘pre-
eminence’ (→ ‘surprise’), Te. ati´sayam- ‘arrogance’, [9] adr
.
s
.
ta- ‘invisible, destiny’
(→ ‘luck’), [24] avasara- ‘time, opportuity’ (→ ‘urgency, need’), udyoga- ‘act of un-
dertaking’ (→ ‘employment’), [97] k¯ala- ‘time’, [94] k¯arya- ‘action’, [92] k¯ara
.
na-
‘cause’ etc. are found, because they also occur in non-literary languages and some have
semantic shift in the literary languages.
Some items which are given as loans are perhaps native, since they occur in classical
literary texts: [75] Ta. kapilai, kavalai ‘waterlift’, Ka. kapile, kavile;Te.kapila ‘water-
lift’ occurs in Tikkana’s Mah¯abh¯arata of the thirteenth century and is not likely to have
been borrowed from Hindi kapi ‘pulley’. Also included in the list are some which came
from sources other than Indo-Aryan, e.g. [328] Ta. v¯attu ‘duck, goose’, Ma. b¯attu, Ka.
Te. b¯atu,Tu.battu is traced to Hindi bat-, batak ‘duck’ (<Pers.). This word is traced
historically to Portuguese pato ‘gander’(Kapp 1998: 21), and is attested in a sixteenth-
century literary work in Telugu (see below). The Portuguese initial p- must have sounded
close to a voiced stop which explains p- > b- as also found in Malay¯a
.
lam, Kanna
.
da and
Telugu. Tamil changes b-tov-.
The loanwords found in classical texts are traditionally classified into two categories:
tadbhava- (derived from Prakrits and not directly from Sanskrit; lit. ‘derived from that’)
and tatsama- (unassimilated loanwords from Sanskrit; lit. ‘same as that’). The earlier
stratum shows assimilated loanwords (tadbhava-) mostly taken from Pali and Prakrits
and some directly from Sanskrit but with phonological changes that suit Dravidian. The
spread of Jainism and Buddhism during the early centuries of the CE must have been
responsible for the spread of learning Pali
and Prakrits in the Dravidian south. There are
Prakrit names in the cave inscriptions written in Tamil–Brahmi, c. second century BCE
(Meenakshisundaran 1965: 171; Mahadevan 1971: 99).
Tolk¯appiyam, an early treatise on Tamil grammar and poetics, already shows several
Sanskrit terms like Ta. ulakam (< Skt. loka-) ‘world’, k¯alam (< Skt. k¯ala-) ‘tense,
1
Te. niccena ‘ladder’ is derived from Pkt. nisse
.
ni < Skt. ni´s-´sre
.
ni- ‘ladder’. This again supports the
independent access of Telugu to Sanskrit and Prakrit borrowing. It appears that South Dravidian
I innovated the meaning ‘ladder’ for ¯e
.
ni, since Skt. ´sre
.
ni and Pkt. se
.
ni mean ‘line, row’ and not
‘ladder’.
10.2
Indo-Aryan loanw
ords in South Dr
avidian I and
II
473
time’, uvamai (< Skt. upam¯a) ‘simile’, k¯amam ‘love’ (< Skt. k¯ama-). Besides, there are
some concepts borrowed and calqued in Tamil, e.g. tokai ‘compound’ (lit. ‘combination’)
from Skt. sam¯asa-, v¯e
rr-u-mai ‘case’ (lit.‘division, separation’) from Skt. vibhakti-
from vi-bhaj- ‘divide’, etc. The Ca˙nkam anthologies, considered the earliest of Tamil
literature, belong broadly to the second century BCE to the third century CE. Even
Sanskrit proper names occur extensively, like ka˙nkai (< ga ˙ng¯a-) ‘Ganges’, yava
nar
(< Skt. yavana-) ‘Greeks’, beside assimilated loans like ka
.
n
.
na
n (< Pkt. ka
.
nha- < Skt.
k
˚
r
.
s
.
na- ‘epic name’). Texts of Middle Tamil literature (300–600 CE) are flooded with
borrowed words from Sanskrit and Middle Indic. Vaidyanathan (1982) has identified
764 items in selected literary texts of this period (300–600 CE). A number of them have
Prakrit sources,
e.g. Ta.
m¯a
.
nikka- < Pkt. m¯a
.
nikka- < Skt. m¯a
.
nikya- ‘ruby’, Ta. amuta-
< Pkt. amuta- < Skt. am
˚
rta- ‘nectar’, but many more are taken from Sanskrit as adapted
tatsamas with different phonological changes, e.g. Ta. amirtam- < Skt. am
˚
rta- ‘nectar’,
Ta. m¯etai < Skt. m¯edh¯a ‘wisdom’, iravi- < Skt. ravi- ‘son’, etc. South India became
the
centre of Sanskrit study and several poets and rhetoricians like Da
.
n
.
din hailed from the
south. The popularity of the Sanskrit epics, the R¯am¯aya
.
na and the Mah¯abh¯arata and
the spread of Vai
.
s
.
navism and Saivism in the south led to a greater exposure of the literati
to Sanskrit learning. While native personal names are found in the cave inscriptions, the
names of kings of the C¯o
.
la and C¯alukya dynasties are all Sanskritic, such as Kul¯ottu˙nga-,
N
˚
rpatu˙nga-, Rajar¯aja-.
Of all the four literary languages Malay¯a
.
lam has absorbed Sanskrit more than any other
language. It developed a special style called Ma
.
niprav¯a
.
la, in which inflected Malay¯a
.
lam
words are interspersed with inflected Sanskrit words like stringing corals (prav¯a
.
la:
Sanskrit) and diamonds (ma
.
ni: Kera
.
labh¯a
.
s¯a or Malay¯a
.
lam) together in a necklace. Most
literary works from R¯amacaritam (twelfth century CE) to E
.
zutaccan’s Mah¯abh¯aratam
(seventeenth century) were composed in this style, which facilitated the absorption
of an enormous amount of Sanskrit vocabulary into Malay¯a
.
lam (Gopalakrishnan
1985, Sukumara Pillai 1985, Prabodhachandran Nayar 1985, Gopinathan Pillai 1985:
31–98).
Pampa’s Vikram¯arjuna Vijayam alias Samasta Bh¯arata, the first major literary work
of Kanna
.
da (tenth century CE), and the
¯
Andhra-M¯ah¯abh¯arata of Telugu by Nannaya
(eleventh century CE) show extensive importation of Sanskrit words and compounds
into these languages. This tradition is followed by all successive writers in any standard
poetic work. As a consequence of extensive borrowing of the tatsama element from
Sanskrit, the phonological inventories of Malay¯a
.
lam, Kanna
.
da and Telugu have been
enlarged by the addition of ten aspirated stops /ph th ch
.
th kh bh dh jh
.
dh gh/, fricative
/h/, and two sibilants /´s
.
s/. Vocalic
˚
r
˚
l of Sanskrit have been added to the alphabet and
in spelling Sanskrit words in writing, although they were pronounced [ri∼ru] and [lu],
respectively. Voiced stops became phonemic in these languages through internal changes
as well as through borrowed vocabulary from Indo-Aryan.
474 Lexicon
The tadbhava loanwords, which follow native phonology, represent an earlier chrono-
logical stratum of borrowing in all literary languages, e.g.
(3) Ma. b¯oy, Ka. b¯oya, b¯oyi,Tu.b¯oyi, b¯ovi,Te.b¯oya, b¯oya
.
du (m sg), b¯oyeta
(f sg) ‘palanquin bearer, fisherman’, Go. p¯o¯ı ‘male of fisherman caste’
[DEDR Appendix 51; Skt. bh¯ogin-, Pkt. bh¯oi- ‘headman of a village’;
CDIAL 9623; Emeneau 1980e: 315–25].
Deaspiration of bh-tob- in most of the languages and devoicing in Gondi are signif-
icant aspects of assimilation.
(4) Ta. to
nnai, Ka. Te. donne,Tu.donnε ‘leaf-cup’, Gad. dona, Go.
.
dona,
Ko
.
n
.
da done,Ku
i
.
dono, Kuvi dunn¯o ‘leaf-cup’ [DEDR Appendix
45; from
Skt. dro
.
na-; CDIAL 6641].
Simplification of initial consonant cluster is an aspect of assimilation to Dravidian.
10.3 Phonological principles governing loanwords from Indo-Aryan
The following is a selected list of items drawn from DBIA (1962). The number in square
brackets refers to the entry in DBIA.
(5) Skt. agni ‘fire’ > Pali, Pkt. aggi > SD I: Ta. akki, Ma. akki,Ko
.
d. agg- v.t.
‘fire consumes’, Tu. aggi; SD II: Te. aggi [5].
(6) Skt. ¯ardra(ka)- ‘fresh ginger’ > Pkt. alla-, allaa > SD I: Ta. allam, Ka.
alla; SD II: Te. allamu, Kuvi alomi id. [22].
(7) Skt. ¯aj˜n¯a- ‘order,
command
’ > Pkt. ¯a
.
n¯a > SD I: T
a.
¯a
.
nai ‘command
,
oath’, Ma. ¯a
.
na, Ka. ¯a
.
ne;Ko
.
d. ¯a
.
ne ¨ı
.
d- ‘to curse’, Tu. ¯a
.
ne ‘oath’; with the
verb i
.
tu/i
.
du ‘put’, it means ‘to swear’ in all; SD II: Te. ¯ana ‘command’,
¯ana-be
.
t
.
tu ‘adjure’ [32].
(8) Skt. avalagna- ‘hanging down from’ > Pkt. olagga- ‘to do service’, olagg¯a
‘attendance’ > SD I: Ta. ¯olakkam ‘assembly of state’, Ma. ¯olakkam ‘splen-
dour, majesty’, Ka. ¯olaga- ‘service, homage, assembly’, Tu. ¯olaga/-e ‘royal
assembly’; SD II: Te. ¯olagamu ‘court held by a king’ [63].
(9) Skt. g
˚
rdhra- ‘vulture’ > Pali, Pkt. gaddha- > SD II: Te. gradda (>gadda),
Go (Koya) gadda; CD: Kol. Nk. Pa. gadda (perhaps lws from Te.) [83].
(10) Skt. kamsa- ‘bell-metal, brass, vessel made of metal’ > SD I: Ta. ka˜ncam
‘bell metal, drinking vessel’, ka˜ncak¯ara
n ‘brazier’, To. koc ‘brass’, Ka.
ka˜ncu, ka˜nca ‘brass, vessel made of bell-metal’, ka˜ncag¯a
ra ‘brazier’, Tu.
ka˜nci, ka˜ncu ‘bell metal’, ka˜ncig¯are ‘brazier’; SD II: Te. kancu ‘brass’,
kancam ‘plate made of any metal’, kancara ‘brazier’ [67].
(11) Skt. k¯a
.
s
.
tha- > Pkt. ka
.
t
.
tha- ‘piece of wood’ > SD I: Ta. ka
.
t
.
tai ‘fire-
wood, log’, Ko. ka
.
t,To.ka
.
ty, Ka. ka
.
t
.
tige ‘timber, stick’, Tu. ka
.
t
.
tige ‘fuel,
10.3
Phonological principles
governing
loanwords
from Indo-Aryan
475
firewood’; SD II: Te. ka
.
t
.
tiya, ka
.
t
.
te ‘fuel, stick’, Go. ka
.
t¯ı¯a, ka
.
tiya, ka
.
t
.
te
(dial). The Dravidian forms presuppose Skt.
∗
k¯a
.
s
.
th-ik¯a- with a diminutive
suffix and Pkt.
∗
ka
.
t
.
th-i¯a [68].
(12) Skt. ´sr¯e
.
s
.
thin- ‘person of authority, head of a guild’> Pali Pkt. se
.
t
.
ti- ‘mer-
chant’. Ta. ce
.
t
.
ti ‘Vai´sya caste man’, ce
.
t
.
ticci f, e
.
t
.
ti ‘title of distinction con-
ferred on persons of the Vai´sya caste’, Ma. ce
.
t
.
ti m, ce
.
t
.
ticci f id.; ce
.
t
.
ty¯an,
e
.
t
.
tiy¯an ‘one of the foreign merchant classes’, To. si
.
ty ‘man of Chetti caste
(Tamilaian)’, Ka. se
.
t
.
ti ‘merchant, bank
er
’; SD II: Te
.
se
.
t
.
ti ‘merchant’
[175].
(13) Skt. bhojana- ‘eating, meal’ > Pkt. bhoa
.
na, bho
.
na > SD I: Ta. p¯o
nakam,
p¯o
nam ‘food, boiled
rice
’, Ka. b¯ona ‘cooked
food
’, Tu. b¯ona;SDII:
Te.
b¯onamu ‘food, boiled rice’ [281].
(14) Skt. mary¯ad¯a- ‘frontier, limit, custom, propriety’ > SD I: Ta. mariy¯atai,
maruv¯ati ‘limit, courtesy, customs’, Ma. mar(i)y¯ada (written with d, not
t) id., Ko. marv¯ady, mar¯ady ‘respect’, Ko
.
d. mariy¯adi ‘custom, honour,
respect’, To. marso θ y ‘respect’, Ka. mar(i)y¯ade ‘limit, propriety, custom,
respect’, Tu. mar(i)y¯adi/a ‘custom, usage, respect’; SD II: Te. mar(i)y¯ada
‘respect, custom’ [289].
In the above groups, except for (10) and (14), all loanwords recorded for Dravidian are
phonologically closer to Pali and Prakrit forms than to Sanskrit. There is no doubt that
these entered the Dravidian languages from Pali/Prakrits, which were the spoken forms of
Middle Indic. It means that tadbhav-ization had already taken place in Prakrits, because
of the Dravidian substrate among Prakrit speakers, and that facilitated borrowing into
the surviving Dravidian speech communities. Item (14) from Sanskrit does not offer any
phonetic problem in Dravidian; therefore, it is taken almost as a tatsama. Item (10) has
-ms- (nasal stop + sibilant) in Sanskrit which is not allowed by Dravidian phonotactics,
hence it is assimilated to nasal + affricate -nc-[˜nc] as expected. Another important aspect
to be noted from the above list (as the authors of DBIA have already mentioned) is that
the non-literary languages had borrowed these items from the neighbouring literary
languages, because borrowing from Indo-Aryan happened, in the initial stages, only in
literate speech communities.
The phonological changes found in the major literary languages in the formation of
tadbhavas (irrespective of chronological routing) are as follows:
(15) (i) deaspiration of stops and loss of /h/;
(ii) ´s
.
s > s/c; loss of Pkt s- in early loanwords;
.
s >
.
z,
.
t [
.
d] in Tamil and
Malay¯a
.
lam;
(iii) assimilation of heterogeneous clusters of consonants or vowel insertion
between such consonants;
476 Lexicon
(iv) simplification of word-initial clusters by loss of a consonant or by splitting
them by inserting a vowel (anaptyxis or svarabhakti);
(v) developing a prothetic vowel before word-initial r and l;
(vi) shortening of non-initial long vowels; also those before -CC, irrespective
of position;
(vii) replacement of Skt.
˚
r (a vocalic segment) by V/rV/Vr;
(viii) devoicing of word-initial voiced stops (mainly in Tamil–Malay¯a
.
lam) and
voicing or lenition of intervocalic single voiceless stops, i.e. /g s
.
ddw/←
Skt. /k c
.
t t p/;
(ix) replacement of Sanskrit diphthongs ¯ai ¯au by ay aw;
(x) replacement of Sanskrit word initial y-by j -, perhaps through Prakrits.
Several of these can be detected in items (3) to (14) listed above. Some more examples
are given under each language to show how the above principles apply to loanwords,
irrespective
of the intermediate stages; roman
numbers in brackets after the
entry refer
to those under (15). Examples:
(16) Tamil
˜n¯a
nam ‘knowledge’ < Skt. j˜n¯ana-(iv)
c¯uttiram ‘aphorism’ < Skt. s¯utra- (iii)
irutu ‘season’ < Skt.
˚
rtu- (vii)
virutti- ‘growth’ < v
˚
rddhi- (i, vii)
ur¯oma- ‘hair’ < Skt. r¯oma- (v)
t¯ocam [tosam] ‘fault’ < d¯o
.
sa- (ii, viii)
ce
.
t
.
ti ‘foreman of a guild’ < ´sr¯e
.
s
.
thin- (i, ii, iii, iv)
ulakam ‘world’ < Skt. loka- (v)
araca
n ‘king’ < Skt. r¯ajan- (v)
tiraviyam ‘substance’ < Skt. dravya- (iv, viii)
(17) Malay¯a
.
lam (Gopalakrishnan 1985: 31–50)
k¯etam ‘affliction’ < Skt. kh¯eda- (i)
kakanam ‘sky’ < gaganam (viii)
˜n¯anam ‘knowledge’ < Skt. j˜n¯ana-(iv)
caci < Skt. ´sa´si ‘moon’ (ii)
tavam ‘penance’ < Skt. tapas- (viii)
uruvam ‘form’ < Skt. r¯upa- (v)
i
.
tavam ‘name of a monkey’ < Skt.
˚
r
.
sabha- (i, ii, vii)
puruvam ‘eyebrow’ < Skt. bhr¯u- (i, iv, viii)
uma < Skt. um¯a- (vi)
¯e
.
ni ‘ladder’ < Pkt. s¯e
.
ni-< Skt. ´sr¯e
.
ni- (ii, iv)
aran < Skt. hara- (i)
10.3
Phonological principles
governing
loanwords
from Indo-Aryan
477
catti ‘lance’ < ´sakti (iii)
cakkira ‘wheel’ < Skt. cakra- (iii)
(18) Kanna
.
da (Ramachandra Rao 1972)
akkaram ‘letter’ < Skt. ak
.
sara- (iii)
arasu ‘king’ < Skt. r¯ajan- (v)
¯agasam ‘sky’ < Skt. ¯ak¯a´sa- (vi, viii)
kappura- ‘camphor’ < Skt. karp¯ura- (iii, vi)
kabba- ‘a poetical work’ < Skt. k¯avya- (iii)
kanci ‘a place name’ < Skt. k¯a˜nci- (vi)
katturi ‘musk’ < Skt. kast¯uri (iii, viii)
kara ‘sharp’ < Skt. khara- (i)
kavila- ‘brown coloured cow’ < Skt. kapil¯a- (viii)
kajjam ‘work, business’ (< Pkt. kajja-) < Skt. k¯arya- (iii, x)
ja
.
de- ‘matted hair’ < Skt. ja
.
t¯a- (viii)
javvana- ‘youth’ < Skt. y¯auvana- (ix, x)
dese ‘direction’ < Skt. di´s¯a- (ii)
di
.
t
.
ti ‘look’ < Skt. dr
.
s
.
ti- (iii, vii)
pas¯adam ‘free gift’ < Skt. pras¯ada-(iv)
bannam ‘ruin, destruction’ < Skt. bhagna- (i, iii)
(19) Telugu
akkaramu ‘letter’ < Skt. ak
.
sara- (iii)
aradamu ‘chariot’ < Skt. ratha- (i, v, viii)
¯akasamu ‘sky’ < ¯ak¯a´sa- (ii, vi)
kata ‘story’ < Skt. katha- (i)
kappuramu ‘camphor’ < Skt. karp¯ura- (iii, vi)
garuwamu ‘arrogance’ < Skt. garva- (iii)
kanci ‘a place name in Tamil Nadu’ < Skt. k¯a˜nci- (vi)
kawila ‘brown-coloured cow’ < Skt. kapil¯a- (vi, viii)
batti ‘devotion’ < Skt. bhakti- (i, iii)
ce
.
t
.
ti/se
.
t
.
ti ‘a merchant’ < Skt. ´sr¯e
.
s
.
thin- (i, ii, iii, iv, vi)
di
.
s
.
ti ‘evil eye’ < Skt. dr
.
s
.
ti- (vii)
jawwanamu ‘youth’ < Skt y¯auvana- ( ix, x)
u˙nkuwa ‘fee’ < Skt. ´sulka- (ii – with change of -lk to ˙nk)
Among the tadbhavas, those which had lost the word-initial sibilant (through an inter-
mediate stage of
∗
h-), e.g. ¯e
.
ni ‘ladder’, ¯ayiram ‘thousand’, etc. and also words that have
a prothetic vowel before Skt. r- and l-, e.g. araca
n, arasu ‘king’, belong to the earliest
stratum. All literary languages have developed word-initial r, l through later borrowing
or through internal changes, e.g. Ta. ra
.
n
.
tu ‘two’ by the time of Middle Tamil. The rest
of the changes are prompted by the phonological structure of the Dravidian languages,
478 Lexicon
namely deaspiration, intervocalic stop lenition/voicing, assimilation of consonant clus-
ters. Their application in different languages independently would also give the same
output. Hence, we cannot set up a common stage of borrowing involving these changes
in all cases. Even by the earliest literary period of Kanna
.
da and Telugu (8–10 CE) the
tatsama stage came with more scholars adopting unassimilated words into the poetic
dialect. Perhaps the speech of the uneducated masses still converted the words that they
needed to use as tadbhavas.
10.4 Loanwords from Perso-Arabic sources
During the six centuries of Moghul rule of north India and over three centuries of the
Bahmani Sultans of Deccan (fourteenth to eighteenth centuries), the major languages
of south India borrowed a number of words of Persian (the state language) and Arabic
(the religious language) origin. From the fifteenth century onwards these words found
their way into South Dravidian
through Dakkhini Urdu. Village
of
ficials dealing with
land records used many administrative terms relating to land revenue and legislation,
which have become part of the common language, e.g. Te. gum¯ast¯a ‘clerk’, sistu ‘cess’,
tahas¯ıl ‘land tax’, k¯ayitam ‘paper’, dast¯aw¯ez ‘document’, cirun¯am¯a ‘address’, r¯aj¯ı ‘com-
promise’, munasabu ‘munisiff, a village administrator’, jill¯a ‘district’, t¯al¯uk¯a ‘town, a
subdivision of a zil¯a’, etc. The Tamil Lexicon has recorded more than a thousand Urdu
words (Meenakshisundaran 1965: 188).
10.5 Loanwords from western languages: Portuguese and English
The Portuguese was the first western nation to come to India (early sixteenth century)
and it ‘was the mediator of terms for products, artefacts and institutions of pre-industrial
Europe’ (Masica 1991: 73). The hot chillies and tobacco were brought to India by the
Portuguese. The number of words taken from Portuguese is no more than one hundred in
any of the modern languages but they represent many commonly used items like ‘soap’,
‘towel’, ‘key’, ‘cabbage’ etc. which continue in usage even now. The terms cited for
Tamil are: par
anki (< F
ranco
)‘a
Frenchman, a foreigner
’, T
a.
v¯attu ‘duck’, c¯a ‘tea’,
alam¯ari ‘almairah’, c¯avi ‘key’, m¯ecai ‘table’, p¯e
.
sk-ar (< Port. fiscal ) ‘cashier’ (final -ar,
h pl hon suffix), ¯ay¯a ‘dry nurse’, koyy¯a ‘Guava tree and fruit’. Kapp (1998) has traced
Portuguese as the source of a number of Telugu and Kanna
.
da words and several of these
are used in the modern standard languages, e.g.
(20) Words borrowed from Portuguese
Portuguese Telugu Kanna
.
da Gloss
aia ‘dry nurse’ ¯ay¯a – ‘baby sitter’
arm´ario ‘cupboard’ almara alm¯ari/u ‘wardrobe’
camisa ‘shirt’ kam¯ıju kamisu ‘shirt’
10.6
Neologisms
479
chave ‘key’ cavi/cevi chavi/s¯avi ‘key’
estirar ‘stretch out’ istr¯ı istri /istari ‘ironing of clothes’
hospital ‘hospital’ ¯aspatri ¯aspatri ‘hospital’
meia(s) ‘sock(s)’ m¯e-j¯o
.
du/j¯o
.
l
.
lu m¯e-j¯o
.
du ‘pair of socks’ (j¯o
.
du
‘pair’)
mesa ‘table’ m¯ej¯am¯eju ‘table’
mestre ‘master’ m¯estr¯ım¯estre/i ‘foreman’
pena ‘writing pen’ p¯en¯ap¯enu ‘pen’
pipa ‘a barrel, cask’ p¯ıp¯ap¯ıpe ‘a drum’
toalha ‘towel’ tuw(w)¯ala tuv¯al ‘a towel’
sab¯ao ‘soap’ sabbu sab(b)u ‘soap’
pato ‘duck’ b¯atu b¯atu ‘duck’
All the above words are still in vogue in modern standard languages. Unlike English
words which can be easily detected, the Portuguese loans have lost traces of their histor-
ical origin and they are considered native Telugu and Kanna
.
da words, even by educated
people. The earliest usage of a Portuguese word in Telugu is b¯atu(wu) ‘duck’ in a
sixteenth-century poem
¯
Amuktam¯alyada (1:65) by K
˚
r
.
s
.
nnadeva R¯aya who ruled both
Andhra and Karnataka states during the early sixteenth century.
Loanwords from English progressively got established from the beginning of the nine-
teenth century and each of the major languages has hundreds of them, many assimilated
into the native fold. Each language has also borrowed independently and adjusted them
to the nati
ve phonological system. In bor
rowing English loanwords, cer
tain features are
shared by the four major languages (see Krishnamurti 1998c: 190–201): (i) English alve-
olar /t/ is replaced by Dravidian retroflex /
.
t/; (ii) English /v w/ are replaced by Dravidian
/w/; (iii ) spelling pronunciation is rampant, creating double consonants like /b
.
t
.
tr/ for
Eng. butter, etc.; (iv) a [y] onglide is added to words beginning with a front vowel and
[w] onglide to words beginning with a back rounded vowel, e.g. Eng. ink [i
ŋk] → SD
[yi
ŋk], E. ooze [u:z] → SD [w¯uz].
Words used by most people, understood even by the uneducated, include items such
as office, coffee, telephone, road, school, radio, television, college, cinema, bank, police,
post, stamp, station, money order, card, cover etc. Both code-switching and code-mixing
are extensively prevalent when two or more people who are educated in English meet
and talk. There is more bilingualism in English now than when the British left in 1947.
For more details, see Krishnamurti (1998c: 308–17).
10.6 Neologisms
The four major literary languages are spoken by over 95
per cent of the total population
of the Dravidian speakers (220 million). Three of these languages have modern standard
480 Lexicon
varieties for writing and formal communication. The standard varieties are based on
the educated speech of a cultural centre in each case: for Kanna
.
da, the Bangalore–
Mysore area, for Telugu, the central coastal districts (Gunturu, Krishna, East and West
Godavari) and for Malay¯a
.
lam the Tiruvananthapuram–Cochin area, which corresponds
to the old feudatory state of Travancore–Cochin. Although there was a Paccamalay¯a
.
lam
movement like the ‘pure Tamil movement’, it has had no impact on modern creative
writers. In Medieval Telugu also there was an attempt to write poems in native Telugu
(accatelugu), but it did not develop into a cultural movement. Malay¯a
.
lam goes a step
beyond the other two major languages and uses inflected Sanskrit words and phrases
in modern writings and discourse, e.g. svayam eva ‘spontaneously’, svapne’pi ‘even
in a dream’, kim api ‘how much’ (Gopalakrishnan 1985: 47). This style in speech is
undoubtedly a consequence of the spread of Ma
.
niprav¯a
.
la as a favoured mode of writing
in Kera
.
la for several centuries (Sukumara Pillai 1985).
Tamil has a diglossic situation:
2
the written and formal spoken forms are based on an
older literary dialect (see Ferguson 1964: 435, Krishnamurti 1998c: 141–64), not on any
modern regional variety. This is not always a pure literary variety but tends to have the
phonology and morphophonemics
of the classical language.
In Tamil,
‘in the first quarter
of the twentieth centur
y, a purist movement arose
...it is against the use of
foreign,
especially Sanskrit words’ (Meenakshisundaran 1965: 175). The purist movement was
part of a cultural Renaissance against the rise of Brahmins and Brahminism with whom
the spread of Sanskrit was associated. Around 1900 CE, it was estimated that about
45–50 per cent of the vocabulary in Tamil was Sanskritic. ‘The influence of Sanskrit
within the last fifty years has been reduced to about 20% of the vocabulary’ (Zvelebil
1975 citing a political scientist’s estimate).
As evidence of lexical modernization in Tamil, the following forms of native origin
have replaced Sanskrit terms, so far in use, cited by Zvelebil (1975):
(21) Adapted Sanskrit term Tamil equivalent (current)
par¯ık
.
sai (Skt. par¯ık
.
s¯a-) → t¯ervu ‘examination’
cin¯ekita
n (Skt. sn¯ehita-) → t¯o
.
zan ‘friend’
pustakam (Skt. pustaka-) → n¯ul ‘book’
carvakal¯ac¯alai (Skt. sarvakal¯a´s¯al¯a-) → pal-kalai.k-ka
.
zakam
‘university, an assembly
of many faculties’
p¯a
.
s¯ac¯astiram (Skt. bh¯a
.
s¯a´s¯astra-) → mo
.
zi-iyal ‘science of
language, linguistics’ etc.
2
I am using ‘diglossia’ in the original sense in which it was used by Ferguson and not in its later
usage by several writers for stylistic differences of any kind to be found in any literate speech
community. For a detailed discussion of this phenomenon, see Britto (1986).