NOTE ON OLD TAMIL AND JAFFNA TAMIL by

F. B. J. KUIPER

Leiden

1. Most palaeographers accept Biihler's theory that the Brahmi script has been introduced in South India at least one or two centuries before Agoka. 1 This opinion is based on the specifically southern form of the letters for ~ and ma, which are no longer known in the northern Brahmi script. At first this script may have been used for records written in Pali, as is the case in the earliest cave inscriptions of Ceylon, which perhaps date from the 3rd cent. 2 B.C. and in any case are not later than the 2nd cent. Soon however the same script (with some necessary additions) has come to be used also for Tamil. The earliest of the cave inscriptions which have successively been discovered from 1906 onwards in the Tinnevelly and Madura districts are on palaeographical grounds ascribed to the third cent. B.C., although it has been objected that this dating is based " o n grounds which are largely theoretical, in contradistinction to the dating of the Arikamedu sherds which is objective and secure". 3 Anyway, it has been the great merit of K. V. Subrahmanya Ayyar to have recognized that these inscriptions are written in Tamil. 4 Whatever uncertainties there may remain as to the interpretation of some details, this result m a y be considered firmly established. 5 One of the striking peculiarities of these inscriptions, which induced Subrahmanya Ayyar to explain them as written in Tamil, is the fact that " T h e soft consonants, i.e., the varga-t.rtfyas are conspicuous by their absence" (p. 283). In his transcriptions, it is true, one meets with such 1 Btib.ler, Indian Palaeography, p. 33; K. V. Subrahmanya Ayyar, Proceedings and Transactions of the Third Oriental Conference (Madras, 1924), p. 282; P. E. E. Fernando Univ. Ceylon Review, VII (1949), p. 284 f. ; cf. also Ancient lndia, II, p. 109. Cf. C. W. Nichols, Univ. Ceylon Review, VII (1949), p. 60. 3 Ancient India, II, p. 109. 4 Proceedings and Trans. Illrd Or. Conference, p. 284. Cf. S. K. Chatterji, Ind. Ling., XIV, p. 2. Some doubts were expressed, however, by K. Zvelebil, Tamil Culture, VI/3 (1957), p. 226 n. 2, who contemplated the possibility that "the language of these inscriptions is rather a form of Southern hybrid Prakrit with very rich Kannada-Tamil loan-words". Similarly VI/1, p. 50 n. 1.

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words as Ne.du (pp. 288, 299), Vel. a.dai (p. 292), Kavu.di (p. 296), but these seeming exceptions are merely due to the fact that the author had adopted the transcription which K. Krishna Sastri had proposed on palaeographical grounds in his first attempt at a decipherment, ~ although from Subrahmanya Ayyar's own comment 7 it is clear that he rightly equated this .d to the /_r/ of Modern Tamil. Since it can hardly be questioned that this phoneme was an alveolar plosive in Old Tamil (see the Excursus below, p. 60), these words should rather be transcribed as Net_u, Ve[l.at.ai (or Vel.l.~t.t.ai?) and K~vu_ti. The same script has since been found also in the graffiti of Virapatnam (alias Arikamedu). 2. From the orthography of the oldest cave inscriptions we may infer that, if there has ever been a phonemic contrast between surds and sonants in a prehistoric period of Tamil, this had at any rate ceased to exist as far back as the earliest records o f the language. S. K. Chatterji may be right in concluding, in his interesting account of this much disputed problem, s that "it would indeed be a little too hazardous to look upon Primitive Dravidian as being a language of the Tamil type in its phonetics and phonology". 9 Anyhow, whatever views one may have on the Dravidian prehistory, this problem is immaterial to Tamil where such a phonemic opposition did no longer exist. Since only the letters for the surds were adopted from the existing Brahmi script, there was apparently no need for letters for the corresponding sonants, which were used, about the same time and in the same script, in the Pali cave inscriptions of Ceylon. It might seem tempting, then, to conclude that these phonemes were also pronounced as surds in every position. For
6 Proceedings and Trans. o f the First Or. Conf. (Poona, 1919), p. 334, n. 3. 7 Proceedings and Trans. o f the Illrd Or. Conf., p. 285.

8 In "Old Tamil, Ancient Tamil and Primitive Dravidian", Ind. Ling., XIV (1954), p. 9 (which has only recently become accessible to the present writer). 9 This was the opinion of K. V. Subbaya, Ind. Ant., 38 (1909), p. 195, and of L. V. Ramaswami Aiyar, JORMadr. 4(1930-31), p. 171f. In the last letter which I received from him (dated 21 December 1938) he wrote: "Regarding the anteriority or otherwise of initial surds in Gemein-Siid-Dravidisch, I have always been of the opinion that Tamil stands for the more conservative stage and that the voicing of surds in Telugu, Kanna.da and Tul.u (not at all general) may have been due primarily to the intervocal positions assumed by the original surds in word-compounds and intimate phrasal sequences. Subbaya's explanation of course is unsatisfactory, but Bloch's view is after all based on a mere theoretical reconstruction (in his "Sanskrit et Dravidien").'" If however the sandhi voicing has arisen at a comparatively late date (as Ramaswami Aiyar assumes because in inscriptional instances of pre-literary Kannada there is still gemination of surds), it would be inadequate to explain initial sonants in e.g. Vedic loan-words. [Seenow also A. Master, Adyar Libr. Bull., 25 (1961), pp. 188-202,Uchida Norihiko, lndogaku Bukkydgaku Kenkygt IX/1 (1961),pp. 357-353.]

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the first centuries A.D., however, this conclusion is unequivocally contradicted by the Greek transcription of Old Tamil geographical names, which proves that the Greeks interpreted the intervocalic plosives of Old Tamil as sonants. Since the principles of the Tamil orthography had not materially changed by that time the question arises if there is any reason to suppose that in the 2nd cent. B.C. the pronunciation was different in this respect. One point is of special interest in this connexion. Alfred Master has drawn attention to the fact that in the Tolk~ppiyam we sometimes find, beside the current forms alavu and uruvu, also the older forms alapu and urupu. 1~ This transition of the p h o n e m e / p / t o the phoneme /v] cannot be explained unless we assume that by that time intervocalic ]p/was pronounced as a voiced bilabial fricative [~]. Again the question must be raised if there is any justification for the assumption that in the 2nd cent. B.C. its pronunciation was different. As a matter of fact, we do not know anything definite about the actual pronunciation at that time. An interesting case in point are the tbrms kut.upita, kot.upit6n_, kot.upit~vdn in the cave inscriptions for what in the later language was kot.t.uvittdn_, kot.t.uvittd_n, kot.t.uvittavan_. 11 The correctness of this interpretation appears from one of the Jaina Rock Inscriptions from the Pallava period published in Ep. Ind., IV, p. 137, where we read pad.imam kot.t.uvitt~n "caused an image to be engraved" (see Subrahmanya Ayyar, op. c., p. 288). Suchvi-causatives do not appear in literary texts before the end of the Sangam period, e.g. pun. ar-vi-ttal Parip~t.al 20, 110, c~r-vi-ttal ibid. 12, in_ai-vi-ttal Kalittokai 147, palarvi-ttava[ ibid. 141.12 We may surmise that this causative formation originally belonged to a more colloquial form of speech, which accounts both for its absence from the earlier literary texts and for its occurrence (with p for v) in the still earlier inscriptions. As at the end of the Sangam period this was written with v, the p must for some time have been pronounced as [[~] during the Sangam period. The phonemic spelling of the oldest inscriptions does not rule out the possibility of a similar pronunciation at that time, but this cannot be either proved or disproved. This much is only clear that from the beginning of the historical period there was no phonemic opposition of intervocalic surds and sonants, but about the range of interlo A. Master, BSOS, IX (1939), p. 1006. 11 H. Krishna Sastri, Proc. and Trans. Ist Or. Conf., p. 333, K. V. Subrahmanya Ayyar, Proc. and Trans. IIlrd Or. Conf., p. 287f. 12 See L. V. Ramaswami Aiyar, Anthropos, 33 (1928), p. 754, JORM, XI (1937), pp. 8, 263 f.

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vocalic allophones used in actual speech we are completely ignorant. 3. I t is a well-known fact that nevertheless both the Tamil script and the circumstance that Tolk~ppiyam and later grammarians are silent about the existence of voiced allophones have given rise to the theory that Old Tamil had, initially as well as medially, only surd plosives. In support of this theory reference is sometimes made to the Jaffna dialect, which as a remarkable instance of a "marginal" dialect preserves several antique features of the language. As far as I know, M. Srinivasa Aiyangar was the first to use this argument in his Tamil Studies (Madras, 1914). After stating that the script is inadequate to denote all sounds actually occurring in speech, but that some of these may be supposed to have crept in during later times owing to the influence of Indo-Aryan, he wrote: "This may be accepted as partly correct, as we find to this day, if one is careful enough to observe slight variations in the pronunciation of the Jaffna Tamils and Tamil Brahmans". In 1932 Prof. P. S. Subrahmanya Sastri stated, in support of the same theory, that "even now in Jaffna such voiceless consonants are pronounced as voiceless and not as voiced. ''lz When I expressed my doubts as to the correctness of this statement in IIJ, II (1958), p. 223, I had overlooked a remark of my informant for the Jaffna dialect, Mr. C. Balasingham from Tellipallai, to the effect that "further to the East" p6ka is pronounced as [po :ko]. From his communications it would appear that there are at least two different forms of speech in what is generally called the "Jaffna dialect". The main object of this brief note is to stress once more the urgent need for exact data on the phonetics of the Tamil dialects of Ceylon. That I was indeed wrong in questioning the learned author's statement about a voiceless pronunciation of the plosives is now apparent from the brief account of "The Jaffna Dialect of Tamil" by K. Kanapathi Pillai. 14 However, welcome though this article is in our present state of almost complete ignorance about the facts, it is too brief to be of much help. According to his description "In many respects, the words are pronounced as they are written. No doubt, there are slight variations in the written and spoken speech. But they are not what Caldwell speaks o f " (p. 222). Intervocalic /k/ is according to him [h], e.g. in akam, nakam, tdkam, ikal, ukir, while after nasals it is voiceless [k] in kahke, wike, ma~ke. Similarly/tic/ is [nt~], not [lads], but there is
is orORMadr., VI (1932), p. 40 (=History of Grammatical Theories in Tamil, p. 54). 14 lnd. Ling., Turner Jubffee Volume, I. p. 219ff.

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unfortunately no explicit statement about intervocalic /p/ and /t/. It should be noted that the pronunciation [po :ka] seems to be unknown to him. On the other hand I had observed a clearly voiced pronunciation of intervocalic /k/, /t/ and /p/ in the idiolect of Mr. Balasingham, and these observations were later confirmed to some extent by the results of K. Zvelebil's investigations, which he sums up as follows: 1~ "Traditionally, the "unvoicing" (?) of medial stops is regarded as a characteristic feature of Jaffna Tamil. My informant for the Trincomalee speech pronounced medial stops as voiced, following the continental norm. In the idiolect of Mrs. Kokilam Subbiah who gave me an example of Jaffna Tamil, a fluctuation was clearly discernible; the medial stops were mostly voiced, sometimes, however, they were clearly voiceless and more fortis, though the informant herself maintained that they were voiced". Unfortunately his materials for the Ceylon dialects are scarce, as he himself complains, as and for the Jaffna dialect no specimen is given. It may be useful, therefore, to give here a specimen of Mr. Balasingham's pronunciation. The text has been taken from G. N. Lansdown, E_n cihkam karjikki.ratu, p. 1. 'ula'ham vefytu ~va:lI~ama:'ya i'rtunda ~o:'6tu 't~iogam ~a:c[tu '~o:1 sat'tamic[tuva'6tu va'.lakkam, ra:Tei'ja:l t~i13gam mat'ta mInuyol3ga'.lei ~sula~am'a :y~ pI~Itttu ~tmna mu'c[Indo6tu. ~ortu na :.1 mirtuy~x~go.l~qa:m ortu '~,u:ttam ku:'r 'snjgatti~na:l tarJgal.vJkkoJ 'e:tpac[tum ~a:~attei kureiktk~ orua 'va.hjei to :c[I'ne. ulakam veku vdlipamdka iruntap6tu cihkam dt.up6l cattamit.uvatu va_lakkam. dkaiydl cihkam ma.rra mirukaftka[ai culapamdkap pit.inut ti_nn_arnut.intatu. oru ndl. rniruka~kal, ellam oru kfa.t.am k~t.i ciizkattin_dl tahkal.ukku ~rpat.um dpattaik ku_raikka oru val_iyait t~t.i_na. It may be added that last year I met with another speaker of Jaffna Tamil at London. Owing to the circumstances the information given was confined to a few shibboleths but the pronunciation of my informant, Mrs. Jayatillake, did not seem to differ appreciably from the one illustrated above, e.g. [~] in capai, [6] in itu [I'6U], and a velar fricative in makan_. With regard to this form of speech there would seem to be no sufficient reason for drawing a sharp line between the Jaffna dialect and Ceylon Tamil generally. There is indeed no fundamental contrast with Zvelebil's phonetic rendering of the Trincomalee dialect (as spoken by Miss Thilagam Selvamani Vadivelu), 17 Here we find:
xs Archiv Orient6lni, 28 (1960), p. 414 n. 1. ~s See "Zametki po tamil'skoj lingvistike", Problemy Vostokovedenija, Akademija Nauk SSSR, No. 4, 1959, p. 91. ar Arch. Or., 27 (1959), p. 282, n. 20. Zvelebil's method of transcription is here reproduced.

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for medial/k/: Ix/in en.di xattiko .n.di, ond0 xe :t.kire :n, [~] in a.10~ira :' ( = al_uki.r~y), [y] in nittirayol.ra6tu ( = nittirai-koll.ukiratu), po:yu6ileija :' ( = p6kavillaiy~), amma yo.dutttu. for medial/.t/: [ ~ in app~.di, ku :d.a :6tu, yo .dutttu. for/t/: [6] in a6tu, ni:r 6a:n, a6tukkru, etc. for medial/p/: [~5]in a :n6e ~o :le :. After nasals we find iflge:, va:figa, ifijova: ( = ihk~ v~), alifijir~tkktu:, van6tu6tu, - ir~ndtu, marandtu, so :m~ari, na.dakktum~o :6ut :, ondu; endtu ( = en_ru), indeikktu (---- in__raikku),is The contrast with the Jaffna pronunciation as given by Kanapathi Pillai (p. 223) is manifest; cf. e.g. [a13ke], [Int~e], [kant~I], [elltU] (---- e n_ru). From these data it may be inferred that there is, in Trincomalee as well as in the Jaffna district, a form o f speech in which the medial plosive phonemes are more or less voiced between vowels and after nasals. This type of Ceylon Tamil is also reflected by such loan-words in Singhalese as agil, shin, a.dayafrom Tamil akil, api_n, at.ai? 9 On the other hand, the other dialect with voiceless plosives is not confined to Ceylon. According to a personal communication of Dr. H. J. Pinnow (Berlin) the same phenomenon is met with in the south of the continent, from Cape Comorin and Tiruchendur up to about Tinnevelty-Palamcottah, where [tapa:l] and [pa:mpu] isthe norm. Apparently the Ceylon dialects cannot well be studied as isolated forms of Tamil but will finally have to be considered in the wider context of Tamil dialect geography as a whole. 4. In the absence of such a comprehensive study of the Tamil dialects any attempt at a historical explanation would be premature. Only some brief remarks may therefore be added in conclusion. The theory that the Jaffna dialect with voiceless plosives preserves an antique feature of the language m a y be defended on several grounds, apart from the general conviction that " t h e Jaffnese Tamils, long isolated in the north of Ceylon, are noted as having retained many archaic Tamil customs long since lost by their continental kindred and as employing in ordinary speech a form of Tamil closely approaching the classical". ~~ On the one hand several scholars, such as Prof. P. S. Subrahmanya Sastri and Prof. C. R. Sankaran, have argued on the strength of the 18 For the pronunciation [nd], a very antique peculiarity of the Jaffna dialect, see L. V. Ramaswami Aiyar, Bull. Sri Rama Varma Res. Inst., 6 (1938), p. 7, and fUrther llJ, II, pp. 214, 238, Zvelebil, Arch. Or., 27, p. 272; 28, p. 572 n. 1. See below, n. 34. 19 Helmet Smith, JAs., 1950, p. 180. 8o J. Hornell, Mere. As. Soc. Beng., 7 (1918-1923), p. 168, who thus explains the survival of an eye carved upon either bow of the Jaffna dhonis.

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Tamil script and the rules of the Tolk~ppiyam that Old Tamil of the Sangam period was characterized by a voiceless pronunciation of the plosives. It has been stated above why the present writer feels unable to accept these arguments as decisive. On the other hand the Jaffna pronunciation has to be considered in the light of Prof. S. K. Chatterji's theory of the historical development of the Tamil system of plosives, which theory he has elaborated in his learned and thought-provoking study referred to above (see n. 8). He there assumes the following subsequent stages: c. 300 B.C. - 400 A.D. : Ancient Tamil (pre-Sangam period), with voiced and unvoiced plosives, initially and medially, as distinct phonemes. 400 - 600 A.D. :Period of Transition. 6 0 0 - 1350 A.D.: Old Tamil (Centami.l): all voiced plosives, initial and medial, became voiceless. The Sangam texts were written down in the new spelling. 1350 - 1800: Middle Tamil period, with voicing of medial plosives. ~1 After 1800: Modern Tamil period (Ko.tuntami.l), with fricative pronunciation. This is not the place to enter into a detailed discussion of this interesting theory. It may only be observed that the transition o f / p / t o / v / i n Tolk~ppiyam and the late Sangam works presupposes the existence of a bilabial fricative [[~] prior to 500 A.D., rather than after 1800 A.D. Intervocalic /t/ and /.t/ must have been voiced in the 1st cent. A.D. (cf. Ho~o6xv], Ko'r-rowp~ in the Periplus), about 550 A.D., when Cosmas Indicopleustes rendered putuppattan_am in Greek script by II ou~0~0~z~v0~,22 and in the 10th cent., when Malayalam/t] was sometimes rendered by the Grantha d. 2s On the other hand, the spelling pacauta in Marco Polo, which has been explained as standing for Tam. pakarata, 24 may possibly reflect a Sanskritizing pronunciation. The Tamil Lexicon, however, gives only pakavan and pakavati. One fails to see decisive arguments for the theory of a material change in the pronunciation of the plosives after the first centuries A.D. If this is so, the only possibility would be to connect the voiceless plosives of the "Jaffna Pronunciation" with a (hypothetical!) pre-Sangam stage of the Tamil system of plosives.
~1 On different grounds P. S. Subrahmanya Sastri dates the intervocalic voicing after 1200 A.D. (see IIJ, II, p. 215 n. 13). ~ Christian Topography, 448A (in Book XI which, it is true, did not originally belong to this work, see Winstedt, Introduction, p. 5 n. 1). ~3 A . C . Sekhar, BDCRI, XII (1951), p. 16. ~ Chatterji, Ind. Ling., 14, p. 14.

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5. Therefore a different explanation of the modern Jaffna pronunciation would seem to deserve serious consideration. The voiced pronunciation of intervocalic plosives (which is far from universal in continental Tamil, see IIJ, II, p. 215) is apparently a mere corollary of the lax articulation. Another corollary of this articulation is the fricative pronunciation, which must be dated back to the Sangam period (i.e., the first centuries A.D.). If in any period the intervocalic plosives had been exclusively surds, they would have been [k], It], [p], etc. The dialect described by Kanapathi Pillai, however, does not conform to this norm since interv o c a l i c / k / i s here pronounced as [h], which is even entirely elided in some cases, e.g. in [mo :n, me :hi for makan, ~5 [mo :|, me :|] for makal, [to: ppan, te: ppan] for takappa_n. They are of particular interest since similar contracted forms have also been recorded from the colloquial Tamil of Madras State, viz. marumoen "son-in-law", marumoa "daughter-inlaw", 2~ and from the Korova dialect, viz. tOpan " f a t h e r " Y In continental Tamil it cannot reasonably be questioned that the pre-stage of these contractions was a word-form with a velar fricative, e.g. [tayAppAn]. It is likely, therefore, that a previous stage of [h] in the "devoicing" Jaffna dialect has also been [y] or [x], which occurs in the other Jaffna dialect as well as in Trincomalee. The conclusion that in an earlier period of this d i a l e c t / k / w a s a fricative in intervocalic position is obviously bound to have some consequences for some of the other plosives. It would be a reasonable inference, indeed, that at that t i m e / t / , / p / , etc. were also fricatives. In that case, the modern pronunciation as [t], [p] would rather have to be explained as the result of a secondary development to voiceless plosives. T h a t / k / w a s not affected by this more recent development may be due to the fact that at the time the velar fricative had already become the glottal [h]. Only detailed investigations in the field of Tamil dialects generally, and those of Ceylon in particular, can enable us to decide whether or not this hypothetical reconstruction of the historical development of the "devoicing" Jaffna dialect is correct. Anyway, in the present state of our knowledge the current view that the voiceless plosives of (one of) the Jaffna dialects represent an antique feature of the pre2s I am unable to verify the statement that makan_ has become mahn (with aytam,t) before developing to mrn; see C. R. Sankaran, BDCRL II (1941), p. 346 n. 1 with references. Otherwise Andronov, Razgovornyj tamil'sk~i jazyk i ego dialekty (Moskva, 1962), p. 17, n. 14: aka > ava > 6. 2~ M. Shanmugam Pillai, "Tamil - Literary and Colloquial", Intern. Yourn. Amer. Ling., 26/3 (1960), p. 35. 27 Ling. Survey of India, IV (1906), p. 319.

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Sangam period (for this is implied in the theory if our conclusions are correct) would seem to lack a solid foundation.
EXCURSUS ON OLD TAMIL /_t/ Our assumption of an alveolar plosive in Old Tamil calls for some comment since Emeneau posits an alveolar trill/_r/as a Proto-Dravidian phoneme, ~a and this is also included in the Table of Proto-Dravidian phonemes i n A Dravidian Etymological Dictionary by T. Burrow and M. B. Emeneau, 29 p. xii. According to this view the Proto-Dravidian system of dental, alveolar and retroflex plosives, trills, laterals and other eontinuants has been as follows: dentals alveolars retroflex t t. n _n n. r _r 1 .r .1

From the point of view of Old Tamil, with which alone we are here concerned, it must be objected that: a) the five nasal phonemes ~, ~, .n, n, and m correspond to the plosives k, c, t., t, and p respectively, most of which do not admit any other but the homorganic nasal before them. Hence ~k, gc, n.t., nt, and mp are common clusters, although _np, .np, etc. do occur (an_pu, e_np~, un.p~n_). The sole fact that there exists a sixth nasal/_n/, and that the cluster corresponding to ~k, .n.t, etc. is _n.rpoints to the conclusion that/_r/functions as a plosive in this system. b) In the past tense of roots ending in -.n we find .n+t > .n.t [1l~, in other words, the dental is articulated at the same place as the preceding nasal, but preserves its plosive character, e.g.u.n-.t~ " I ate." In roots ending in -_n we find _n+t > _n_r,e.g. t/_n_r~_n" I ate". Sincethere is a fairly general agreement as to the alveolar character of/n_/, we may expect that t becomes an alveolar plosive in this cluster. In any case it is apparent that in this system the phoneme/_r/has its place among the plosives. Similarly, if in the past tense of roots ending i n a retroflex ./we find l.q-t > t.t., we must conclude that t adopts the retroflex articulation of ./while ./is assimilated to the dental, the result being a long retroflex plosive [t:]. In roots ending in a non-retroflex lateral we find a parallel development lq-t > _r_r. Apparently the dental again adopts the alveolar

98 See Kolami (Berkeley-LosAngeles 1955), p. 152, TPS., 1957, p. 50, 29 Oxford, 1961.

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articulation of l, which in its turn is assimilated to t. Hence the result must have been a long alveolar plosive [.t:], as it still is in m o d e m colloquial Malayalam ( J O R M , XI, p. 6). c) Adjectives in -ru, such as ci_ru- "small", ku.ru-"short", when standing before a noun with initial vowel, are treated like those in -cu, i.e. either the vowel or the consonant is lengthened, while in adjectives ending in -_ru or -.ru only the vowel can be lengthened, e.g. cir_r-il or cTr-il " h u t " like pacc-ilai "green leaf", pdc-aval "green fields", as opposed to p~r-f~r "great town", kdr-ilai "luxurious leaf". It is accordingly treated as a plosive. d) _r differs from the trills, laterals and continuants r, l, ./, .r in that it cannot occur in word-final position, but must always be followed by a ku_r_riyalukaram, like all plosives, 3~ e.g. d_ru. e) In the systematical arrangement of the Tamil phonemes of Tolkgppiyam and the other ancient grammatical works/_r/is classed among the plosives. The description of its articulation in Tol. El. 94 and Na_n_nfil 86, it is true, has been differently interpreted. A. Chandra Sekhar remarks: "It is very significant that in both Tolkdppiyam and Nan__nfd_r is described as being produced by the contact of the front part of the tongue with the palate as in the case of_n. Na_n_nfd clearly says that the contact is very close and firm, while the term o_r_r-employed by Tolk~ppiyam seems to suggest that the duration of the contact was shorter without any other difference in the nature of the contact. From these descriptions it is clear that the speech-sound was not the heavily trilled .r of today but was an alveolar plosive. The plosive nature of r is also clear from the classification of the sound as valle_luttu and from the statement that _r cannot end a word. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that a word like a.rut "river" was pronounced in Ancient and Middle Tamil as ~!ut". al It is obviously neither necessary nor safe to base one's conclusions as to the articulation exclusively on these old texts whose terminology appears to be ambiguous. P. S. Subrahmanya Sastri inferred from the Tolk~ppiyam alone t h a t / r / w a s an alveolar fricative in Old Tamil, 82 although he pointed out that this conclusion contradicted the evidence of

3o See also C. P. Venkatarama Aiyar, "The Pronunciation of the hard r in Dravidian Languages", Proceedings and Trans. of the 1st Or. Conf., Poona (1920), pp. lxxxilxxxiv. 31 A. Chandra Sekhar, "Tamil Speech-sounds", BDCRL XIV (1952), p. 225 (the addition "Middle Tamil" is probably incorrect, see L. V. Ramaswami Aiyar, Educational Review, Dec. 1938, pp.* 3-4). See also P. Meile, .lAs., 1943-1945, p. 75. 82 See Comparative Grammar of the Tamil Language (1947), p. 64.

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Old Kanarese, where the plosive character of the corresponding phoneme is definite according to A. N. Narasimhia. as f) While the Greek rendering of the name Muei.ri by Mo6~tptg, etc. (which is, it seems, the only serious argument in favour of the theory of an alveolar trill in Old Tamil) may be interpreted in different ways, the spelling - (in MkX- Nk~- points to a plosive [d] in Tam. kunru "mountain". The assumption of an Old Tan'ill pronunciation [_nd] also accounts far better for the development of _n.dto _n_nin the late Middle Tamil colloquial speech, and to .n.n in modern colloquial Tamil (especially in [wort~m] for on_.ru "one"). 84 In this connexion attention may be drawn to the abnormal pronunciation [i:ntm :] for en_ru in the present-day Madura dialect (beside normal [inntu]), s5 to [erttu] in the same meaning in the Jaffna dialect , ae and to [nd] in the remaining areas of Ceylon Tamil, e.g. [0ndfi, endtu], a7 It may also be noted that while according to Ramaswami Aiyar/n_r_/"has changed to tiff everywhere in Malay~lam", as A. Chandra Sekhar found the pronunciation as alveolar [_nd_] surviving in the Kayavar dialect of Malayalam (spoken in Central Travancore) among the older generation, e.g. an_dut "is", nikkumd.ut
" s h e s t a n d s " . 39

g) Tamil/_r/differs from the dental trill in that it frequently occurs as a long consonant. In the Tamil coUoquials of South India and Ceylon this long/_r/is today always pronounced as dental It :], which pronunciation is stated to be current among the "ignorant" as early as the 1 lth or the 12th cent. If 6ttu- "to praise" in Tiruv~cakam 1.49 may be taken as a colloquial variant of ~.ru- id. (Tolkfippiyam, etc.) this pronunciation can be traced as far back as about the 9th cent. Possible earlier indications in Sanskrit loan-words admit of different interpretations (e.g. puttika. "white ant", Manu; if Dravidian, cf. Tam. pu.r.ru: Kann. puttu "ant-hill"). The Jaffna pronunciation [nitka] > [nikko] for ni.rka "to stand" is likely to preserve the ancient plosive nature of/_r/, which in colloquial Middle
aa A Grammar of the oldest Kanarese Inscriptions (Mysore, 1941), p. 35. The earliest instance o f r > r in Old Kannada occurs in an inscription dated 750 A.D., see G.S. Gai, Historical Grammar of Old Kannada (Poona, 1946), p. 15. a4 E . g . L . V . Ramaswarni Aiyar, The Educational Review, Dec. 1938, p*4; ArdenClayton, A progressive Grammar of Common Tamil, 5th ed. (1942), p. 300. For [nd] in "vulgar" speech see Beythan, Prakt. Gramm. der Tamilspr., pp. 31, 33. Zvelebil rightly characterizes m o d e m [ndr] as "Btihnenaussprache," Arch. Or., 27, p. 272. a5 Zvelebil, Arch. Or., 28, p. 435 n. 40, p. 437. ae K. Kanapathi PiUai, Turner Jubilee Volume, I. p. 225. 8~ See above n. 18. 8s Bulletin of the Sri Rama Varma Res. Inst., 6 (1938), p. 8. aa A. Ch. Sekhar, BDCRI, X (1950), p. 48.

NOTE ON OLD TAMILAND JAFFNATAMIL

63

Tamil inscriptions is already confounded with the dental trill in this position: ~ For these reasons the OM Tamil system seems to have been as follows dental alveolar retroflex t n t_ n_ .t n. r 1 .r .1

The question whether the Proto-Dravidian original o f / t . / m a y also have been a plosive is a different problem which does not concern us here. [Remark on Mo6~p~g. While intervocalic voicing in Old Tamil may be inferred from the Greek rendering o f / t , .t, c/ in HoBo-, -wp, and Mo6~p~g (see pp. 58, 61), a voiced fricative pronunciation must be assumed on account of Sangam v for p and probably also in Sangam -uka- > -uva- (etc.), which would seem to point to a pronunciation [uya]. A lax articulation of intervocalic /k/ in Old Tamil is in any case suggested by the following instances: tuvalai "crowd" (Aifiku_runQ_ru) : tuku- "to be gathered in a mass, as the hair", toku- "to assemble, collect, to be crowded", etc. [DED. 2861]; uvi- (tt, pp) "to boil, v.t." (Puram), uva_r.ru"to cause to swell up, to flow" (Akam) : Kann. ukku- "to rise, swell, come up or over in boiling, to be greatly increased", ukkisu- "to make boil up or over", cf. Tam. uvi- (nt, v) "to boil away, as water in a pot of rice"; uvar- "to dislike, abhor, loathe" : Kann. uga.r- "to emit (saliva), spit out, etc." [DED. 547]; uva- "to be glad, to rejoice" (Pattuppfit..tu, Tirumuruk~_r_ruppa.tai), uvar "pleasantness" (Nar_ri_nai), uvakai "love" (Tolkhppiyam), uvappu "joy, delight" (ibid.) :uka- "to be glad, pleased, satisfied" [DED. 476]; tuyar- "to grieve, sorrow, lament", tuyaram "affliction" (Akam) :Lex. tuku "pain, distress", Tel. tokkata "distress, grief" (otherwise DED. 2895]; tevvu- "to fill" (Paripgtal), tevit.t.u- "to chew the cud" (Puram), tevit.t.al "that which is spit or vomited" (Akam) : teki.1- (lex. tekul.-) "to be full", tekut.t.u- "to cloy, glut" [DED. 2801]; tevvu- "to get, obtain" (Pattupp~.tt.u), tevi!t.u- "to reach, attain" (Tolk~ppiyam) :tekku- "to receive, take", taku- "to be obtained", Kann. tege- "to take away" [DED. 2804]. Cf. also A. Master, Adyar Libr. Bull. 25, p. 200. 4o L.V. Ramaswami Aiyar, The Educational Review, Dec. 1938, p. *4, For nikka in Ceylon Tamil see Zvelebil, Arch. Or., 27, p. 293 (Trincomalee dialect) and Kanapathi Pillai, Turner Jubilee Volume, I (1958), p. 227 (Jaffna dialect). In continental Tamil [tk, tp] etc. still occurs beside[rk, rp] etc. ("v zavisimostiot individual'nyxosobennostej govorjag6ego", Andronov, Tamil'skij Jazyk, p. 19).

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Accordingly, the alveolar phoneme in Muei_ti, which in any case was voiced like/t./, may also have been a fricative sound like [~] and [3']. In that case the definition of Tol. El_. 94 an.c,ri nu_nin~-v-an.n,am orra "when the tip of the tongue being raised slightly touches the palate" may be taken to refer to this very intervocalic position of/t./, while Na_n_mil 86 an.n.a nu_nina nan_iyu_ri "when the tip of the tongue has firmly touched the palate" possibly refers to the alveolar plosive in the clusters /_nt., t.t., t.k, t.c, .tp/ or to a later trilled articulation. P. S. Subrahmanya Sastri, A Comparative Grammar of the Tamil Language, pp. 59, 65, assumes an early confusion o f / r / a n d intervocalic/t_/. In any case, the possibility of an Old Tamil pronunciation [a: ttu] as suggested by Sekhar (see above, p. 61) must be ruled out.] 41

4x Acknowledgment should be made to Mr. B. J. Hoff for his expert advice with regard to the phonetical analysis of the tape recording (p. 56).