There are 6 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: Sanskritisation
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
2. Re: Sanskritisation
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
3. Re: The Jaffna Seal
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
4. Re: Tamil Dialects of Sri Lanka
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
5. Contact-Induced Morphosyntactic Realignment in Negombo Fishermen¡¯s
Tamil
From: "RVS" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Caste specific dialect of drummers of Jaffna
From: "RVS" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 1
Date: Wed, 02 Mar 2005 17:22:06 -0000
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Sanskritisation
There are number of books on the "Tamil/Muslim" history of
Batticaloa. But in general it is the history of peaceful settlement
of competing fisher communities/merchant guilds from South Tamil
Nadu/Kerala such as Mukkuvas, Karaiyar, Thimilar, mopillas etc as
well as from the western and northern coast of Sri Lanka.
This also should be viewed in tandem with the arrival so
called "Vanniar" cheifs with South Indian armies that stayed on to
rule the area.
Assimilation has also added layers of Veddahs and Sinhalese into the
Tamil/muslim fold.
--- In varalaaRu@yahoogroups.com, "af7802" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> What is the history of Batticaloa? Why is their language closer
to
> Indian dialect than Jaffna? Why don't they follow Agamas in
temple
> worship. Why is casteism weaker?
>
> Are all these things just part of "high" culture, not involving
the
> masses?
> --- In varalaaRu@yahoogroups.com, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >
> > Sanskritisation is a model that doesn't need a sizeable number
of
> > Brahmins per say to take place. Jaffna was a kingdom with its
> > associated trappings of state power, rituals and rules. All were
> > modeled on what is at that time considered to be proper
governance
> > which included what we today ins anthropological terms call as
> > Sanskritisation
> >
> > Batticaloa was never fully integrated into this socio –political
> view
> > point because most of the area was semi independent and came
under
> > the purview of the Kandyan kingdom.
> >
> > Sanskritisation is associated with so called high culture
similar
> to
> > the westernization that is going on amongst the elites in South
> Asia
> > today. Speaking in English and sending children over to Convent
> > schools and discssing about Kafta in cafe over a Columbian
coffee
> > whereing T- shirts and jeans is not generally an option for a
> person
> > from a village.
> >
> > It is that simple why Jaffna and other Tamil hinterlands
differed
> in
> > their so called "high" culture but at the mass level the people
> > outlook on life was not that different in Jaffna, Batticalao or
> > Mannar.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 2
Date: Wed, 02 Mar 2005 17:22:07 -0000
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Sanskritisation
There are number of books on the "Tamil/Muslim" history of
Batticaloa. But in general it is the history of peaceful settlement
of competing fisher communities/merchant guilds from South Tamil
Nadu/Kerala such as Mukkuvas, Karaiyar, Thimilar, mopillas etc as
well as from the western and northern coast of Sri Lanka.
This also should be viewed in tandem with the arrival so
called "Vanniar" cheifs with South Indian armies that stayed on to
rule the area.
Assimilation has also added layers of Veddahs and Sinhalese into the
Tamil/muslim fold.
--- In varalaaRu@yahoogroups.com, "af7802" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> What is the history of Batticaloa? Why is their language closer
to
> Indian dialect than Jaffna? Why don't they follow Agamas in
temple
> worship. Why is casteism weaker?
>
> Are all these things just part of "high" culture, not involving
the
> masses?
> --- In varalaaRu@yahoogroups.com, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >
> > Sanskritisation is a model that doesn't need a sizeable number
of
> > Brahmins per say to take place. Jaffna was a kingdom with its
> > associated trappings of state power, rituals and rules. All were
> > modeled on what is at that time considered to be proper
governance
> > which included what we today ins anthropological terms call as
> > Sanskritisation
> >
> > Batticaloa was never fully integrated into this socio –political
> view
> > point because most of the area was semi independent and came
under
> > the purview of the Kandyan kingdom.
> >
> > Sanskritisation is associated with so called high culture
similar
> to
> > the westernization that is going on amongst the elites in South
> Asia
> > today. Speaking in English and sending children over to Convent
> > schools and discssing about Kafta in cafe over a Columbian
coffee
> > whereing T- shirts and jeans is not generally an option for a
> person
> > from a village.
> >
> > It is that simple why Jaffna and other Tamil hinterlands
differed
> in
> > their so called "high" culture but at the mass level the people
> > outlook on life was not that different in Jaffna, Batticalao or
> > Mannar.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 3
Date: Wed, 02 Mar 2005 17:36:12 -0000
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: The Jaffna Seal
Alternate viewpoint is that even Sinhalese had these Dravidian
letters and sounds that were purged out later
--- In varalaaRu@yahoogroups.com, "af7802" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
> In his book on Early Tamil Epigraphy, I. Mahadevan (citing Lal)
> discounts the belief that the graffiti phonetically corresponds
with
> the Indus Valley script, given the immense differences in time and
> geography. With only three letters, he is unsure whether the
Brahmi
> is even Tamil-Brahmi.
>
> He shows less ambivalence concerning the potsherds shown to him by
> Pusparatnam at the University of Jaffna. Given that these sherds
> have the Dravidian letters zh and R, Mahadevan is convinced that
> Tamil language had been in Jaffna since "time immemorial."
>
> -AF
>
> ******************
>
> Anaikkottai Seal by Dr. K. Indrapala, Department of History,
> University of Jaffna in Early Settlements in Jaffna an
Archeological
> Survey (Appendix II), Ponnambalam Ragupathy Ph.D. thesis,
University
> of Jaffna, 1987 pp. 199-202
>
> In the first two weeks of December 1980 an archaeological survey
team
> from the University of Jaffna in the northern most
> part of Sri Lanka brought to light an important megalithic burial
> complex at a place called Anaikkoddai, the first of its
> kind to be discovered in the Jaffna district. Among the unearthed
> articles in one of the burials, was a pre-Christian metal
> seal with two lines of writing.
>
> While the newly-discovered megalithic burial complex is in itself
of
> great significance to the archaeology of that district and has
> already created much excitement there, the metal seal, the
> significance of which is as yet unknown to many, appears to be an
> extraordinary find with implications for the study of the so-
called
> non-Brahmi or graffiti marks found primarily on pottery in the
> megalithic sites of South India and Sri
> Lanka as well as in sites further north. It may even prove to be
of
> interest to the students of the intriguing Indus script.
>
> The inscription on the seal is deeply indited and well preserved.
The
> second line of the inscription is clearly in Brahmi of
> about the third or second century B.C. It consists of three
letters
> and an anusvara ("pu/li" = dot). The first line consists
> of three characters or symbols, written in the same way as the
> ideograms on an Indus seal. What is interesting is that these
> are not unfamiliar characters, for they occur both among the
numerous
> graffiti marks on megalithic pottery as well as among the Indus
> ideograms.
>
> This is the first known instance of these symbols occurring on a
seal
> in the form of an epigraph alongside a Brahmi inscription and
hence
> the special significance of the seal. This poses a series of
> interesting questions.
>
> One is no doubt tempted to ask whether we ave at last stumbled
upon a
> bi-lingual inscription in the Indus and Brahmi scripts. But we
must
> leave this question aside for the moment. What is of immediate
> relevance is the question whether this will provide a clue to the
> proper understanding of the graffiti marks on the megalithic
pottery
> of South India and Sri Lanka.
>
> The so-called graffiti marks have been found on a large number of
> potsherds, both in the megalithic and premegalithic contexts in
South
> Asia. The earliest material comes from the Indus Valley sites
> belonging to the Harappan culture and it continues in the post-
> Harappan chalcolithic cultures in Pakistan, Gujarat, Rajasthan and
> Maharashtra along the western side of the subcontinent. The later
> material belonging to the megalithic phase comes from Karnataka,
> Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka in the southern part of the South Asian
> region.
>
> For almost exactly a hundred years, scholars have shown interest
in
> these graffiti marks and attempts were made to collect them and
> discover their significance. Perhaps the first attempt was made in
> 1881, and in recent years Mr.B.B.Lal, a former Director-General of
> Archaeology in India, made a systematic survey of these materials,
> which resulted in the publication of a 'preliminary note'
> entitled : 'From the megalithic to the Harappa: Tracing Back the
> Graffiti, on the Pottery' More graffiti marks have been discovered
> since and some of them have been published.
>
> Mr.B.B.Lal's investigation revealed that "Out of the total of 61
> symbols noted so far, as many as 47 are common to the
> megalithic pottery on the one hand and the Harappan and post-
Harappan
> chalcolithic on the other". In terms of statistics, his conclusion
> was that 89 percent of the megalithic symbols go back to the
> chalcolithic-Harappan times. And he concluded "But to stress the
> point that the symbols do have a phonetic, syllabic or alphabetic
> value would indeed be presumptuous in the present state of our
> knowledge".
>
> Writing about ten years later, Prof.T.V.Mahalingam, in his report
on
> the Tirukkampuliyur excavations, doubted that these graffiti had
any
> association with script and concluded that "we may not
> be far wrong if we take the graffiti marks to
> represent such totemic symbols by the people of the ancient past".
>
> Among those who investigated the meaning of these graffiti, it was
> Mr.G.Yazdani who more than 64 years ago, thought that these
> constituted a script and that these symbols were characters used
to
> express ideas. Although later researchers tended to dismiss his
view
> Mr.Yazdanils seems to be the most acceptable theory.
>
> The Anaikkoddai seal seems to confirm Mr.Yazdani's view. So far
> scholars appear to have been misled by the notion that these
symbols
> occur only on pottery. But their occurrence in a line on a seal,
like
> letters in any short inscription and similar to those on the Indus
> Valley seals, together with another line in Brahmi - very much
like
> the bi-lingual legends on a coin, indicates that these symbols
were
> in fact used as characters in a script not only on pottery but
also
> on other materials. That the symbols on the megalithic pottery
stood
> for words or names is also confirmed by the occurrence of names in
> Brahmi scripts on potsherds of a slightly later period excavated
in
> Arikamedu and elsewhere in Tamil Nadu as well as in Kantarodai,
> Anuradhapura and other sites in Sri Lanka. After the spread of
> Brahmi, naturally this phonetic script displaced the earlier
symbols.
>
> If as we are inclined to believe, the so-called graffiti marks on
the
> megalithic pottery are ideograms or characters with
> meaning, they have to be evidently treated as survival of the
Indus
> writing system. For, as we have seen, the vast majority of these
> graffiti could be traced back to the Indus ideograms and this is
not
> a mere coincidence. Spatially as well as chronologically a
> relationship could be established between the two sets of
characters.
> Spatially they extend from the Indus Valley right down the western
> part of India to the south and beyond to Sri Lanka.
Chronologically
> they begin in the Third Millennium B.C. in the Harappan
chalcolithic
> culture, continue into the post-Harappan phase, then into the
> megalithic phase and overlap into the period of the Brahmi script.
> The Anaikkoddai seal belongs to this final phase, after which the
> easy phonetic Brahmi script supplanted the more difficult
character
> writing.
>
> On this premise, the first line of the Anaikkoddai seal
inscription
> consists of Indus-derived characters and each of them must have a
> value. Being a legend on a seal, they no doubt stand for a name.
And
> the Brahmi writing in the second line obviously stands for the
same
> name, as the case of the Greek and Brahmi legends on some of the
> coins of the Indo-Greek rulers, Pantaleon and Agathocles. So, for
the
> first time we have a chance of deciphering one complete legend in
the
> characters of this Indus-derived script with the aid of a Brahmi
> transliteration.
>
> The inscription in Brahmi consists of three letters and an
anusvara.
> They are crowded within a small space and the first letter, though
at
> first sight it seems to present some difficulty in reading, shows
on
> closer examinations all the features of the vowel-consonant 'Ko'.
The
> middle stroke of this letter is not horizontal but diagonal and
the
> arm of the right (as it appears in negative on the seal) is not
very
> prominent. The second letter is clearly 've' and the third letter
is
> a clear 'ta'. There is a dot or anusvara above the letter 'ta'.
Two
> readings seem to be possible, depending on the point at which we
> read the anusvara. If we read it before 'ta' the inscription would
> read as 'Koventa', but if we read the anusvara after 'ta', the
> reading 'Kovetan', is possible. Either way, the word would be
> Dravidian and both readings would have the same meaning.
>
> 'Koventa' consists of two words 'Ko' and "venta". Ko in Tamil and
> Malayalam means 'King' and is related to words in other lesser
known
> Dravidian languages, such as 'Koc' in Parji and 'Kosu' in
> Gadba. "Venta" is no doubt a variant of or related to the Tamil
and
> Malayalam 'ventan', 'Ventu', also meaning 'king'. It is also
related
> to the Parji word 'vedid', meaning 'good'. "Koventa" would then
> appear to be a tautological compound and it is interesting to note
> here that such a compound. 'Koventan' as well as its variant
> form 'Koventu' does actually occur in the earliest literature of
the
> Tamils.
>
> In the reading 'Kovetan', 'Ko' is of course 'King' and 'Vetan'
would
> also mean 'King'. "Ventan" (which could also be read as "Vettan",
as
> the double consonants do not sometimes occur in the early Tamil-
> Brahmi inscriptions) is a variant of "Ventan" and its root could
> clearly be seen in such ancient Tamil "vetalikar" (vetu (or veta)
+
> alikar - king's clowns or dancers). "Vetan" has to be split as
vetu
> (or veta) + "an" the 'an' being the masculine singular ending. If
as
> is obvious the name on the seal is Old Tamil or Proto-Malayalam
then
> the second reading namely "Koventan~" is preferable to the first
> which has no masculine singular ending. But the first reading is
> possible if the name is in some other Dravidian language,including
> Proto-Tamil While "Koventa" could be meaningfully split into only
two
> parts ('Ko' and 'venta'), "Kovetan" could be split into three
parts
> going by some of the forms of the masculine nouns in the early
Tamil-
> Brahmi inscriptions of Tamil Nadu. The three parts
> are "Ko", "veta", "an", comparable to "asiriyku -an", "Pana-an"
> and "Katala-an-" in the Mankulam Inscription No.1. This accords
well
> with the occurrence of three characters in the first line on the
seal
> as the equivalent of the name in Brahmi. We are therefore,
inclined
> to adopt the reading "Kovetan".
>
>
> --- In varalaaRu@yahoogroups.com, Raveen Satkurunathan wrote:
> > The Jaffna Seal:
> >
> > 4.8 Mathivanan claims to have discovered some clinching evidence
> > validating his decipherment. The most important among them is
the
> > metal
> > seal from Jaffna described by him as the 'Rosetta Stone' for his
> > decipherment. An archaeological team led by K.Indrapala of the
> > University
> > of Jaffna excavated a megalithic burial complex at Anaikoddai in
> > Jaffna
> > District, SriLanka. In one of the burials, a metal seal was
found
> > assigned by the excavators to ca.3rd century B.C. There are two
> > lines of
> > writing on the seal; the upper line depicts three megalithic
> symbols
> > (one
> > of them repeated twice) resembling the signs of the Indus
script;
> the
> > lower line has three characters in the Brahmi script read as ko
ve
> ta.
> > Indrapala (1981) has raised the question whether this could be a
> > bilingual
> > inscription in the Indus and Brahmi scripts. Scholars have
debated
> the
> > question, but the results are inconclusive.
> >
> >
> > http://users.primushost.com/~india/ejvs/ejvs0801/ejvs0801.txt
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 4
Date: Wed, 02 Mar 2005 17:33:29 -0000
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Tamil Dialects of Sri Lanka
Practically the Batticalao speech is the speech of the Mukkuva
community of South Tamil Nadu/Kerala as it was when the immigration
happened.
Let's look at a similar situation. The so called Taiwanese language
is an ofshoot of the Fujian/Min dialect of Mainland China. Haklo
community makes up 80% of Taiwanese but their kin group in the
Fujian province is a sub dialect of the major Min dialect. But this
little group spread across the whole of Taiwan.
Similalrly for the Eastern region of Tamil Speaking Sri Lanka, it is
the influence of Mukkuva community whose kindred people today happen
to mostly dwell in South Kerala and Kanyakumari district of Tamil
Nadu, that is paramount.
In Eastern hinterland this community formed the workers, feudal
lords, merchants and filled all possible niches but in the process
did not overly become Sanskritised due to week political controls.
Their Tamil culture was based on "folk' Hinduism truer to its Tamil
roots.
But we also have to take onto account the Muslism portion of the
popultaion beacuse as of today they have become a strong element and
they share many cultural/linguistic relationships with their Tamil
neibhours.
--- In varalaaRu@yahoogroups.com, "af7802" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Very little research has been done on Batticaloa culture. It is
> Sivathamby himself who has described how Agamas not used in
temples,
> and casteism is weaker.
>
> Prof. S. Suseendirarajah had written a brief article on pronouns
in
> Batticaloa Tamil. He has shown that system of pronouns displays a
> great similarity to Indian Tamil- only two demonstrative bases
> instead of three ("avar" & "ivar", but no "uvar"), little use of
> intermediate respectful "niir" (in between polite niingkaL and
> impolite nii), and use of 3rd person pronouns more similar to
Indian
> Tamil.
>
> In the same article, he looked at assimilation. Whereas Jaffna
Tamil
> assimilates -nR- to -NT- (like 'enRu' to 'eNTu') and Indian Tamil
> makes it to -nn- ('ennu'), Batticaloa will mix both assimilation.
He
> has hypothesized that Batticaloa Tamil is a more recent emigration
> than Jaffna from India, and one influence of Jaffna Tamil dialect
is
> on this assimiation.
>
> Jaffna Tamil uses some Sangam Tamil words in day-to-day speech,
> like 'mukil' (cloud) and 'nirai' (row). Is Batticaloa vocabulary
> similar to Jaffna?
>
>
> -AF
>
> --- In varalaaRu@yahoogroups.com, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >
> > According to Prof Kathigesu Sivathamby, in his article titled "
Sri
> > Lankan Tamil Society and Plitics". None of the Sri Lankan Tamil
> > dialects are close to any of the standard Tamil Nadu Tamil
> Dialects.
> >
> > All Sri Lankan Tamil Dialects are variants of Tamil/Malayalam
> > Dialects used in Southern Tamil Nadu and South coastal Kerala
and
> > have evolved independantly in a regional manner in Sri lanka.
> >
> > --- In varalaaRu@yahoogroups.com, "af7802" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > What is the history of Batticaloa? Why is their language
closer
> to
> > > Indian dialect than Jaffna? Why don't they follow Agamas in
> temple
> > > worship. Why is casteism weaker?
> > >
> > > Are all these things just part of "high" culture, not
involving
> the
> > > masses?
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 5
Date: Wed, 02 Mar 2005 19:55:51 -0000
From: "RVS" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Contact-Induced Morphosyntactic Realignment in Negombo Fishermen¡¯s
Tamil
Contact-Induced Morphosyntactic Realignment in Negombo Fishermen¡¯s
Tamil
The Karavas or Karaiyars of Negombo, Sri Lanka, are a caste of
bilingual Roman Catholic fishermen. While these people speak Sinhala
with native fluency, and often identify themselves as Sinhalese,
most of them also use a peculiar dialect of Tamil in the home and at
work. The Karava Tamil dialect, hereafter Negombo Fishermen¡¯s Tamil
(NFT), appears to have undergone considerable morphosyntactic
convergence with Sinhala, as a consequence of contact with
Colloquial Sinhala (CS). For example, NFT has mostly lost Tamil verb
agreement morphology for person and number, apparently under the
influence of the Sinhala model. Colloquial Sinhala (unlike Literary
Sinhala) has a single verb form for all persons, singular and
plural. Most Tamil dialects, by contrast, retain in both the spoken
and the written languages a well-developed system of person and
number verb agreement morphology. Thus in NFT we have, with Jaffna
Tamil (JT) for comparison:
1.a. naan kolumbu-kki poo-ra (NFT)
I Colombo-DAT go-PRES
b. naan kolumbu-kki poo-r-een (JT)
I Colombo-DAT go-PRES-1st SING
c. mam∂ kol∂mb∂-T∂ yan∂wa (CS)
I Colombo-DAT go (PRES) (¡®I go to Colombo¡¯)
2. a. aven kaNDi-kki poo-ra (NFT)
he Kandy-DAT go-PRES
b. avan kaNDi-kki poo-r-aan (JT)
he Kandy-DAT go-PRES-3rd SING
c. eyaa nuw∂r∂-T∂ yan∂wa (CS)
he Kandy-DAT go (PRES) (¡®he goes to Kandy¡¯)
Tamil person and number verb morphology persists in NFT mostly in
marked modalities. These modal forms appear to correspond to similar
Colloquial Sinhala usages such as the intentional (or ¡°volitive
optative¡±), themselves remnants of Sinhala person/number morphology
that have been grammaticalized as person-specific modals (see
Paolillo 1994). For example, in Colloquial Sinhala, the present
tense verb stem followed by ¨Cnnaŋ (derived from the old first person
future) denotes strong intention, and is used ordinarily only in the
first person. Thus CS mam∂ ya-nnaŋ, ¡®I intend to go;¡¯ ya-, ¡®go.¡¯
In NFT, the form naan poo-r-een (shown for JT in example 1.b above)
normally means not ¡®I go,¡¯ as in JT and other dialects, but ¡®I
intend to go.¡¯ Thus the morphological first person present has
become a marked modality in NFT denoting strong intention, not the
present tense per se. Likewise, the Colloquial Sinhala
possibilitative (or ¡°involitive optative;¡± Paolillo 1994), which is
formed by adding to the present verb stem the suffix ¨Cyi (eyaa ya-
yi, ¡®he might go;¡¯ eyaa, ¡®he¡¯) and is restricted to the third
person, is paralleled in NFT by the retention of the morphological
Tamil third person future singular and plural to denote the
possibilitative; thus NFT avan poo-v-aan, ¡®he might go;¡¯ poo-,
¡®go,¡¯ ¨Cv-, future tense marker, -aan, 3rd singular masculine; in
other Tamil dialects, this form means ¡®he will go, he habitually
goes.¡¯
NFT has also developed a number of other grammatical traits under
the probable influence of Sinhala, including a postposed indefinite
article, an indefinitizing postclitic ¨Csari (apparently modeled on
Sinhala ¨Chari), and case assignments for defective verbs that follow
the Sinhala, rather than Tamil, patterns of agreement.
Negombo Fishermen¡¯s Tamil, spoken by perhaps as many as 50,000
people, is thus a very distinctive dialect, even in the context of
the considerable dialectal diversity of Sri Lankan Tamil dialects.
With Karnataka Sarasvat Konkani (Nadkarni 1975), Tamilnadu
Saurashtri (Smith 1978), Sri Lanka Portuguese (ibid.), and the Urdu,
Marathi, and Kannada dialects of Kupwar (Gumperz and Wilson 1971),
NFT grammar is the outcome of pervasive structural realignment (the
term preferred in Smith 1978) as a result of stable bilingualism.
NFT is thus a valuable addition to the body of research on language
contact situations in South Asia. This paper will present a
preliminary description of this hitherto undocumented dialect, with
emphasis on certain major points of grammar that have apparently
come about as a result of contact with Sinhala, and will discuss
briefly commonalities between the NFT contact situation and other
cases of contact-induced change in the South Asian language area.
References:
Gumperz, John J. and Wilson, Robert. 1971. ¡°Convergence and
Creolization: A Case from the Dravidian/Indo-Aryan Border,¡± in
Pidginization and Creolization of Languages, Dell Hymes, ed.
Cambridge University Press.
Nadkarni, Mangesh. 1975. ¡°Bilingualism and Syntactic Change in
Konkani,¡± Language, vol. 51, pp. 672 ¨C 683.
Paolillo, John C. ¡°The Co-Development of Finiteness and Focus in
Sinhala,¡± Perspectives on Grammaticalization, William Pagliuca, Ed.,
John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1994.
Smith, Ian. 1978. ¡°Realignment and Other Convergence Factors,¡±
University of Melbourne Working Papers in Linguistics, vol. 4.
http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~sala23/abstracts/A17.doc
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 6
Date: Wed, 02 Mar 2005 20:07:57 -0000
From: "RVS" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Caste specific dialect of drummers of Jaffna
A traditional drummer of Karainagar, Jaffna. The drummers are one of
the ancient communities in the formation of Tamil society in Sri
Lanka. Besides playing drums at funerals and folk temples, they had
a role in the society as heralds and traditional weavers. They
maintained the family records of their feudal lords and even
practised medicine and astrology. In Jaffna, they still retain a
dialect of their own, which has a number of proto-Dravidian and a
few Prakrit words, not found in any other dialects of Tamil.
First Edition: February 1986; @ Ponnampalam Ragupathy; Publisher:
R.S. Visakan on behalf of the Institute of Research and Development,
33, Chezhiyan Mansion, Raja Street, Madras-600 017; Typesetting and
Layout: Cre-A : Madras; Printer: Sudarsan Graphics, Madras-600 017;
Copies available at: Cre-A: 268, Royapettah High Road, Madras-600
014.
http://tamil.weblogs.us/archives/2004_05.html
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