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A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages c3.s8: Earliest Extant Written Relics of the Dravidian Languages

A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages c3.s8

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Earliest Extant Written Relics of the Dravidian Languages

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The Dravidian words which are contained in the Râmâyaṇa, the Mahâ-bhârata, and other Sanskrit poems of undoubted antiquity, are so few that they throw no light whatever upon the ancient condition of the Dravidian languages prior to the ninth or tenth centuries A.D., the earliest date to which any extant Tamil compositions can safely be attributed.

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The oldest Dravidian word found in any written record in the world appears to be the word for ‘peacock’ in the Hebrew text of the Books of Kings and Chronicles, in the list of the articles of merchandise brought from Tarshish or Ophir in Solomon’s ships, about 1000 B.C. This word is *tuki* in Kings, *tûki* in Chronicles. The ordinary name at present for the peacock on the Malabar coast and in Tamil is *mayil* (Sans. *mayûra*); it is also sometimes called *śiki* (Sans. *śikhi*), a name given to it on account of its crest; but the ancient, poetical, purely Tamil-Malayâḷam name of the peacock is *tôkei*, the bird with the (splendid) tail. *Śikhi* = *avis cristata*; *tôkei* = *avis caudata*. The verbal root of the word *tôkei* is *tok’* or *tôk’*, *tuk* or *tûk’*, to hang; hence ‘a scarf,’ ‘a skirt border,’ is called *tôkkei*. The vowel of the root librates between *u* and *o*: half the derivatives have the one vowel, half the other. Hence there is no reason to suppose the Phœnicians in error when they represented *tuk* as the radical part of the word. That the vowel is short in Kings and long in Chronicles is also quite in accordance with the fact that in Tamil-Malayâḷam the vowel is sometimes short, sometimes long.

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Though *tôkei*, as a verbal noun, is a derivative from *tôk’* or *tûk’*, yet the ultimate root appears to have been *to* or *tu*. Judging from analogy, the final *k'* or *ku* must have been a formative. A primary root with this addition becomes a verbal noun, and in the next stage of the language this verbal noun becomes in its turn a new, secondary verbal root. It is interesting to be able to trace the use of this Tamil-Malayâḷam formative *k'* or *ku* so early as the time of the Phœnician trade with India. Max Müller, speaking of this etymology (Lect. p. 209), remarks: “If this etymology be right, it would be an important confirmation of the antiquity of the Tamulic languages spoken in India before the advent of the Aryan tribes.” I have no doubt that this etymology is right, and that the inference deduced from it is well founded. It may here be added that from the Dravidian *tôkei*, pronounced *tôgei*, would naturally be derived the Arabic *tawas*, the Greek *ταώς*, and ultimately the Latin *pavo* and our own *pea-fowl*. Minayeff has discovered in the Buddhistical writings a reference to voyages made by ancient Indian merchants to Babylon (called ‘Baverû’ = Old Cuneiform Persian ‘Babiru’), in the second of which voyages they took thither the first peacock for sale. (See paper by Professor Weber in the *Indian Antiquary* for May 1873).

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Of the names of the other articles of merchandise mentioned in Kings and Chronicles, *kôf*, an ape, has generally been identified with the Sanskrit *kapi*; and the Greek *κῆπος*, and even the English *ape*, have been supposed to have the same origin. It seems more probable, however, that the word has been derived from the old Egyptian *kâf*, an ape, a word which Mr Le Page Renouf informs me is in very common use in Egyptian inscriptions, and which he says is to all appearance as ancient as the language itself. The origin of the word used for ‘ivory’ (*shen habbim*, the tooth of the *habb*) still seems to me somewhat doubtful. On the whole, the most probable derivation seems to be from the old Egyptian *ab*, ivory. *Algum* may perhaps be the Sanskrit *valguka*, sandal wood, another meaning of which is ‘beautiful,’ a word which seems to be identical with, or derived from, the Tamil-Malayâḷam *aragu* or *alagu*, beauty. If so, *algum* will be more correct than *almug*. The fragrant wood called ‘aloes’ in Proverbs vii. 17, &c., was the Aquilaria Agallocha, the Hebrew word for which, *ahalim* or *ahaloth*, is evidently derived rather from the Tamil-Malayâḷam form of the word, *aghil*, than from the Sanskrit *agaru*, though both are ultimately identical.

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The Greek word *ὄρυζα*, rice, must be one of considerable antiquity. It dates from the period, whenever that was, when rice was first introduced from India into Europe; and it cannot be doubted that we have here the Tamil word *arisi*, rice deprived of the husk, this being the condition in which rice was then, as now, bought up in India for exportation to Europe. The distinctively Malayâḷam form of the word, ari, seems a corruption.

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The earliest Dravidian word in Greek of which we know the date is κάρπιον, Ctesias’s name for cinnamon. Herodotus describes cinnamon as the κάρφεα (dry sticks), which we, after the Phœnicians, call κιννάμωμον. Liddell and Scott say, in loc. κάρφος, plural κάρφεα, “this word bears a curious resemblance to the Arabic words kerfat, kirfah.” This resemblance, however, must, I think, be accidental, seeing that Herodotus considered ‘cinnamon’ alone as a foreign word, and that κάρφος is naturally derived from κάρφω, to wither. The word mentioned by Ctesias seems, however, to have a real resemblance to the Arabic word, and also to a Dravidian one. Ctesias, the author of the earliest Greek treatise on India, describes an odorous oil produced from an Indian tree having flowers like the laurel, which the Greeks called μυροβάδα, but which in India was called κάρπιον. From Ctesias’s description (making allowance for its exaggerations) it is evident that cinnamon oil was meant, and in this opinion Wahl agrees. Uranius, a writer quoted by Stephen of Byzantium, mentions κέρπαθον as one of the productions of the Abasêni, the Arabian Abyssinians, by which we are doubtless to understand not so much the products of their country as the articles in which they traded. From the connection in which it is found, κέρπαθον would appear to be cinnamon, and we can scarcely err in identifying with it kerfat, or, more properly, kirfah, one of the names which cinnamon has received in Arabic. Some Arabic scholars derive kirfah from karafa, ‘decortavit;’ but Mr Hassoun does not admit this derivation, and considers kirfah a foreign word. We are thus brought back to Ctesias’s κάρπιον, or the Indian word which κάρπιον represented. As this is a word of which we know the antiquity, the supposition that the Greeks or Indians borrowed it from the Arabs is quite inadmissible. What then is the Indian word Ctesias referred to? Not, as has been supposed, kurundhu, the Singhalese name for cinnamon, derived from the Sanskrit kuruṇṭa; but the Tamil-Malayâḷam word karuppu or kârppu—e.g., karappa-(t)tailam, Mal. oil of cinnamon. Other forms of this word are karappu, karuva, and karuvâ, the last of which is the most common form in modern Tamil. Rheede refers to this form of the word when he says that “in his time in Malabar oils in high medical estimation were made from both the root and the leaves of the karua or wild cinnamon of that coast.”

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There are two meanings of karu in Tamil-Malayâḷam, ‘black’ and ‘pungent,’ and the latter doubtless supplies us with the explanation of karuppu, ‘cinnamon.’ A word with a related meaning to this is *karukku*, ‘a medicinal preparation.’ This name may have been given to cinnamon from what has been described as ‘the sweet burning taste’ of the bark, and especially of the oil. Wild cinnamon grows freely in Malabar, in the very region in which Ctesias’s name for it, and the name adopted by the Arabians, is still in use. The cinnamon now grown in Ceylon is, it is true, of a much finer quality, but it is doubtful whether the cultivation of it had been introduced into Ceylon at that early period, and even if it had, it should be remembered that Ctesias, who derived all his information about India from Persian and Babylonian merchants, seems to have known nothing of Ceylon. I have little doubt that the Sanskrit *karpûra*, ‘camphor,’ is substantially the same as the Tamil-Malayâḷam *karuppu* and Ctesias’s *κάρπιον*, seeing that it does not seem to have any root in Sanskrit, and that camphor and cinnamon are nearly related. The camphor of commerce is from a cinnamon tree, the *camphora officinarum*. If the identity of Ctesias’s word with the Tamil-Malayâḷam *karuppa* be admitted, it follows that we have here the earliest Dravidian word quoted by the Greeks, and that at that early time Tamil roots were sometimes converted into verbal nouns by the addition of the formative *pu*, as they are at present, just as we have seen in the Hebrew *tûki*, the alternative formative *ku* or *kei*, used, as at present, for the same purpose.

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It is a remarkable circumstance that the largest stock of primitive Dravidian words contained in any written documents of ancient times—the earliest authentic extant traces of the existence of the Dravidian languages, as distinguished from Sanskrit—are those which are found in the notices of the Greek geographers Ptolemy and the author of the “Periplus Maris Erythræi;” including also the “Natural History” of Pliny. Many of the names of places and tribes recorded by those geographers, not long after the commencement of the Christian era, are identical, letter for letter, with the names now in use. Several of those names have become obsolete, or cannot now be identified; but the signification of the compound words of which they consist is generally apparent, and in several of them we can detect the operation of some interesting dialectic peculiarity or euphonic rule which is still characteristic of these languages. I subjoin a few examples of Dravidian words of this class recorded by the Greeks, beginning with the names of Dravidian peoples and princes.

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(1.) ὁ Πανδίων—ἡ χώρα Πανδιόνων (Κανδιόνων is evidently an error)—the Pâṇḍya king and people. This name is, as we have seen, of Sanskrit origin, and Pandæ, the form which Pliny, after Megasthenes, gives in his list of Indian nations, comes very near the Sanskrit. The more recent local information of Pliny himself, as well as the notices of Ptolemy and the Periplus, supply us with the Dravidian form of the word. The Tamil sign of the masculine singular is an, and Tamil inserts i euphonically after ṇḍ, consequently Πανδίων, and still better, the plural form of the word Πανδίωνες faithfully represents the Tamil masculine singular Pâṇḍiyan. Ptolemy is quite correct in giving the same name to the people and their prince. The people were Pâṇḍyas, the prince the Pâṇḍya, or the Pâṇḍya-déva. The form of the masculine singular in ancient Canarese, corresponding to the Tamil an, is am; in Telugu it is uḍu, so that Pâṇḍiyuḍu in Telugu answers to Pâṇḍiyan in Tamil. Consequently we learn, that as early as the Christian era, Tamil differed dialectically from the other Dravidian idioms, and in particular that its mode of forming the masculine singular was then the same as it is now. We also learn from the expression Μόδουρα βασίλειον Πανδίωνος that the Pâṇḍyas had transferred their capital from Kolkei on the Tâmraparṇî to Madura on the Veigei (or Vêghavatî) before the Christian era. Μόδουρα itself (in Pliny Modura) is the Sanskrit Mathurâ, pronounced in the Tamil manner. The corresponding city in Northern India, Muttra, is written by the Greeks Μέθορα.

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(2.) ὁ Κηροβόθρος. The prince called by this name by Ptolemy is called ὁ Κηροβότρος by the author of the Periplus. The insertion of π is clearly an error, but more likely to be an error of a copyist than that of the author, who himself had visited the territories of the prince in question. He is called Cœlobothras in Pliny’s text, but one of the MSS. gives it more correctly as Celobotras. The name in Sanskrit, and in full, is Keralaputra, but both Kêra and Kêḷa are Dravidian abbreviations of Kêrala. They are Malayâḷam, however, not Tamil abbreviations; and the district over which Keralaputra ruled is that in which the Malayâḷam language is now spoken.

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(3.) Σῶραι νομαδες—’Αρκατου βασίλειον Σῶρα—’Ορθουρα βασίλειον Σώναγος—Παραλία Σωρητῶν (or Σωριγῶν); also Παραλία Τωριγγῶν (which should evidently have been Σωρίγγῶν, seeing that it included the mouth of the river Χαβῆρος). Without entering here on any minute topographical discussions with regard to details, it seems evident to me that the word Σῶρα, which we meet alone and in various combinations in these notices, represents the name of the northern portion of the Tamilian nation. This name is Chôla in Sanskrit, Chôḷa in Telugu; but in Tamil Sôra or Chôra. Ptolemy’s accuracy, or rather perhaps that of his informants, with regard to the name of this people is remarkable; for in Tamil they appear not only as Sôras, but also as Sôragas and Sôriyas, and even as Sôringas; their country also is called Sôragam. The r of the Tamil word Sôra is a peculiar sound, not contained in Telugu, in which it is generally represented by *ḍ*, nor in Sanskrit and Pali, in which it is represented by *ḍ* or *ḷ*. The transliteration of this letter by the Greeks as *ρ* seems to show that then, as now, the use of this peculiar *r* was a dialectic peculiarity of Tamil. The Indian equivalent of the name of the king Sornax has not survived (as those of *ὁ Πανδίων* and *ὁ Κηροβόθρος* have), and it is fruitless to guess what it may have been; but as we know from native poems that the name of the ancient capital of the Sôras was Ureiyûr (pronounced Oreiyûr), we may safely identify this name with Ptolemy's *Ορθουρα*, the capital of the *Παραλία Σωρητῶν*.

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(4.) *Ἀρκατοῦ βασίλειον Σῶρα*. *Ἀρκατος* is here represented, not as a country, people, or city, but as the name of a prince. As General Cunningham has pointed out, *Σῶρα* is represented as the name of a city, where a king called *Ἀρκατος* reigned. Though this was evidently Ptolemy's meaning, yet one is strongly tempted to suppose that here the names given by the natives of the country to his informants had got transposed. The name *Σῶρα* is identical with that of the people of the district, whom Ptolemy himself calls *Σῶραι νομαδες*, and *Ἀρκατος* answers exceedingly well, in situation as well as in sound, to Arcot, the capital of the Carnatic in Muhammedan times. There is a distinct tradition that the inhabitants of that part of the Chôla or Sôra country which lies between Madras and the Ghauts, including Arcot as its centre, were Kurumbars or wandering shepherds—nomads—for several centuries after the Christian era. General Cunningham objects to this identification that Arcot is quite a modern name; but it must, as Colonel Yule has pointed out, be at least as old as 1340 A.D., for it is mentioned by Ibn Batuta. The name is properly *âr-kâḍ*, Tam. the six forests, and the Hindûs of the place regard it as an ancient city, though not mentioned by name in the Puraṇas, and point out the ‘six forests’ in which six of the *rishis* of the ancient period had their hermitages. If this identification be admitted, we have here another instance of the antiquity of the dialectic peculiarities of Tamil, for the oblique form of the word *kâḍ* is *kâṭṭ’*, and the word ordinarily used in Telugu for forest is not *kâḍ*, but *aḍavi* or *aṭavi*.

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(5.) *Κάρουρα βασίλειον Κηροβόθρου*. Karûr is mentioned in Tamil traditions as the ancient capital of the Chêra, Kêra, or Kêrala kings, and is generally identified with Karûr, an important town in the Coimbatore district, originally included in the Chera kingdom. *Karûr* means the black town, and I consider it identical with *Kâragam* and *Kaḍâram*, names of places which I have frequently found in inscriptions in the Tamil country, and which are evidently the poetical equivalents of *Karûr*. The meaning of each of the names is the same. Ptolemy’s word Κάρουρα represents the Tamil name of the place with perfect accuracy; kar means black, and ûr (sometimes pronounced ûr-u), a town. Neither of these words seems to have altered in the least in sound or signification for 1800 years.

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(6.) Modogalingam nomine, Pliny. I have already, in p. 32, discussed the meaning of this name. I add here that if modo be regarded as a Telugu word, meaning three, we have here an interesting illustration of the antiquity of Dravidian dialectic peculiarities; for three is in Telugu mûḍu, in Tamil mûndru, in Canarese mûru, in Tuḷu mûji.

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(7.) Damirice, and also Scytia Dymirice, Peutinger Tables; Dimirica, in the Ravenna Cosmography, see p. 14. The Dymir of Dymirice was supposed by Dr Burnell to represent the word Tamir, and if so, the Damir of Damirice will come still nearer thereto. The portion of the Malabar coast immediately to the north of Dymirice is called, by Ptolemy and the author of the “Periplus,” Ἀρίακη, and it seems probable that this was the district to which the name of Âryaka was given by Varâha-mihira several centuries afterwards (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. v.) It appears probable, therefore, that the difference between the Aryans and the Dravidians can be traced in the names given by the Greeks to those portions of the Malabar coast which we know from other sources of information have always been inhabited by Aryans and Dravidians respectively.

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(8.) I content myself with simply noting the following names of places on the Malabar coast. Μουζιρίς appears to be the Muyiri of Muyiri-cotta; Τύνδις is Tuṇḍi; and the Kynda of Nelkynda (or as Ptolemy has it Μέλ-Κυνδα, i.e., probably Western Kynda) seems to be Kannettri, the southern boundary of Kêrala proper. One MS. of Pliny writes the second part of this word not cyndon, but canidon. The first of these places was identified by Dr Gundert; for the remaining two we are indebted to Dr Burnell.

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(9.) Cottonara, Pliny; Κοττοναρική, Perip.; the district where the best pepper was produced. It is singular that this district was not mentioned by Ptolemy. Cottonara was evidently the name of the district; κοττονάρικον, the name of the pepper for which the district was famous. Dr Buchanan identifies Cottonara with Kaḍatta-nâḍu, the name of a district in the Calicut country celebrated for its pepper. Dr Burnell identifies it with Koḷatta-nâḍu, the district about Tellicherry, which he says is the pepper district. kaḍatta, in Malayâḷam, means transport, conveyance; nâḍu, Tam.-Mal., means a district.

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(10.) Σάνγαρα. The author of the “Periplus” calls by this name the canoes formed out of single trees, in which pepper was brought from Cottonara to Barace. The Malayâḷam name of these boats is *changâḍam*, Tuḷu *jangâla*. Compare Sanskrit *samghâḍam*, a raft. I have never been able to explain *κολανδιόφωντα*, the name of the large vessels that sailed from the western coast to Ceylon and the Ganges.

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(11.) *Κοττιάρα*. This is the name of a place in the country of the *’Aϊοι* of Ptolemy, in the *Παραλία* of the author of the “Periplus,” identical in part with South Travancore. Apparently it is the Cottara of Pliny, and I have no doubt that it is the Cottara of the Peutinger Tables. It is not to be confounded with Cottonara, the place mentioned above. It is called by Ptolemy *Κοττιάρα Μητρόπολις*, and must have been a place of considerable importance. The town referred to is probably *Kôṭṭâr-u*, or as it is ordinarily written by Europeans, Kotaur, the principal town in South Travancore, and now, as in the time of the Greeks, distinguished for its commerce. The name of the place is derived from *kôḍ-u*, Tam.-Mal. a fort, and *âr-u*, a river. It is a rule both in Tamil and in Malayâḷam that when a word like *kôḍ’* is the first member of a compound, the final *ḍ* must be doubled for the purpose of giving the word the force of an adjective: it is another rule that sonants when doubled become surds. Consequently the compound *kôḍ-u* - *âr-u* becomes by rule *Kôṭṭ-âr-u*. If the identification of the place be correct, as it appears to me to be, we find here an interesting proof that in the time of the Greeks the same phonetic rules were in operation as now.

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(12.) *Κομάρια ἄκρον*, Ptol. ; *Κομὰρ*, *Κομαρεὶ*, Perip. Cape Comorin has derived its name from the Sanskrit *kumârî*, a virgin, one of the names of the goddess Durgâ, the presiding divinity of the place; but the shape this word has taken, especially in *Κομὰρ*, is distinctively Tamilian. In ordinary Tamil *kumârî* becomes *kumări*; and in the vulgar dialect of the people residing in the neighbourhood of the Cape, a virgin is neither *kumârî* nor *kumări*, but *kŭmăr*, pronounced *kŏmăr*. It is remarkable that this vulgar corruption of the Sanskrit is identical with the name given to the place by the author of the “Periplus.” He says, “After this there is another place called *Κομὰρ*, where there is a *βριάγιον* (probably *φρούριον*, a fort; *ἴερον* is less likely), and a harbour, where also people come to bathe and purify themselves, . . . for it is related that a goddess was once accustomed to bathe there monthly.” This monthly bathing in honour of the goddess Durgâ is still continued at Cape Comorin, but is not practised to the same extent as in ancient times. *Kumârî* formerly ranked as one of the five renowned sacred bathing places, a representation which accords with the statement of the author of the “Periplus.” Through the continued encroachments of the sea, the harbour the Greek mariners found at Cape Comorin, and the fort (if that were meant) have completely disappeared; but a fresh-water well remains in the centre of a rock a little way out at sea. It is singular that Cape Comorin does not appear in any shape in the Peutinger Tables.

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(13.) Παραλία. There are three Paralias mentioned by the Greeks, two by Ptolemy (the Paralia of the Soreti, and the Paralia properly so called, that of the Toringi), one by the author of the "Periplus." The Paralia mentioned by the latter corresponded to Ptolemy's country of the Ἀῖοι and that of the Καρέοι, that is, to South Travancore and South Tinnevelly. It commenced at the Red Cliffs, south of Quilon, and included not only Cape Comorin, but also Κόλχοι, where the pearl fishing was carried on, and which belonged to King Pandion. Dr Burnell identifies Παραλία with Puraḷi, which he states is an old name for Travancore, but I am not quite able to adopt this view. It is true that, if the Greeks found any part of the Travancore coast called Puraḷi, they would naturally proceed to convert that name into a word of their own, bearing an intelligible and appropriate meaning; but, on the other hand, it is not clear that any part of the coast was ever called by that name. Puraḷi is stated by Dr Gundert ("Malayāḷam Dictionary" in loc.) to be the name of a fort belonging to the old kings of Koṭṭayam in the interior. Hence Puraḷīśan, lord of Puraḷi, was one of the titles of those kings. This title is now poetically applied to the kings of Travancore; but it seems probable that it was adopted by them at a comparatively late period, on their gaining possession of the territory to which the title belonged, in the same manner as they adopted the title of Vanji-bhūpati, lord of Vanji, a name of Karûr, the ancient Chera or Kerala capital. It is also to be remembered that the Paralia of the "Periplus" included not only the coast of South Travancore, but also the coast of Tinnevelly as far as Kolkei. It appears to me, therefore, that Παραλία is to be taken as a Greek word, though possibly it may have corresponded in meaning, if not in sound, to some native word meaning coast. This will appear probable from the next item.

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(14.) οἱ Καρέοι. The Careï of Ptolemy inhabited the southern portion of Tinnevelly, between Cape Comorin and Kolkei; consequently their country constituted the eastern portion of the Paralia of the "Periplus." Karei is the Tamil word for coast or shore, from the verbal theme karei, to be melted down, to be washed away, and is obviously identical in meaning with the Greek Παραλία. Up to the present time several portions of the Tinnevelly coast (including that part where I have myself lived and laboured for more than thirty years) are called Karei, the coast, or Karei-(ch)chuttru, the coast circuit, and a caste of fishermen further north are called Kareiyār, coast-people. There cannot be any doubt that the last portion of two names of places mentioned by Ptolemy represents the Tamil *karei*, coast, viz., Καλαικαρίας and Πειγιγκαρεῖ. If the latter word had been written Πεινγκαρεῖ, it would have been perfectly accurate Tamil, letter for letter. The meaning is great shore; and *perum*, great, becomes *perung* before *k* by rule. *perum* itself, instead of *peru*, is a distinctively classical form.

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(15.) ἡ Σωλήν. The Tâmraparṇî, the chief river in Tinnevelly, must be the river intended to be denoted by Ptolemy by this name, for it is the only river mentioned by him between Cape Comorin and the Kâvêrî, and it entered the sea south of Κόλχοι, the emporium of the pearl trade, which was certainly at the mouth of the Tâmraparṇî. It is difficult, however, to explain how it came to be called Σωλήν. This word means in Greek a shell-fish, a mussel; and it seems uncertain whether the Greeks called the river by this name, because the native name of it somewhat resembled this, or because of the fishing for chanks, as well as pearls, then as now, carried on at its mouth. The name by which the river seems always to have been called in India is Tâmraparṇî, a name which bears no resemblance whatever to Solen. In Tamil poetry it is often called the Porunei, which is merely a Tamilisation of the second portion of its Sanskrit name. *Tâmraparṇî*. Sans., would naturally mean the tree with red or copper leaves; applied to a river, it would seem to mean the river which resembles a red leaf. It is called by this name in the Mahâ-bhârata, though whether the passage in which it is mentioned is older than Ptolemy may be regarded as uncertain. The name Tâmra-parṇî being identical with the oldest name of Ceylon—Tâmbapaṇṇi in Pâli, Ταπροβανη in Greek—it might have been supposed, if the river had been called by this name in the time of the Greeks, that they would have called it the Taprobane, the name by which they called Ceylon. Solen cannot have any connection with Sylaur, erroneously represented in Lassen as the name of the principal tributary of the Tâmraparṇî. This tributary is called the Chitra-nadî, commonly the Chittâr, which means in Tamil the small river, and it is physically impossible that it ever can have been, as Lassen conjectured, the principal stream, the mountain district it drains being very much smaller than that which the Tâmraparṇî drains.

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(16.) Βηττιγώ. This, according to Ptolemy, was the name of the mountain range in which the Σωλήν—the Tâmraparṇî—took its rise, in addition to two rivers on the western coast, the Βάγις and Ψευδόστομος. The mountain range meant is evidently that of the Southern Ghauts—that is, the range of mountains stretching from the Coimbatore gap to Cape Comorin. The Tâmraparṇî rises in a beautiful conical mountain included in this range, visible from the mouth of the river, and visible also from Κόλχοι, the emporium frequented by the Greeks. When the Greeks asked where the river took its rise, they would naturally be directed to this conspicuous mountain, and on learning its name would naturally give the same name to the whole range. This mountain is commonly called by the English Agastier—that is, the rishi Agastya’s hill—Agastya being supposed to have finally retired thither from the world after civilising the Dravidians; but the true Tamil name of the mountain is Podigei, pronounced Pothigei (the Podiyam of the poets) or Peria (the greater) Podigei, in contradistinction to a smaller mountain in the same neighbourhood. The root meaning of podi being ‘to cover,’ ‘to conceal,’ podigei may have meant ‘a place of concealment;’ but, whatever may have been its meaning, it seems to come as near the Greek Βηττιγώ as could be expected.

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(17.) Κόλχοι ἐμπόριον. This place is mentioned both by Ptolemy and by the author of the “Periplus,” both of whom agree in representing it as the headquarters of the pearl-fishery, and as belonging to King Pandion. It was the first place east of Cape Comorin frequented by the Greeks, and was situated to the north of the river Solen. It is one of the few places in India mentioned in the “Peutinger Tables,” where it is called ‘Colcis Indorum.’ From the name of this place the Gulf of Manaar was called by the Greeks the Colchic Gulf. The Tamil name of the place is almost identical with the Greek. It is Kolkei; and though this is now euphonically pronounced Korkei, through the change of *l* before *k* into *r* by rule, yet it is still pronounced Kolka in Malayâḷam, and I have found it written Kolkei in an old Tamil inscription in the temple at Trichendoor. Doubtless it was so pronounced in the time of the Greeks, when euphonic refinements could not have advanced very far. Korkei is well known in Tamil traditions as the place where the germs of civil government made their first appearance amongst the Tamilians—the government set up in common by the three mythical-patriarchal brothers, Sêran, Sôran, and Pâṇḍiyan. Vîra-Râma, the poet-king, one of the later Pâṇḍyas, in a little poem called “Vettri-vêrkei,” styles himself Korkei(y)âḷi—that is, ‘ruler of Korkei.’ This place is now about three miles inland, but there are abundant traces of its having once stood on the coast, and I have found the tradition that it was once the seat of the pearl-fishery still surviving amongst its inhabitants. After the sea had retired from Κόλχοι, in consequence of the silt deposited by the river, a new emporium arose on the coast, which was much celebrated during the middle ages. This was Kâyal (meaning in Tamil ‘the lagoon’), the Cael of Marco Polo. (See Colonel Yule’s “Marco Polo,” vol. ii.) Kâyal in turn became in time too far from the sea for the convenience of trade, and Tuticorin (Tûttrukuḍi) was raised instead by the Portuguese from the position of a fishing village to that of the most important port on the southern Coromandel coast. The pearl-oyster has nearly disappeared now, I am sorry to say, from the coast, and the staple trade of Tuticorin has long been, not pearls, but cotton. The identification of Κόλχοι with Kolkei is one of much importance. Being perfectly certain, it helps forward other identifications. *Kol* in Tamil means ‘to slay;’ *kei*, is ‘hand.’ The meaning of Kolkei, therefore, is ‘the hand of slaughter,’ which is an old poetical term in Tamil for ‘an army,’ ‘a camp,’ the first instrument of government in a rude age. In so far as the two words included in this name are concerned, the Tamil language does not seem to have altered in the slightest from that day to this. The junction of the words has been euphonised, but the words themselves remain the same.

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(18.) Κῶρυ. Ptolemy describes Κῶρυ as an island in the Argaric Gulf, or Palk’s Straits. Elsewhere he describes it as a promontory, and correctly, for it was both—if it is to be identified, as I have no doubt it is, with Râmêśvaram, a long narrow island terminating in a long spit of land. The bay between Point Calymere and the island of Râmêśvaram is called ‘Rama’s bow,’ and each end is called *Dhanu kôṭi*, ‘the tip of the bow,’ or simply *kôṭi* (in Tamil *kôḍi*), ‘the tip,’ ‘end,’ or ‘corner.’ The most celebrated of the two *kôḍis* was that at Râmêśvaram, and this word *kôḍi* would naturally take the form of *kôri* or *kôru*. The ease with which this change might take place is shown by the fact that it is this very word *kôṭi* which is meant when we speak of the high number called by the English a crore. It is remarkable that the Portuguese, without knowing anything about the Κῶρυ of the Greeks, called the same spit of land Cape Ramanacoru.

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(19.) Καλλιγικόν. According to Ptolemy, Κῶρυ, the Râmêśvaram spit of land, was also called Καλλιγικόν, but it seems probable that he was mistaken in this identification, and that we are to understand by Καλλιγικόν the promontory called Calingon by Pliny, by which it appears to me that Point Calymere was meant. The circumstance that there were two places called Κῶρυ—that is, two ends of the bow—one of which was at Point Calymere, seems to show how Ptolemy’s informants may have come to speak of Κῶρυ as also called Καλλιγικόν. The Tamil name of Point Calymere is *Kaḷḷi-mêḍu*,—that is, ‘the euphorbia eminence,’—and it seems probable that the Greek *καλλι* and the Tamil *kaḷḷi* are identical.

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(20.) Κῶλις. In the various Greek and Roman geographers prior to the time of Ptolemy, the name Κῶλις occupies an important place. It appears first (in the shape of an appellative) in Strabo, who speaks of Ceylon as seven days' sail from the southernmost part of India, the inhabitants of which he calls Κωλιανοι; but it is probable that Strabo herein follows Onesicritus, a writer three centuries older, who represented Ceylon (Taprobane) as twenty days' sail from the same place. Pomponius Mela calls it Colis. Pliny, who reduces the number of days' sail from Ceylon to four, calls the place Coliacum, and describes it as the promontory of India which was nearest Ceylon, between which and it there was a shallow coral sea. Dionysius Periegetes, who brings Κωλις into greater prominence than any other writer, transfers to it (by a poetical licence) the description of Aornis near the Indus, given by the writers of Alexander's period, and gives to Ceylon itself a name which seems to be derived from Κωλις—viz., Κωλιας. In Ptolemy Κωλις disappears, and Κωξυ, a name previously unknown, comes up instead. I have no doubt that the words Κωλις and Κωξυ are identical, and that the places denoted by these names were one and the same—viz., the island-promontory of Râmêśvaram, the point of land from which there was always the nearest access from Southern India to Ceylon. The geographical knowledge of the present time might naturally wish to identify Κωλις with Cape Comorin, as the southernmost point of India; but in the times preceding Ptolemy (e.g., in the “Peutinger Tables”) what we now call Cape Comorin was not known to be a cape; and the Cape Comorin of the period (that is, what was supposed to be the southernmost point of the Indian continent) was Kôṭi, or Râmêśvaram, the point from which the passage to Ceylon (Rama's or Adam's bridge, the Ma'bar of the Arabians) was most easily made. I do not consider Κωλις a corruption of Κωξυ. On the contrary, I regard both names as equally representing the same word. Kôṭi, ‘the end of the bow,’ ‘the angle,’—that is, the angle or corner of the bay (the Argaric Gulf) lying between Point Calymere and the island of Râmêśvaram. Pomponius Mela regarded it as an ‘angulus,’ not of that bay merely, but of India, viewed as a whole. He supposed it to be the termination towards the east of the southern coast, which extended thus far in a straight line nearly due east and west from the Indus! Κωλις seems to me somewhat nearer the Indian original Kôṭi or Kôḍi, than Κωξυ; and the change of the Sanskrit ḍ into the Tamilian ṛ or ḷ, we have already seen exemplified in the change of the ḍ of Draviḍ into the ṛ or ḷ of Tamiṛ or Tamil.

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(21.) Malli, quorum Mons Maleus; Pliny. This mountain seems to have been to the north of the country of the Calingas, and General Cunningham identifies it with Mahêndra Male in Ganjam. It is difficult to determine the situation of the places in India mentioned in Pliny; but it seems certain that, wherever the Mons Maleus may have been, its name embodied the well-known Dravidian word (which we see also in the Sanskrit *Malaya*) *malei*, ‘a mountain.’ The name of the people was probably derived from the same word, and signified, like the Tamil *maleiyar* and the Râjmahâl *Mâler* or *Malcr*, ‘mountaineers.’

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(22.) It may be noticed that the rendering of the Sanskrit *Buddha* by Clemens Alexandrinus as Βούττα, and his rendering of the Sanskrit *śramaṇa* (Buddhistic ascetics) by Σεμνοί, accord better with the Tamil forms of these words (*Putta* and *Śamaṇa*) than with the Sanskrit originals.

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(23.) It is remarkable how many names of places in Southern India mentioned by Ptolemy end in ουρ or ουρα, ‘town.’ There are twenty-three such places in all. The following are examples:—Σαλούρ, Κορέουρα, Ποδοπέρουρα, Παλούρα, ᾿Αρεμβούρ, Μαγούρ, Μαινιττούρ, Κορινδιούρ. In addition to these there is Καρούρα mentioned already. It is scarcely possible to doubt that Ποδοπέρουρα means *pudu-per-ûr*, ‘new great-town;’ or Παλούρα, *pâl-ûr*, ‘milk-town.’ Probably a letter or two in the rest may have been changed, so that we cannot be quite certain what they meant, except the places should be identified, which has not yet been done; but they sound wonderfully Tamil-like. The conjunctions of consonants (*nt, nd, mb, tt*) are exactly such as Tamil loves.

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Some of the names of places mentioned by Ptolemy prove that the Brâhmans had by that time established themselves at various points in the Carnatic, and given names to some of the principal localities. Μόδουρα, Madura, is a Sanskrit word; so also is Πανδίων, the king’s name. Χάβηρος, ‘the yellow river,’ the Kâvêrî, is claimed by Sanskrit, though possibly Dravidian. There is no doubt that Κομάρια, Cape Comorin, is Sanskrit; and probably Κῶρυ is Sanskrit also. Ptolemy says that Brâhmans (Βραχμάναι Μάγοι) dwelt in the country under the mountain Βηττιγώ, and as far as the country of the Βάτοι—εν οἷς πόλις ἥδε, Βράχυμ. Can this Βράχυμ be Brahmadêśam, an ancient town on the Tâmraparṇî, not far from the foot of the Podigei mountain, which I have found referred to in several ancient inscriptions?

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At a later period than that of Ptolemy by several centuries, when the Indian trade had passed from the hands of the Greeks to those of the Persians, Cosmas Indico-pleustes, in his “Christian Topography,” furnishes some interesting particulars respecting Ceylon and the Malabar coast, included in which he preserves for us a few Tamil words. I have already mentioned his name for the Malabar coast—Μαλὲ, the mountain region. He gives also the names of five places on the Malabar coast from which pepper was exported, three of which end in πάτανα, ‘town,’ a word which, though found in Sanskrit, is, I think, o Dravidian origin; and of these, one (Πουδοπάτανα) gives us the distinctively Tamil word pudu, new. There is still on the same coast a town called by this name, which, like many other ‘Newtons,’ must be a town of considerable antiquity, seeing that it has long been regarded by native authorities as the northern boundary of Kêrala proper and of true Kêrala usages. This πουδο of Cosmas is slightly more correct than the ποδο of Ptolemy’s ποδοπέρουσα. Colonel Yule (Bombay Antiquary for August 1874) identifies the place with the ‘Bodfattan’ of Ibn Batuta, and the ‘Peudefitania’ of Nicolo Conti.

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Though the Greek geographers have not given us any information respecting the languages of India, beyond what little is furnished by the names of places contained in their works, the information derived from those lists is exceedingly interesting. The earliest extant traces of the Dravidian languages which possess reliable authority, are those with which we have been furnished by the ancient Greeks; and from an examination of the words which they have recorded, we seem to be justified in drawing the conclusion, not only that the Dravidian languages have remained almost unaltered for the last two thousand years, but probably also that the principal dialects that now prevail had a separate existence at the commencement of the Christian era, and prevailed at that period in the very same districts of country in which we now find them. The art of writing had probably been introduced, the grammar of the Dravidian languages had been fixed, and some progress made in the art of composition before the arrival of the Greek merchants;* and the extraordinary fixity with which those languages

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* The arrival in India of those Grecian merchants appears to be contemporaneous with the conquest of Egypt by the Romans. The earliest Roman coins found in India are those of the reign of Augustus. A large number of Roman imperial aurei were found some years ago on the Malabar coast; upwards of thirty types of which, commencing with the earlier coins of Augustus, and including many of Nero, were described by me in a paper published at Trivandrum in 1851 by the Rajah of Travancore, to whom the coins belonged.

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It may be desirable to mention here the approximate dates of the Greek and Roman geographical writers referred to above.

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B.C.—Herodotus 420; Ctesias 400; Onesicritus 325; Megasthenes 300.

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A.D.—Strabo 20; Pomponius Mela 50; Pliny 77; Periplus Maris Erythræi 80; Dionysius Periegetes 86; Ptolemy 130; Arrian 150; Clemens Alexandrinus 200; Eusebius 320; Festus Avienus 380; Marcian 420; Cosmas Indicopleustes 535; Stephen of Byzantium 560; Ravennatis Anonymi Cosmographia, 7th century; Georgius Syncellus 800; Eustathius, the commentator on Dionysius Periegetes, 12th century; Uranius, a writer quoted by Stephen of Byzantium, date unknown. The date of the Peutinger Tables is unknown, but an examination of the Asian segment of those tables convinces me that the author could not have had any acquaintance with Ptolemy, and therefore probably lived at an earlier period.

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appear to have been characterised ever since that period is in accordance with the history of all other Asiatic languages, from the date of the commencement of their literary cultivation.

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If the Dravidian family of languages is allied, as I think it may be believed to be in the main, to the Scythian families, it may justly claim to be considered as one of the oldest congeners of the group. With the exception of the language of the Behistun tablets, no words belonging to any distinctively Scythian language can be traced up to the Christian era. Mr Norris says, “I know of nothing written in the Magyar language earlier than the fifteenth century, and of the other Ugrian languages we have nothing above fifty or sixty years old. The great Finnish heroic poem, the ‘Kalevala,’ may be of any age, but as it appears to have been brought down to us only by word of mouth, it has naturally varied, like all traditional poetry, with the varying forms of the language.” The Uigurs or Oriental Turks acquired the art of writing from the Nestorian Christians, the Mongolians from the Uigurs; so that the literary cultivation of neither of those languages can be compared in point of antiquity with that of the Dravidian. Amongst the earliest records of the Scythian tongues that have been discovered, is a brief list of words recorded by the Chinese as peculiar to the old Turks of the Altaï; and of eight words contained in this list, all of which are found in the modern dialects of the Turkish, probably three, certainly two, are Dravidian. Those words as given by the Chinese are:—

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| | TURKISH OF THE ALTAÏ. | MODERN TURKISH. | TAMIL. |
| black, | *koro*, | *quarâ*, | *karu*. |
| old, | *kori*, | *gori*, | *kira*. |
| chieftain, | *kân*, | *khân*, | *kôn*, or *kô*. |

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I am strongly inclined to consider the last Tamil word, *kôn* or *kô*, to be identical with the *kân*, *khân*, or *khâgan* of the Turko-Mongolian languages. The Ostiak, an Ugrian dialect, has *khon*. In the old Tamil inscriptions I have invariably found *kô* or *kôn* instead of the Sanskrit *râjâ*: but the word has become obsolete in modern Tamil, except in compounds, and in the honorific caste title *kôn*, assumed by shepherds. This conjunction of meanings (king and shepherd) is very interesting, and reminds one of the Homeric description of kings as ποιμένες λαῶν.

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The Tamil literature now extant enables us to ascend, in studying the history of the language, only to the ninth or tenth century, A.D.: the Dravidian words handed down to us by the Greeks carry us up, as we have seen, to the Christian era. Beyond that period, the comparison of existing dialects is our only available guide to a knowledge of the primitive condition of the Dravidian language. The civilisation of the Tamil people, together with the literary cultivation of their language, may have commenced about the sixth or seventh century, B.C., but the separation of the primitive Dravidian speech into dialects must have taken place shortly after the arrival of the Dravidians in the districts they at present inhabit—an event of unknown, but certainly of very great antiquity. The Irish and the Welsh dialects of Celtic, the Old High and the Old Low dialects of Teutonic, and the Finnish and Magyar dialects of Ugrian, had probably become separate and distinct idioms before the tribes by which those dialects are spoken settled in their present habitations; but the various Dravidian dialects which are now spoken appear to have acquired a separate existence subsequently to the settlement of the Dravidians in the localities in which we now find them. Supposing their final settlement in their present abodes in Southern India to have taken place shortly after the Aryan irruption (though I think it probable that it took place before), every grammatical form and root which the various dialects possess in common, may be regarded as at least coeval with the century subsequent to the arrival of the Aryans. Every form and root which the Brahui possesses in common with the Dravidian tongues may be regarded as many centuries older still. The Brahui analogies enable us to ascend to a period anterior to the arrival in India of the Aryans (which cannot safely be placed later than 1600 B.C.); and they furnish us with the means of ascertaining, in some degree, the condition of the Dravidian languages before the Dravidians had finally abandoned their original abodes in the central tracts of Asia.

Cites (10)