FB Post about Evolution of Tamil

[dEhiN]

Hi so I was searching for the Tamil spelling of senthamil and came across this post by someone on FB entitled "Evolution of Tamil Language". The content seems quite interesting, but I'm not sure about the veracity of this guy's research. Can anyone confirm whether what he says is true? Or at least whether you are aware of any glaring holes in his points? Thanks in advance.

[vijayjohn]

Okay, I'm not going to talk about every single point in this post right now, but I will say this much: Some of this is true, and some (in fact probably most of it) is not. For example, Tamil literature does not date back 5,000 years; that's ridiculous. Even the Indus Valley Civilization is not nearly that old. Human writing itself dates back only 7,000 years. Tamil literature dates back to about the 3rd century BC. That being said, it is true that Kolami, Gondi, and Oraon are spoken in North India, that Brahui is spoken in Balochistan, and that all of those are Dravidian languages. It's also true that Prakrit and Pali (both Middle Indo-Aryan) are descended from Old Indo-Aryan, which includes Vedic Sanskrit (and on which Classical Sanskrit is based), and that Prakrit was not considered fit for literature and Sanskrit was used instead (indeed, Indians still consider Sanskrit an extremely prestigious language to this day in a way that even English is not, kind of like how knowing Latin is prestigious in the West, and the shift from Sanskrit towards other languages in Indian literature was gradual) although "Prakrit" is quite a vague term that refers to pretty much any Middle Indo-Aryan language (including Pali).

[dEhiN]

Ok thanks Vijay. I suspected most or a good amount of it wasn't true. I didn’t know Vedic Sanskrit predates Classical Sanskrit.

[vijayjohn]

Ok thanks Vijay.

Np.

I didn’t know Vedic Sanskrit predates Classical Sanskrit.

Well, Old Indo-Aryan is the ancestor of all the modern Indo-Aryan languages, and both Vedic Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit are Old Indo-Aryan languages. Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the Rig Veda, which is one of the oldest texts attested in any Indo-European language and was preserved orally for well over a thousand years before it was finally written down. It was a spoken language, and the ancestor of Classical Sanskrit, which is not a language anyone actually ever spoke (at least not at that time...) bur rather a literary and liturgical language based on Vedic Sanskrit.