#tamil language

[linguingit]

I love how in Tamil, when you're sick, you say- "enakku odambu mudiyala" which literally translates to "my body cannot".

What a mood and a half. 👏 👏

[vacationtolocation]

[liberty-barnes]

@ tamil people i need help please

okay so my friend's birthday is coming up and we always joke about our trio of girls being the sun, the moon, and the star. she's the sun in this equation

so in her birthday card, moon & i wanna write "thank you for being our sun" but in tamil cause she's from sri lanka but i don't trust google translate and i don't want something important like that to be wrong but i also don't know any tamil people besides her so if someone could please be kind enough to translate this for us so we can write it in the card i would really appreciate it🤍🤍🤍

[ahamasmiyodhah]

Not wanna degrade any language but Tamizh and Sanskrit is the MOST poetic Language.

The words hit right chord >>

[tamblr]

The mythological history of Tamil

Almost every ancient language has mythology associated with it, most ancient languages are further connected to divinity or are sacred themselves. Prominent examples of this are Sanskrit, Latin, Arabic and Hebrew. While Sanskrit and Latin were reserved for a small class of people, perpetuating their extinction, it’s the opposite for Arabic and Tamil. The sacredness of the languages mean that everyone should respect and preserve the language and hence the rate of change in these languages from the classical period is quite less compared to the norm. There is a great negative perception surrounding Tamil nationalism and I hope this text on the mythology and history shows the beautiful side, how it unites the different social groups and their various interpretations of the language, starting with Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, Christians, Muslims and social justice in rural/urban society and how they all come together in the embodiment of the language. 

The mythology of the story starts off with the sage Agastya (Agattiyar, kurumuni). As David Schulman writes…

It seems that when Agastya was sent south by the gods to balance the earth, he at first felt rather insecure about one essential matter, which he explained to Śiva:

‘They say the Tamil land, where I am headed, 

is full of poetry [tŏṭai pĕṟu tamiḻ nāṭ’ ĕṉpa].

Everyone there has studied Tamil and has achieved sweet Tamil wisdom. I should be able 

to respond when asked a question.

So kindly heal my ignorance and give me

the book of natural, correct Tamil [antac cĕn tamiḻ iyaṉūl].’

Here is a request the god cannot refuse; he places before him the “first book” (mutaṉūl), which Agastya studies thoroughly before taking up his post.

We find Agastya (kurumunī) mentioned as having been there at the very beginning of Tamil, in the first academy (caṅkam = Sangam) together with the gods Śiva, Murugan, and Kubera and 545 other members of this august body. Not only that: his book, the Akattiyam, was the book (nūl) for this first academy and for all the 4,449 poets”.

The Sangam as well as the structured domain of Tamil poetry that it embodies are now complete. God himself drifts repeatedly into his role as a poet; but he is also clearly an editor and a grammarian, setting up criteria of excellence and differentiation among texts that look, superficially, alike. To be god, in south India, is to work on reality through the instrumentality of metrical sounds during the sangam period. A great example of the praising of lord Shiva in the modern times is from Baahubali (Tamil). 

3 of the 5 sangam epics that are celebrated today were written by Jains, such as the Nālaṭiyār, the Silappatikaram, the Valayapathi and the Seevaka Sinthamaṇi and one of the classical products of that period is the ancient Tamil Buddhist epic-poem Manimekalai. 

During the colonial period, the Tamil language became further embodied in the goddess, the Tamil mother (Tamil Thai). Here Tamil itself is personified as the goddess, her characteristics being divinity (teyvattaṉmai), classicality (uyarttaṉicemmai), purity (tūymai), antiquity (toṉmai) and motherhood (tāymai). Adorned with a Garland of letters, Tamil Thai holds in her hands palm leaf manuscripts, a japa mala, the torch of knowledge and a Sengottu yazh. In praise of her we find beautiful poetry, two of which are quoted below. 

‘O sweet Tamiḻttāy! May you flourish forever here and offer grace to your devotees!

You produced the poetry of Kapilar and other poets of the good academy in the southern land.

You fed the world with the Kuṟaḷ of Valluvar.

You destroyed darkness with mighty Kamban.

......

You stand as source of all learning.

......

You caused learning to grow among women.

......

You created scholars to nourish our minds.

O fine Tamiḻttāy! Look at all you have accomplished!’

(Velayutam Pillai 1971: 41-42

‘O Tamiḻttāy, may you flourish blissfully as a sovereign queen!

You gave birth to us, and embracing us, fed us nectar from your beautiful breasts;

You taught us to speak as infants, and also the full meaning of numerous words;

You caused our evil habits to flee, and firmly established in their stead good conduct that is dearer than life and fame. . . .

You taught us to respect ourselves, and teaching us about the experiences of the past and the present,

You have shown us the road to eternal release!’

(Velayutam Pillai 1971: 4

But it doesn’t just stop with a Hindu interpretation. In Tamil folk music as Dalit liberation theology Zoe C. Sherinian shows how Christian Dalits (once known as untouchables or outcastes) in southern India have employed music to protest social oppression and as a vehicle of liberation. Her focus is on the life and theology of a charismatic composer and leader, Reverend J. Theophilus Appavoo, who drew on Tamil folk music to create a distinctive form of indigenized Christian music. Appavoo composed songs and liturgy infused with messages linking Christian theology with critiques of social inequality. An example Tamil Christian devotion in modern times is beautifully embodied in this song.

In the book, the light of knowledge, Francis Cody writes:

For rural women, due to caste based oppression they had to petition the state to get things done. The act of petitioning the state was in no way an ordinary or obvious course to take for these women, who had never stepped foot in a school. It was the result of massive amounts of work. The people described above were all participants in the Arivoli Iyakkam, the “Light of Knowledge,” or “Enlightenment,” movement. The villagers from Katrampatti, their activist neighbor, Karuppiah, and even the collector were taking part in this social movement, which sought to make political agents of rural women and to disseminate scientific knowledge through the spread of written language. Over the course of nearly twenty years, from 1990 until the movement ended in 2009, the Arivoli Iyakkam managed to mobilize huge numbers of people from across the Tamil countryside. In the small, rural district of Pudukkottai over three hundred thousand villagers participated in literacy lessons, science demonstrations, and other Arivoli events. Across southern India the number reached the millions. By the time of my fieldwork in the early 2000s, it was no longer unusual for groups of women like those from Katrampatti to write petitions or to pursue other forms of interaction with local state offices. In modern times women empowerment is present in songs such as singapenney.

Lastly, The Arab Muslim Traders and the native Tamil converts to Islam in Tamilnadu state of India and Sri Lanka came into closer contact as a result of their commercial activities. They were bound by a common religion, but separated by two different languages They felt the necessity for a link-language. They started to write Tamil in an adapted Arabic script called Arabu-Tamil. The Arabu-Tamil or Arwi script represents the Tamil language using an Arabic style of scripts. From 8th century to 19th century, this language enjoyed its popularity among Tamil speaking Muslims of Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. It rendered a most useful service for the advancement and progress of Arab and Tamil cultures. The result was the best-known literary work of Muslim Tamil, the Cīṟāppurāṇam, probably the finest large-scale narrative poem in Tamil in the seventeenth century; this vast work, largely modeled on Kamban, tells the story of Muḥammad in a Hijaz that has been reimagined as the verdant Tamil land, complete with the classic tiṇai. These texts had a rich body of work in jurisprudence, sufism, law and medicine but sadly saw a decline in the 20th century with no attempts to arrest the decline. In the system of modern education, Muslim children failed to learn Arabu-Tamil language, as it was out of the school curriculum. In the system of religious educational institutions, the Urdu syllabus known as Silsilatun Nizamiyyah was adopted by the Madrasahs in the beginning of the 20th century in Tamil Nadu. Arabu-Tamil as a language and subject did not find a place in that syllabus.The decline of Arabu-Tamil language is a great loss to the Tamil Muslim community as this was their religious language. It had safeguarded the interest of this community. It was fondly and reverently nurtured by noble savants.  However, in recent years the mixing of Arabic and Tamil is beginning again with songs such as: Tala Al Badru Alayna and Arabic Kuthu. 

There were of course several criticisms of radical Tamil nationalism, embodied succinctly in this poem.  

‘Intiyattāy [Mother India] languishes in sorrow, and you speak of your own community!

That is disgraceful!

O Tamilian, break the chains that enslave that venerable woman…!

Long live the Tamil land!

May our Tamil language flourish, so that our Intiyattāy who supports us may find fulfillment.’

(Ramalinga Pillai 1988: 29

The sentiment echoed in the voices of Indian Tamilians is the underlying idea that “unity in diversity” is our strength. Let Tamilians be Tamilians so we can all be Indians. Tamizhi and Semmozhi manadu are two such songs which echo such an identity. To finish it off, here’s a link to a song celebrating some of the greatest freedom fighters of India! (Also two of the songs are from Tollywood but what's more desi than remaking or dubbing the same content in the numerous languages)

I hope this piece helps people understand our unconditional devotional pride toward the language regardless of caste or creed which can sometimes come across as too extreme to other people.

[cactus-tries-to-study]

October 2, 2021

Rain, old books, and stained glass windows

[rotzaprachim]

Language Moodboard-  தமிழ் / Tamil 

[bangbangmisfit]