Friday, April 17
Time: 12noon-2:00pm
Venue: 816 Williams Hall

Transition from Old Tamil to Medieval Tamil: Influence of Religious movements on Language change
Vasu Renganathan, Department of South Asia Studies

Abstract

Tamil and Sanskrit languages have influenced each other throughout the history of Tamil.   Poems of ancient Sangam Tamil have references to kings having employed Sanskrit priests in their kingdoms to perform Vedic rituals and Pujas.  The term antanar, for example, was used to refer to such priests of the Sangam time. However, this term was later used to refer to Lord Siva himself from the Medieval period onwards.  So were other similar changes in the language especially due to religious influence during the transitional period from Old to Medieval Tamil. Increase in borrowings, development of new grammatical forms, vernacularization of Sanskrit elements etc., are some of  such changes that occurred during this transitional period. Old Tamil is relatively less cumbersome language when compared to medieval Tamil, which developed many new grammatical forms, most of which were first attested in the poems of the  poet saints. In this talk, I attempt to trace the trajectory of developments of a few changes of Tamil from Sangam period to the Medieval period, and propose how some of the connotations that the poet saints introduced in their poems were instrumental in the changes that occurred in the Tamil language.

Co-sponsored by the Department of South Asia Studies and the South Asia Center