17.
The Linguistic Illusion of the Max Mullerian School
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Prof. Max Muller and his followers, seized
by a mania immediately after they mastered Sanskrit, for propagating the
Sanskrit lore far and wide, as if it were a divine mission, without paying
any attentiion to the Dravidian family of languages and without scrutinizing
the Sanskrit records, have done a great harm to Tamil, though unwittingly
and indirectly by adding to the injustice already done to it for the past
three millennia. They set their seal of approval to the notion that Sanskrit
is the sacred language of India, characterized the pre-Aryan Tamilian
religions, viz., Saivism and Vaishnavism, as Brahmanical, and created
the impression in Western countries that all Indian languages are derived
from Sanskrit.
Dr. Caldwell writes, ‘the Sanskrit Pƒ–dya
is written in Tamil Pƒ-diya, but the more
completely Tamilised form Pƒ–di
is still more commonly used all over Southern India. I derive Pƒ–di,
not from the Tamil and Malayalam Pa-du, ancient, though that is a very
tempting derivation, but-as native scholars always derive the word from
the Sanskrit Pƒ–du,
the name of the father of the Pƒ–dava
brothers. This very form Pƒ–dya,
is the sense of a descendant of Pƒ–du,
is mentioned, as I am informed, by Professor Max Muller, by, Kƒtyƒyana,
the immediate successor of Pƒ–ini.”1
“It was supposed by the Sanskrit Pandits
(by whom everything with which they were acquainted was referred to a
Brahmanical origiŒ, and too hastily taken
for granted by the earlier European scholars, that the Dravidian languages,though
differing in many particulars from the North Indian idioms, were equally
with them derived from the Sanskrit. They could not but see that each
of the Dravidian languages to which their attention had been drawn contained
a certain proportion of Sanskrit words, some of which were quite unchanged,
though some were so much altered as to be recognized with difficulty;
and though they observed clearly enough that each language contained also
many non-Sanskrit words and forms, they did not observe that those words
and forms constituted the bulk of the language, or that it was in them
that the living spirit of the language, resided. Consequently they contented
themselves with ascribing the non-
1.D.C.G.Introduction,p.12
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