From the same root, Kannada and Tamil walked independent paths

From the same root, Kannada and Tamil walked independent paths

The recent statement by veteran actor Kamal Haasan on the origins of the Kannada language has attracted widespread public attention and sparked a national-level debate.

Dravidian languages are generally classified into four groups: North Dravidian, Central Dravidian, South Dravidian-II, and South Dravidian-I. Both Kannada and Tamil belong to the South Dravidian-I group. Robert Caldwell, in A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages (1857), was the first scholar to establish the southern Dravidian languages as a distinct language family, which he termed ‘Dravidian’. Since Caldwell’s pioneering work, numerous scholars—such as Aiyyar, Emeneau, Subrahmanyam, Shanmugam, Krishnamurti, Zvelebil, Andronov, and Steever—have made significant contributions to the study and classification of Dravidian languages. Despite the extensive body
of research, none of these studies suggest that Kannada originated from Tamil, or vice versa.

The Dravidian Languages by Bhadriraju Krishnamurti (2003) is widely respected in academic circles and serves as a foundational textbook worldwide. According to Krishnamurti, Tamil and Kannada, along with several other languages, evolved from a common linguistic ancestor classified as the South Dravidian-I. Kannada and Tamil share a close historical relationship because both separated from this ancestral source within a relatively short temporal span.

More recently, Kolichala (2018), using Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of cognate-coded lexical data, a method which reconstructs the evolutionary history of language families by analysing cognate words, reaffirmed Krishnamurti’s classification of Kannada and Tamil. 

A language may: A) retain proto-forms and functions, or B) independently develop new forms and functions. 

Here are a few examples to illustrate: 

1) Different developments in Kannada and Tamil: Kannada has developed the suffix ‘utta’ for the present tense, whereas Tamil uses ‘kinr’. Similarly, Kannada employs ‘in-d-a’ to mark the ablative case, while Tamil uses the construction ‘ir-un-du’.

2) Instances where Tamil retained Proto-Dravidian features while Kannada diverged: In Proto-Dravidian, voiced stops such as /g, j, ɖ, d, b/ were not phonemic; they occurred only as allophones of their voiceless counterparts /k, c, ʈ, t, p/ in limited phonetic environments. After Kannada diverged from the common ancestor,
it developed these voiced stops into independent phonemes that occur freely in various positions and environments. In contrast, Tamil retained the original Proto-Dravidian phonemic system. For example,the Proto-Dravidian word ‘ka:t’ remained as ‘ka:ʈu’ in Tamil, whereas it developed as ‘ka:ɖu’ in Kannada. 

3) Cases where Kannada retained Proto-Dravidian features while Tamil diverged: In Proto-Dravidian, the consonant /k/ in word-initial position before the front vowels /i/ and /e/ often changed to /c/ (e.g., ki- > ci-) in Tamil, whereas Kannada preserved the original /k/. This sound change in Tamil likely occurred after it diverged from the common ancestor, reflecting an independent phonological development. For example, the Proto-Dravidian root key meaning ‘to do’ or ‘to make’ remains ‘key’ in Kannada but evolved into ‘cey’ in Tamil.

Another interesting and important independent development in Kannada is presented below:

A Proto-Dravidian term, ‘akan’, which developed into ‘agam’ in Tamil through intervocalic voicing, is a key term in Classical Tamil poetics paired with ‘puram’. In Kannada, ‘agam’ does not appear as a free morpheme, but its presence is evident in a few compound words, suggesting that it existed at the Proto-Kannada stage. The root ‘akan’ has been grammaticalised across Dravidian languages as a case marker. Notably, Kannada is the only
Dravidian language where it isa widely used and productive locative suffix. In contrast, Tamil retains ‘agam’ primarily as a postposition.

Such structural differences between Kannada and Tamil clearly indicate that both languages evolved from a common Proto-Dravidian ancestor and developed through independent lines of innovation.

Caldwell, as a missionary in the Madras Presidency, was well acquainted with Tamil. The availability of older forms of Tamil, particularly in Sangam literature, helped him reconstruct proto-forms. Consequently, he argued that Tamil is ‘closer’ to Proto-Dravidian. This has, over time, led to a widespread but misguided perception that Tamil is the origin of several other Dravidian languages. This misunderstanding has, in some cases, fuelled a sense of linguistic chauvinism among certain Tamil speakers. Public statements, such as that of actor Kamal Haasan, appear to stem from this unscientific and oversimplified view of Dravidian linguistic history. However, Caldwell never claimed that either Kannada or Tamil originated from one another.

Kamil Zvelebil is one of the most prominent figures in Dravidian linguistics and is highly respected both globally and within India, including among Tamil scholars. In his work Dravidian Linguistics (1990), he categorically states that ‘In its extreme form, this school of thought is represented by some contemporary (and previous) Tamil scholars who would maintain that Tamil practically equals Old Dravidian and that it has not at all, or almost not at all, developed and changed in the course of its history. This is, of course, ‘patent nonsense’.

(The writer is a professor of Kannada at the Central University of Karnataka)