சிறுவர்க்கான செந்தமிழ் மறைமலையடிகள்
Preface
“Tamil can readily dispense with the greater part or whole of Sanscrit, and by dispensing with it rises to a purer and more refined style, where as English cannot abandon its Latin without abandoning perspicuity.:” -Dr. Caldwell in his “Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages,” 3rd edition, P.47.
This great truth discriminatively perceived and impartially proclaimed by Dr. Caldwell the greatest Dravidian philologist, concerning the richness of the Tamil language and the poverty of the other, it is regrettable even Tamil scholars of the land have not sufficiently recognised. How rich, pure and elegant in words and phrases the ancient Tamil literature had been, how simple, yet how lovely, original, edifying and true to nature had the conceptions of its poets and prose writers shone, but to what a poor, mixed, inelegant and low style has the language of its modern literatue fallen, and to what an artificial, ugly, slavish, corrupted and false mode of strain the thoughts and ideas of its authors are fettered, a slight comparison of the two literatures will easily disclose. As has been truly observed by J.A. Symonds, “The genius of a language is the genius of the race which made it.” This significant fact as applying to Tamil cannot be expressed so well as in the notable works of Dr. Gilbert Slater who writes thus: “The very character of the Tamil language, the perfection with which it has been developed into an organ for precise and subtle thought, combined with the fact that it represents a much earlier stage in the evolution of inflexional language than any Indo-Germanic tongue, suggests, though of course it does not prove, the priority of the Dravidians in attaining settled order and regular government.” (The Dravidian Element in Indian Culture, p 70) Though Dr. Slater, in claiming “a greater antiquity for Dravidian than for Aryan civilisation”, only suggests, from a correct understanding of the perfect structure of Tamil, the fact that the Tamilians had attained to a settled order of society and government long before the Aryan people settled into order yet an attentive study of the very ancient Tamil work the Tholkappiam and such old Tamil classics as the Pathuppattu, the Purananuru and others will afford proofs indisputable for substantiating what the learned doctor has hinted above.
As the primary function of language is to facilitate the communication of ideas among a people by means of sounds commonly recognised by them, as the growth of civilisation among them can increase only in proportion as they imbibe the thoughts and ideas of their own inteligent men and make them the guiding principle of life, and as this intermingling of thoughts and ideas cannot take place but through their own recognised, connected, significant sounds called their mother tongue, it had become absolutely necessary for them to preserve their language from constant change and decay and make its usage pure and stable. It is only in the midst of peoples who thus advance in civilisation that the necessity of keeping their tongue pure, undefiled and fixed is deeply felt. Others who take no effort at all to better their condition but are content with the mere satisfaction of their animal appetites, care so little to stamp the usage of their speech that in a round of ten or twenty years a new langauge comes to life among them and in another round it dies away. After quoting many instances to show how languages, like mushrooms, rise and perish rapidly among savages, the great and distinguished linguist Prof. Max Muller says: “We read of missionaries in Central America who attempted to write down the language of savage tribes, and who compiled with great care a dictionary of all the words they could lay hold of. Returning to the same tribe after the lapse of only ten years, they found that this dictionary had become antiquated and useless. Old words had sunk to the ground and new ones had arisen to the surface; an to all outward appearance the language was completely changed.” (The science of Language, 1899, Vol. I. p66) It must be obvious then how important it is for a civilized people to keep their language intact and maintain its purity to an utmost extent. Still, however civilized a people may be, all the persons who compose it cannot exert themselves to keep their language pure and fixed since laziness in an inborn principle in many which renders them indifferent to a correct pronunciation of words and sentences. And is close association with this principle of laziness which inwardly undermines the structure and stability of a language, another equally baneful, springing from the desire for imitation, comes rather outwardly from the contact of two peoples speaking or using two different languages, and induces them to import the words and phrases of the one into the other. Unless the mischief played by these two evil principles is checked strongly and in time, a language cannot live long but will quickly pass away and with it all scope for culture and civilisation will also pass away.
Now where can we look for a potent power to come from and check the operation of the two evils but from the small but active and intelligent section of a people which forms the centre radiating knowledge and civilisation al around. If a people could be so fortunate, like the Tamilians or the Egyptians, as to possess early among them an intelligent class who, by creating a literature and committing it to writing, made a persistent effort to check the decay of their language and the promiscuous mixture of foreign elements in it, their language, theirs alone, would acquire a vitality that would keep it permanently living, But for the creation and existence of a large and rich literature possessing a many-sided interest for its people, it would not have been possible to arrest the change and decay of a language. Prof. Sayce pertinently well observes: “Destroy literature and facility of intercommunication, and the languages of England and America would soon be as different as those of France and Italy” (The science of Languageï 1900, Vol p 210).
When one grasps the importance of this circumstance which controls the fate and destiny of a language it would become clear to his or her mind why Tamil has lived so long and still continues to live in all its youthful vigour, even after such cultured languages of high antiquity as the Egyptian, the Accadian, the Assyrian, the Hebrew, the Aryan and so on have ceased to exist. So far as we can compute on historical grounds, it is for more than ten thousand years that the Tamil language is being spoken and written. And to invigorate its constitution in addition to its innate vitality it possesses a vast, varied, original, useful and highly interesting literatue produced from 5000 B.C. up to the present times. The great and momentous fact must be borne in mind that, of the few cultivated languages of the ancient world, Tamil alone, as I just pointed out, is still living in all its richness and youthful vigour, all others of the modern world being only five or six hundred years old and even among these, except some European languages, few own original literatures as pure Tamil.
To many it might look a surprising circumstances that Tamil should outlive all other ancient languages, that it should still display so much virility as argues for its perennial existence. But the secret is not far to seek, although it has eluded the notice of even erudite scholars. The words, phrases and sentences of Tamil require but little effort on the part of the speaker to utter them properly. The sounds of each letter and word issue forth from the throat and mouth normally and naturally, giving no trouble whatever to the speaker. That all its twelve vowels and eighteen consonants constitute the only natural and normal sounds that could come out from the human voice with the least effort, can be shown clearly by inquiring into the phonetic and physiological laws that lie at their basis; but in a short preface like this it is not possible to enter into that profitable study. We have already shown that laziness in pronunciation forms one of the main factors that lead to the constant change, decay and death of languages. But in the case of Tamil, however lazy a man might be, he cannot pronounce its words so badly as to efface their identity altogether. On the other hand, the words themselves, without requiring much effort, flow out from him like the rhythm of a sweet tune issuing forth from the strings of a harp touched by summer breeze. For the Tamil lanugage does not possess such hard consonants, hissing sounds and aspirates as are possessed by Sanscrit, Hebrew and other cognate languages. It is this distinct melliflous character of its sounds that has preserved and still preserves Tamil from any disastrous change and decay. To this day even the illiterate Tamil peasants understand the classical poetic language of the Thirukkural that was composed at the beginning of the Christian era. When I had been at Jaffna during my lecturing tour, I was struck with wonder when I heard from the lips of its people many pure Tamil words used in ancient Tamil classics, but which have fallen into disuse in Madras and suburban cities. Even big cities like Madras where all sorts of people speaking all sorts of languages mix and mingle together, all those who speak Tamil speak it purely whether they be the born Tamils or others who have adopted it merely for social intercourse or business purposes. In the colloquial Tamil scarcely one percent of either Sanscrit or other foreign words mixes.
But the mischief that affects it badly comes mainly from the circle of English-knowing brahmin and non-brahmin officials, who speak neither pure Tamil nor pure English, but mix the two together so badly and ridiculously that neither a Tamilian nor an Englishman understands their language but turns aside with disgust. Besides introducing into their spoken and written Tamil many an English word and phrase, nay even whole sentences, the brahmins and their followers import into it Sanscrit and Hindustani terms also. This “constant degradation of language” in the words of Pater, “by those who use it carelessly,” at present affects Tamil so wholly by the slipshod fashion in which it is handled by the so called educated people. Whether your speak English, or whether you speak Tamil or any other language, you must learn to use it in such a way as to make your ideas quite intelligible to the people who are born and bred in that language. The standard by which one ought to measure the nature and use of a language must be the extent of its usage among the largest portion of its people in the daily intercourse of their life. As the educated section forms a very small minority of almost all the people in the world, especially in this country not only is it an inconsiderable part, but it also concerns itself less about the welfare of the masses than its own, the present fashionable mode of their easy talk cannot, with any propriety, be taken as the standard for using a language like Tamil which has been cultivated for more than fifty centuries and is spoken still by more than twentyone millions in Southern India and Ceylon alone. As days advance with the spread of English education, the gulf between the educated and the uneducated Tamils also widens, their being little understanding between them and little sympathy with each other. The root-cause of this may, by all careful observers, be traced to the inadequate instruction imparted in Tamil to students reading from the High School to College classes.
The object of the following treatise therefore is to remedy this defect at first by feeding properly the acquisition of the knowledge of Tamil at its very root, and secondly by acquainting the young mind not only with a knowledge of actual facts but also with practical moral maxims clothed, of course, in the attractive allegorical form called the fable.
To attain my first object the whole work is written in pure but simple Tamil, only here and there so interspersed with the words and phrases taken from the classical Tamil literature, as to make their meaning easily understood by their context and help the students in this way early to store in their memory a considerable number of fine and beautiful words and expressions they will frequently meet with in their later course of higher Tamil studies. Although I have in this prose work scrupulously avoided quoting any poetic, yet the synonyms given at the opening of each original essay and the classical terms and expression used here and there, will, I hope, greatly contribute to a sound knowledge of Tamil, of its structure and peculiarities, and aid the student to understand any poetical composition also to some extent. The manner of writing employed in this book, besides increasing the student’s knowledge of Tamil, will also enrich his Tamil vocabulary and serve him in good stead to communicate easily to his countrymen the ideas he has imbibed from the various branches of English learning.
My second object is to strike out a new path in the treatment of subjects, keeping in view the wide and amazing extension of knowledge achieved by the European nation, whole still clinging to some extent to the ancient mode of classifying subjects as laid down in the great Tamil grammar and rhetoric the Tholkappiam. Almost all the Tamil texts now in use never deviate from the beaten track of repeating the mythical stories of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, as if the incidents related in them had been actual historical occurrences and of omitting for the most part real daring adventures and soul-inspiring deeds of the heroes who actually existed in countries other than India. By this blind belief and persistent treatment of worn – out myths , by this wanton neglect doggedly maintained towards the actual greatness of the heroes of other countries, these Tamil texts, at the very time of its genial growth, blunt the historic sense of the pupils and breed in its stead an undesirable credulity which never leaves them even after years of their excellent culture in English. I have, therefore, completely left out all kinds of Indian myths in this books and brought in mainly actual historical incidents and a few supernatural events related in the reliable works in English.
In rooting up blind belief and credulity from the mind of the young pupils, it is not my desire that they should be taught to disbelieve completely all occurrences of a wonderful and supernatural character. On the other hand, it is my earnest wish that they should be instructed so as to acquaint themselves early not only with what occur ordinarily within nature and human nature but also with those that occur rarely at fitful intervals within, near and beyond them, provided they belong to the class of cases proved by careful, intelligent and disinterested witnesses. Here too the students must be on their guard, lest they should fall into the error of extending theit belief from one proved supernatural and superhuman case to many an unproved one. This careful cultivation of mind, while it is plastic, will tend to make it susceptible of receiving into it only those ideas that are true, real and wholesome, and free from deceptions and will conduct it ultimately to and region where truth alone shine. For, greater than truth there is nothing to be attained by the human soul.
Finally, it is my sacred duty to emphasize the importance of diligently cultivating a pure Tamil style both in speaking and writing, for that alone could urge the student to stretch his vision over the vast domain of the very valuable old Tamil literature in search of new words and expressions which lie abundantly there and which will readily serve him to express his precious new ideas in Tamil without seeking the aid of any foreign tongue. The more one exercises his mind in expressing himself clearly in his own mother tongue, the more will his powers of concentration and expression increase, and the better can he serve his country, language and religion. Further, that each and every word of pure Tamil bears on its face the mark of elegant use to which it was put for more than six thousand years by the very intelligent and highly civilized forefathers of the Tamil people, that these words, instead of becoming worn out and unfit for further use like the words of the dead languages, have, on the contrary, gained immense vitality and fresh life as times went on, every patriotic son of Tamil must impress on his mind indelibly. No filial son of Tamil can discard this priceless heritage of his own and go seeking after the aid of others that belong to those who bear no good will towards him, without degrading himself into beggarry and bringing contempt on his great forefathers and on the great language they used and cherished with so much love. Dear sons of Tamil, awake from this negligent torpor, serve your mother with filial piety and sincere heart, and reinstate her once pure and undimmed glory!
Vedachalam
Pallavaram,
25th March, 1934
