From naga ganesan@... Mon Jan 28 08:37:42 2002
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Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 16:37:41 -0000
To: agathiyar@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Tamil origins (was: pi~n~nakanE)
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Also:

Pl. see my reasoning for the Tamil directions' names:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/agathiyar/message/12970

I believe vaTakku and vaLai-thal are related.
varai = mountains. Perhaps Tamils named the
North direction looking at Himalayas' undulations.

Also, theRku is obviously connected with thel/thal.
Cf. theru - street. This refers to the sea-faring
nature of Tamils.

The question is why Tamil legends consistently
talk about I & II sangams etc., in South direction
being submerged in the Ocean. I've a tentative solution:

We see civilization in the South India arising in
First millennium
BCE, and so, Tamils must have moved from North to
South, no dobt.

There are ancient Tamil legends about South being
inundated, and
Tamils
losing many of their books. In Siirkaazhi, the ancient
Shiva
temple is said to have floated when the world was
inundated.
Shiva is called "tONiyappar" (tamil tONi > skt.
drONa).

What these are refering to? I think it refers to the
ancient
flood from Mediterranean that created the black sea.
This ancient floods created Black sea in just one
year!!!
Tremendous force, devastation.
Have you read the marine biologists from Columbia
univ.'s
monumental discovery described by them:
Noah's flood : the new scientific discoveries about
the
event that changed history / William Ryan and Walter
Pitman
New York : Simon & Schuster, c1998.

These terrific floods gets narrated in Sumerian
legends,
in the Bible, and also in Sanskrit purANas and Tamil
legends.

Because Black sea does not have oxygen, wood and
bioorganic
material are preserved. First predicted by
Bascom, Willard.
Deep water, ancient ships : the treasure vault of the
Mediterranean. Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday, 1976.

The ancient Tamil sangam legends where the lands and
books are said to have been lost engulfed by the
Southern Sea, and
in Matsyapurana, Manu giving protection to the fish at
the Malaya
mountain, and Bhagavatham saying that Satyavrata, the
pious Draavi.da
king was saved by the fish, can also be considered.

--------------------------------

Regarding the name Shiva, tamil words like kempu 'red'/cemmai 'red,
good, auspicious'
need to be considered.
1) ziva (23 Dec 1999) < *kiva < drav. kema(=good/auspicious/red)
http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9912&L=indology&P=R11011
2) zimIdin, ziva, zibi (30 Dec 1999)
http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9912&L=indology&P=R13503

Also, in the North, when Dravidians became acculturated as Indo-Aryan
language speakers, many Dravidian words with word-initial k-
gets changed to z- (="s shibilant) words in sanskrit.
I've explained some of those words:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CTamil/message/527
(Pl. refer esp. to the URLs given in the CTamil elist message above).

Your as well as the list's thoughts, as usual, are appreciated.

Thanks,
N. Ganesan


--- In agathiyar@y..., "naga_ganesan" wrote:

> anbuLLa Prof. Sankaran,
>
> Have you seen the recent book by Karen Prentiss,
> Embodiment of Bhakti, OxfordUP. That's a must
> read for Tamils and all Indians. A step further
> than Norman Cutler's work on bhakti. I think Prentiss (sp?)
> is a student of Norman.
> Bhakti as a mass movement starts in tamil:
> Tirumuruku, 12 tirumuRai, AzvArs, ...
>
> She gives very old refs. (Indic, & western, eg., Grierson etc.,)
> about Bhakti to Shiva. This starts in Tamil,
> and esp. Tevaram.
>
> Agreed that Shiva is present from late sangam texts,
> esp. kali-t-tokai onwards (full of north Indian elements).
> The earliest Lingam unearthed is at Gudimallam near
> Madras (now AP). His anthropomorphic representation
> on a phallus standing on a dwarf.
> There is an exact parallel in Sumerian art.
> The dwarf is called Humamba (have to check the name).
>
> I agree that Shiva is North, but is of North Dravidian extraction,
> Regards,
> N. Ganesan
>
> PS: After reading you quote a Vikatan ref.
> to Narendra Subramanian's work Drav. politics in TN
> upto 1980 or so, I got the book. Very nice and
> hard scholarship.
>
> R. Suntharalingam, E. Irschick (he asked me few qns., few months
back,
> I didn't put time into it), ... have you
> seen Charles Ryerson's Tamil renaissance work
> on Periyar, ... - NG.