Depictions of language and languages in early Tamil literature – How Tamil became cool and straight

This paper aims at following up the development of the basic designation of the language called Tamil (tamiḻ) and its perception of otherness, i. e. other languages, especially the «Northern language » (vaṭa-moḻi & al.), in the early, pre-theoretical and non-theoretical, literature of the first millennium of the common era. The variety of literary genres and texts serving quite different purposes preserves a multiplicity of voices which have not survived into the relatively narrow circles interested in grammatical discourse. Already in the oldest literary corpus, that of the Caṅkam, the word tamiḻ is occasionally used for territory, people and language, but also for a learned literary tradition. A marked increase can be observed from the 7th century onwards, where we find both in courtly and even more so in devotional texts the onset of a conscious promotion of Tamil, often in implicit contrast to Sanskrit. The epicentre of the movement seems to be located in the Shaiva tradition

Art · Linguistics · Literary language · Literature · Sanskrit · Tamil · Variety (cybernetics · Computer Science · History · Indian and Buddhist Studies · Philosophy · Artificial Intelligence

• Praising the king in Tamil during the Pallava period

  Open Access•Emmanuel Francis•Bilingual discourse and…•2013

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