mar 29th
kapidhwaja, thanks for the materials. i didnt see the whole discovery film, it was too big to download. also thanks for the pointer to bharat rakshak and the great military heroes
the wikipedia article on cholas was very good. i liked it except for the stray reference to the 'aryans'
i have great respect for ancient tamils. the sangam era, karikala chola, rajaraja chola, the bhakti saints, the great thanjavur delta manufacturing center.
just look at the following:
0. sangam literature: some of the most beautiful indian poetry comes from this period. read ak ramanujan's translations; i remember in particular "red earth and pouring rain" -- absolute masterpieces
1. chola bronzes: the epitome of indian art, superlative pieces that have no equal
2. rajaraja/rajendra chola: the epitome of indian imperialism, with their naval armada that was the biggest ever assembled before the era of the steamship
3. karikala chola: his grand anicut across the kaveri is the *oldest* waterworks in the world, and it is *still* working after 2000 years
4. bhakti saints of tamil country: they (and sankara) revived hinduism. what we all know of as hinduism today was created by the nayanmars and azhvars such as manikyavachakar and avvaiyyar
however, modern tamils do not deserve any particular respect. they are loud (they dont believe in speaking, they only shout) and sort of imperialistic. ev ramaswamy naicker was trying to create 'dravidianism' as a new religion whereby tamils would dominate southern india. his goal probably was to have everyone in south india (which of course would secede from the north) bow 5 times daily and pray in the direction of chennai, which would be the imperial capital of 'dravidian' india which would be everything south of the vindhyas.
christism = expression of white imperialism
mohammedanism = expression of arab imperialism
marxism = formerly expression of russian imperialism, now expression of chinese imperialism
naicker was hoping to add
'dravidianism' = expression of tamil imperialism
alas, other south indians found this business hilarious. in fact, they have made a conscious decision to tolerate hindi (bihari ? :-) imperialism rather than go with the evr plan of tamil imperialism.
i also think a classical language needs a classical civilization. for the tamils, there was the sangam civilization and also the chola era. for telugu, there was the vijayanagar empire. kannada, i am not sure. but malayalam did not have a classical civilization other than the sangam civilization: in fact, two of the greatest tamil works were written in kerala -- silappadikaram and manimekhala. this is why i believe tamil is clearly a classical language, perhaps telugu is; i am willing to be educated about kannada, but i dont think malayalam is.
however, interestingly enough, as *modern* languages, kannada and malayalam are streets ahead of telugu and tamil. both have produced many world-class works, more so than tamil and telugu. in modern tamil, in my opinion it's only the epic works that are remarkable, such as ponniyin selvan and sivakamiyin shapatham. kannada has its karanth, ananthamurthy et al. malayalam has its thakazhi, vijayan, pottekkat, bashir et al. someone knowledgeable about telugu is welcome to correct me.
here are my tongue in cheek opinions on various southern languages:
1. telugu, sweet language, lots of sanskrit, but it also has a predilection for 'g' and 'nta', both harsh sounds. look at place names: gudur, guntur, gooty, guntakal, guntur, gummidipoodi.
2. kannada, also a sweet language, very sanskritized, it is mellifluous and easy on the ear
3. tamil, i would be able to tell if it is sweet or harsh if only they stopped shouting! i once had the misfortune to travel by bus from bangalore to trivandrum through tamil nadu in a bus which had a blaring tamil movie video. i almost died.
4. malayalam, a nasal and rapid-fire language, the most sanskritized of the lot, about 80% of malayalam is pure sanskrit. it was explicitly created from tamil to be able to express sanskrit characters and sounds
ok, i said semi-serious, so don't get your knickers in a twist, all right?
indian history needs to be rewritten to give the south its due. after all, the south is pretty much where the action is: a per capita income map of india shows a distinct southern/western advantage except for punjab.
11 comments:
Happy Guddi Padwa [new year] to all the maharashtrians.
One more year sans puran poli,kadhi, wadeys et al. for me :(
Being a non-South Indian married to a multilingual South Indian....I can safely say I dont agree with any of Rajeev's attributes to South Indian languages.
To my non-South Indian ears, they sound as follows :-
Kannada : Too 'strict' sounding...like listening to a 'march past drumroll' rather than a sweet melodious song. Too many un-couth sounds like 'hha' 'khha' etc...
Telugu : Half the words sound like gaalis !!
Tamil : Too harsh. All the wonderful rich Tamil culture Tamilians are proud of, is nowhere to be seen in their movies & the way the characters speak in them ! Cant stand the movies.
Malayalam : Havent heard much to form a opinion.
Sorry folks ! And please dont fall on me like a ton of bricks...
pennathur, thanks for supporting my point that evramaswamy naicker was trying consciously to emulate mohammed and jinnah. he *was* trying to get us all to bow to chennai like mohammedans do to mecca.
like mohammed: evr's claim that everything before him (the era B.EVR -- Before EVR?) was trash; the urge to destroy images; the willingness to make tactical adjustments for long-term benefit (in mohammed's case, the battle of hudaibiyah, in evr's case, the alliance with christists).
like jinnah: evr despised the people who he claimed he represented, like jinnah. he just used them for personal profit, while not being concerned one bit about them.
evr's rationalism was a crock. "survival instinct" indeed -- he was plain scared silly of mohammedans, so he never dared critique them. what a hypocrite! if *one* hindu had stood up and said, "i'm gonna blow you away, mother!", evr would have shut up about hinduism too. as i said, coward and bully.
evr's criticism of caste was simple: his caste was not top dog. therefore he made his caste (and other middle castes) top dog. didnt make one bit of difference to the guys at the bottom that it was not brahmins oppressing them, but naickers and nadars and suchlike. so his achievement: nil.
i tell you, evr is one hell of a role model. for the congress and marxists. on how to screw everyone and make money for oneself.
lazysusan, i'm fine that your mileage varies. mine is strictly personal observation as an insider. as an outsider, i should also tell you that i find urdu harsh and uncouth: all those 'q' sounds and those abrupt consonant endings. it sounds like they're -- like arabs -- gargling, or trying to cough up some phlegm. mulaqat, haqeeqat, zaroorat, etc. sanskrit words sound so much nicer.
kapidhwaja, thank you, thank you. posting good stuff sure helps.
btw, i didn't say you guys were all illiterates. i was pretty specific about whom i called semi-literate, and that too with good evidence. :-)
re triage, it wasn't one person, it was roughly one-third of the people in each category. thus tri- and thus tri-age. this is pretty commonsensical and well-known in management practice. so you spend your effort where it can be of some value, not trying to change people's minds when they are made up. just
NZ/Rajeev, :) Well Urdu has got nothing to do with me. But I am really surprised you find Urdu (Hindi version of Urdu) harsh. I mean seriously, even Oriya or Bengali is alien to me, but I never found it harsh. Only SI languages oh yes also the Bihari style dialects sound uncouth...depends on how they are spoken too ofcourse...tone etc. Even a good sounding language can sound harsh if spoken in a uncultured tone.
yes, lazysusan, hindis have the idea that urdu sounds sweet. this is a conditioned reflex: you've been told this, so you believe it. to an outsider who just listens to the sounds, urdu (like its parents arabic and persian) sounds unpleasant. one of the reasons is the paucity of vowel sounds: they are all consonant-heavy, thus the abrupt endings too. this is also why urduized 'buddh', 'arjun', 'karn', etc. sound harsh and incomplete to those used to the original sanskrit 'buddha', 'arjuna', 'karna' etc. similar languages can have very different sounds. chinese sounds extremely harsh, while japanese is quite euphonious.
pennathur threatens me with malayali jokes. but all the rest of the south indians have plenty of tamil jokes. so there's not much oneupmanship possible there.
i do have to say that i enjoy some tamil film music. when i was a child, the nearby theater (now sadly demolished and turned into a shopping center) used to play 'kalangalil aval vasantham' every night, along with 'rajavin parvai raniyin pakkam', and i enjoy those two. i found the recent 'alai payuthe' incredibly moving. and so also a couple of songs from 'roja' like 'chinna chinna aasai'.
tellingly, these were all low-decibel :-) and didn't have anybody saying 'daaay!' so if only tamil people could control themselves a little the language is sweet :-)
Rajeev, might I suggest all songs of AM Raja? They all sound soft to the ear. I personally feel Rehman has made a mess of Alai Payuthe, as good as it sounds! The original by Oothukadu Venkata Subbaiyar is way better. And I agree with you, if only we tamizh could tone down a bit, the language might be more appreciated. Even I hate all those high-decibel songs/scenes.
pennathur, i agree that evr did nothing for anybody else's struggles, he was mostly trying to line his own pockets, metaphorically speaking.
regarding vaikom, he was a complete nonentity there and did nothing for the emancipation of the ezhavas and others who led the vaikom struggle. evr did not actually oppose casteism,
he only didn't like others being casteist, he was perfectly willing to be casteist against the brahmins, for instance.
altogether, a complete charlatan.
if as you say, the reason for his bile against hinduism was a single instance of someone being casteist, well then it was pretty hypocritical/stupid (take your pick) for him to line up with the christists (what about apartheid and Jim Crow segregation in the US at that time?) and with mohammedans (what about the treatment of women and all dhimmis?).
the more i read about him, the more evr shoots up in my opinion. what a perfect role model for the congress!
EVR was a kannada chettiar and kannada is the sweetest followed by telugu
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