Adibhasha

Adhi Bhasha is a work resulting from explorations of Chattampi Swami on linguistics. Swami originally wrote it in Tamil. It was later translated it into Malayalam by one of his disciples. It was traced out an dpublished by Dr. K. Maheswaran Nair in 1998. The work quotes liberally from rare Tamil manuscripts. It establishes that the continent to the east of Ceylon was the place where animal life and man originated and that the first language that evolved in the world was Dravidian. Summing up linguistic theories Swami argues that that man originated at some specific place and later separating themselves into different groups went to other places. The first group of people would have been using a naturally developed language. The first man would have grown up using that language. Later that first family would have got divided into various branches. The languages also would have separated into different branches. When Swami wrote the book; linguistic research has not yet been started in Malayalam. According to John Marshal who led the excavations at Mohanjodaro and Harappa Dravidian culture was the oldest and original culture of India and is accepted by all historians. Even before Marshal, Swami had come to this conclusion. Adhibasha also establishes this view. According to Swami it is the term Taymozhi that later became Tamil. Taymozhi means mother language. Swami states that Mutthamizh means Moolathamizh. In ancient times there were three kingdoms in South India; Chera, Chola and Pandya. He opines that Tamil is called Mutthamizh because it was used in these three countries. Tamil later reformed by Agasthya is known as Chentamizh, which has become the scholarly and literary language. The colloquial language used for communication was Kodum Tamil, which means unreformed language. Like this Muttamizh branched into two; Chenthamizh and Kodumtamizh. It is from Kodumtamizh that Malayalam took birth. Although Swami's conclusions are controversial the logic and firmness with which he has establishes them make their denial difficult.

Extract from: Chattampi Swami: An Intellectual Biography. By R. Raman Nair and L. Sulochana Devi. Trivandrum, Centre for South Indian Studies, 2010

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