The Use of Grantha Script in Classical Tamil Manuscripts
2023–2025
RFH03
In South India, Tamil and Sanskrit have co-existed as literary languages for probably almost two millennia. In theory, this corresponds to a simple division where Tamil script is used for Tamil (undermarked in several respects) and Grantha script is used for Sanskrit (including sets of voiced and aspirated consonants as well as a huge repertoire of ligatures for consonant clusters). In practice, however, we know of inscriptions using mixtures of both scripts (often freely and unpredictably) in contexts where elements from both languages occur. Research during the last years established that this is also the case for some manuscripts, particularly in paratexts such as marginal blessings and colophons.
What is not generally known is that mixed scripts also occur in commentary manuscripts of the classical tradition. Even the earliest literary texts in Tamil, the Caṅkam corpus, contain loanwords; and half of the lexicographical tradition, which starts at the end of the first millennium, consists of Sanskrit lexical items, which is why it has to be called crypto-bilingual. Commentary glosses, which rely heavily on these early Thesauri, can thus use considerable shares of Sanskrit. It has recently been demonstrated that even pure Tamil words can be glossed with Sanskrit words spelled in Grantha. However, since the time of early prints, these interrelations have been completely obliterated, firstly because it is technically difficult to print from a double set of letters, and secondly because of nationalist (anti-brahmin) policies.
This project maps and analyses these interrelations on the basis of a manuscript corpus which is already brought together, digitised, and catalogued (Wilden 2014). The main texts chosen for this purpose are those classical anthologies of poetry that are transmitted with a medieval commentary. The investigation starts from the manuscript evidence, establishing different usages by different transmission strands (or possibly regions or copyists) and identifying the ways in which they were converted in the early printed editions. This evidence allows us to ask broader questions of multilingual interaction in the period when the lexicographical corpus was formed (late first millennium), in the era when the commentaries were produced (early second millennium), and finally in the preprint era when our manuscripts were copied.
People
Project lead: Eva Wilden
Research Associate: Maanasa Visweswaran