The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Clarification

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Saturday, Nov 03, 2007
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Clarification

With respect to the report published in these columns on October 26 about the status of Telugu as a classic language, Mr. Iravatham Mahadevan writes:

My attention has been drawn to the report in The Hindu on October 26 relating to the status of Telugu as a classical language being confirmed by my research on the Indus script. I wish to clarify my position in the matter.

I gave a talk on “The Dravidian Elements in the Indus Script” at the Dravidian University, Kuppam, on October 24. Prof. G. Lakshminararyana, the Vice-Chancellor, presided and Mr. A. B. K. Prasad, Chairman, Official Language Commission, Government of Andhra Pradesh, was the chief guest.

I pointed out that the Andhras who are mentioned as early as in the Aitareya brahmana (ca. 800 BCE) must have occupied the lands just to the south of the earliest Aryan settlements in the Vedic Age (ca. 1500 BCE).

The linguistic context between them resulted in Dravidian loanwords getting into Indo-Aryan languages and vice-versa. This is how the most common masculine nominal suffix – anR in Dravidian was borrowed as Andhra into Indo-Aryan, which became the ethnic name to denote the Non-Aryan people. Conversely, the Dravidian titles indicated by the Indus signs “Jar bearer” and “Arrow-bearer” were translated into Indo-Aryan respectively as Sata-vahana and Salvya-vahana, dynasty names of the Andhra rulers from about the 2nd century BCE. Thus the Harappan heritage of the Andhras became bi-lingual.

I do not see what all this has to do with the question of Telugu being recognised as a classical language. My talk related to the situation in the 2nd millennium BCE, more than one thousand years before the invention of the Brahmi script.

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