The influence of Sanskrit on Tamil.

The influence of Sanskrit on Tamil.

This view may be true on the influence of Sanskrit in Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and so forth but NOT Tamil.

In the deep past perhaps there was a stage where the distinction between Sanskrit and Tamil was not that great. Perhaps Rigkrit was simply a dialectical variation of Tamil. It is only after the
CaGkam epoch that you hear of Sanskrit in the South of India.

Many secondary developments in lexicon were borrowed into Telugu, Kannada and so forth but not Tamil.

The Tamils fought hard to maintain the essential purity of Tamil language and which continues to this day. And you cannot rule out that many words of Sanskrit are Tamil in origin and which entered the language after the CaGkam epoch.

The fact that Dikshitar wrote his Prayoga Viveekam in the 17th century does not in any way discredit his essential findings. Both Sanskrit and Tamil that he compared are existent even now and we can cross check his claims and refute them if wrong. If you read his treatise you can also see continuous references to PaNini and other traditional Sanskrit grammarians. He had also the good sense to do the same with Tolkaappiyam and Tamil linguists who followed his ways.

What matters is NOT the date of the composition of the treatise but the CLAIMS. He clearly shows that Sanskrit is an agglutinative language and hence not a lanaguage that belongs to IE family of languages which are not agglutinative.

This you can cross check even now with respect to the various
features of agglutinative languages I have mentioned.

Loganathan Krishnan @ Ullaganar