When the British administrator Francis Day landed on the coast of Madras(now Chennai) in 1639,the British wouldn’t have imagined that Francis day was actually marking the beginning of the 400 year British history in India .Though Francis Day landed at the then Madras,Calcutta(now Kolkatta)eventually became the British capital for the East India Company then and later the Indian political capital.
The smart Brahmins of Tamil Nadu naturally were the brainy lot of India then and were natural choice for inducting into the British administration at Calcutta.There they got close to Sir William Jones , a puisne judge on the Supreme Court in Bengal It was strange that Jones was more interested in philology than his own subject ‘law’.He sat with the Indian Tamil Brahmins in his quest to know about the fascinating lot of the languages of India.He was also active in the Asiatic Society(1786)at Calcutta and knew lot of IE languages like Greek,Latin etc.
After a time of study ,Sir William Jones seem to have gained the following impression regarding the origin of Indian languages from various sources:
1. Sanskrit is the mother of all Indian languages.
2.Sanskrit is the base of Indian culture.
3. Sanskrit has common words with Greek/Latin etc.
Little did Jones realise then that his understanding of India was lot incomplete without getting to know about the aboriginal people and language of the land. Based on this limited understanding William Jones had about the Indian languages,he went on to propose the existence of a relationship among European and Indian languages especially with Sanskrit.Later this family of languages came to be known as Indo-European languages .
During the same time ,Francis W Ellis,Collector of down south Madras Presidency had developed interest in Tamil and Sanskrit languages.He found out that William Jones’ findings were sort of incomplete in that he had omitted to include Tamil,the major language of the Indian sub-continent which was at least 3000 years old .He recognised Tamil as an independent ,older language with 44 daughter languages.Tamil was also found to be spoken by the native aboriginal speakers unlike Sanskrit which was heard only in some chants in temples.It was Ellis who first used the word ‘Dravida’(sic) to call the Tamil family of languages.
There’s no record of William Jones ever attempting to know about the great Tamil group of languages either from Francis Ellis or on his own.However,William Jones’ discourses on IE hypothesis eventually reached the then knowledge capital of the world England followed by Germany and Europe leading the entire world to believe that Sanskrit is the mother of IE languages.All these happened during the late 1700s.
Recent findings on Sanskrit -IE -Tamil connection
Much water has flown since the IE classification was done by Jones 200+ years back on erroneous/incomplete grounds.All subjects in arts/science etc.underwent dramatic changes during this 2 centuries of knowledge explosion and development.Linguistics was no exemption to the trend.
The following latest findings by the linguists of the internet era serves to update our knowledge on IE languages with special reference to Sanskrit.
1)Theory of Language Origination
It was found out recently that for any language to originate,a PEOPLE i.e.a community of native speakers is a condition-precedent.Research showed that Sanskrit had no known community of native speakers ever.Even the priestly caste Brahmins who chant Sanskrit mantras did not speak Sanskrit in their homes or among themselves.Instead ,it was found out that the Brahmins of India speak their respective State languages only .They normally declare the respective State languages as their mother tongue.Hence,the IE linguists who studied the matter feel that Sanskrit cannot qualify as a language without an identifiable native speakers and an established spoken status.Accordingly ,Sanskrit is now identified as the only unspoken script among the 449 member languages of the IE family.
2) Difference between language and code
Linguists are of the view that a language needs to be essentially spoken but not essentially required to have a script.If it is not spoken then it turns to be a cryptic code. Moreover,while a language is open to all in the community ,a code is always restricted to a fixed group.Based on these grounds,Sanskrit is now tagged as a code only.
3) Core Diction Deduction Technique(CDDT)
CDDT is yet another recent technique aimed at finding out who the mother of a particular language is by matching the core diction of both the languages involved.For details regarding the application of CDDT,please read my answer to Did Sanskrit originate from Tamil? Link https://www.quora.com/Did-Sanskrit-originate-from-Tamil/answer/Alvaro-Hans
Conclusion
It’s true that as of now there are 2 different language groups in India,namely the Indo-European languages and the Dravidian languages.However modern IE linguists feel that the extant classification done in 1786 has turned redundant/anachronistic/archaic now in view of the recent findings listed above.They are of the view that a need for revisiting the family classification has arisen now and if found necessary both the families be merged based on the recent findings.
(Originally published in Quora,Oct 20,2018)
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