Schalk :ஈழம் சொல்லாய்வு

Schalk writes further on Eezham

[TamilNet, Thursday, 16 August 2012, 22:25 GMT]
The Dravidian Etymological Dictionary (DED) has two entries (549, 550) for the word Eezham and one of them means the island. This means Eezham is evaluated as a Dravidian word by the DED. Eezham and Chingka’lam are parallel allocations. While they have not derived from each other, Chingka’lam did not refer to an ethnie, the Sinhalas, but to the island as whole and to its demos, not to one ethnie. The demos could be Tamil and/or Sinhala speakers. Considering usage evidences, Seeha’la and Lamkaa are late comers compared to Eezham, writes Professor Peter Schalk in a further note sent to TamilNet, after criticising the Indian MEA demand to drop the word Eezham as “provocative” (TamilNet 13 August). On Saturday, an interview feature in BBC Tamil Service said that Eezham has no entry in the DED and Madras Tamil Lexicon traces its origin to Pali.

Full text of the additional note sent by Professor Peter Schalk. His MTL transcription of words without diacritical marks is retained as it was in the text:

Professor Peter Schalk

The DED has not only one, but two entries about ilam. That means that ilam is evaluated as a Dravidian word. Burrow and Emeneau followed a long lexicographical tradition that we already can see in the tivakaram, akarati nikantu, pinkala nikantu, cutamani nikantu, namtipa nikantu and tamil moliyakarati. The standard formula in them is like this: “Īlam: another word is cinkalam”. The entries reflect an alternating use of the words. Nowhere is said that ilam is derived from cinkalam, albeit the concept of derivation was well-known. The apidana kocam, Brito and Alvapillai Veluppillai also stand in that tradition. Already in the tivakaram in the 8th century we find this alternating use that I have characterised as parallel allocation of ilam and cinkalam. The tivakaram has been studied by Sinhala scholars who have projected Caldwell’s analysis into it without being aware of Caldwell. They referred to the Tamil Lexicon. Ilam is allegedly derived from sihala, they ascribe to the tivakaram anachronistically. This is bad historical scholarship, but it was and is politically “in”.

Again, before Robert Caldwell nobody, including scholars from Sinhala linguistics, has ever derived ilam from sihala, but after Caldwell, Hobsson-Jobson and Tamil Lexicon and Initirapala have taken it up. The derivation is linguistically (morphologically) and historically impossible. Today the derivation has become one of the pillars of anti-Tamil Simhalatva (Nalin de Silva, Gamani Iriyagolle, Susantha Goonetilleke). Iriyagolle’s view reveals a special “linguistic” theory. He thought that the relation between a signifier and its signified is organic, necessary and indissoluble. It is not conventional or arbitrary. Therefore, he thought that if the signifier is ilam and its signified is sihala, then there is no ilam. Everything is sihala. This kind of rudimentary thinking is characteristic for Simhalatva.

The interesting point in the DED is that it has two entries (549, 550), one for toddy and one for the island. They are treated as homonyms, but not as synonyms. Moreover, it also indicates that there are two different morphemes (stems) for ilam, one for toddy and one for the island. Usually ilam is taken as one word with several meanings, like the Tamil Lexicon does. I think that the DED is on the right track. We should treat ilam as word with at least two different stems. We should not let us be lured by homonymy. When we discuss ilam as toponym we need not to bring in toddy, gold, juice, etc. It only confuses. Let us treat ilam 1 and ilam 2 as separate words. We may find ilam 3 and ilam 4 also.

Another interesting theme in this connection is to study the Tamil use of the word cinkala(m). It did not refer to an ethnie, the Sinhalas, but to the island as whole and to its demos, not to one ethnie. The demos could be Tamil and/or Sinhala speakers. This was also the use by Samudragupta in the fourth century using Sanskrit. In Īlam, sihala appears first in the Dipavamsa from the fourth century together with lamka. Both are latecomers in relation to ilam. Throughout history, the Tamil use of cinkalam alternated with the use of ilankai and ilam. We can say that ilankai is derived from lamka, but we cannot defend the statement that ilam is derived from sihala.

The influence of Robert Caldwell’s analysis from the 1850s has been non-constructive. There is no reason for us today to continue that part of his work that has many constructive sides.

Among living scholars who have discussed the concept ilam deeply is professor (emer.) Alvappillai Veluppillai. His views together with other scholarly views can be studied in the book, ilam-sihala? An Assessment of an Argument, Uppsala: AUU, 2004. ISBN 91-554-5972. The book can be ordered at acta@ub.uu.se.

* * *

Comments from an Eezham Tamil academic in the diaspora:

Professor Peter Schalk has aptly brought out the point that Eezham, listed as a Dravidian word by the Dravidian Etymological Dictionary, is a parallel toponym for the island, which as far as available evidences go, was in use much earlier than Seeha’la and Lanka.

He has also pointed out to the morphological and historical linguistic impossibility of Eezham deriving from Seeha’la and how the 19th century scholar Caldwell misled some followers including the Madras Tamil Lexicon, to pave way for ‘Simhalatva’ interpretations.

However, the Dravidian Etymological Dictionary itself is not completely free from the influence of Caldwell, when it presents the second entry (550) cited by Schalk in which it considers the derivation of Eezham from Sanskrit Simhala and Prakrit Seehala, by the direction of an arrow mark and a question mark added in the entry. (See Image)

DED entry 550. The Dravidian retroflex L (ZH) is represented with an r with two dots below it in the DED transliteration.

There could be no second word that Eezham, as a toponym, has to be treated independently from the homonyms meaning toddy, gold or metal etc. But an inquiry into etymology, with the help of historical linguistic usage examples and etymology of parallel terms, is needed even to answer the question whether the morphemes are independent or related. Avoiding investigation just because it causes confusion is not deep academic approach.

Even the DED has found it appropriate to note under its entry on Eezham meaning toddy (DED 549, see image), about the legend ascribing the origin of the toddy-tapper caste of Kerala (Eezhavar) to Ceylon (Eezham).

DED entry 549

The seemingly ignorant provocation coming from the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, where the minister is from Karnataka and the foreign secretary is from Kerala, is not concerned about historical linguistic parallels of Eezham and Chingka’lam. Now the involved terms are Eezham and Sri Lanka. Imperialism vilifying the former and upholding the latter is rather sociolinguistic abuse or engineering, aimed at erasing parallels in the island in complicity with the genocidal state of Sri Lanka.

Chronology:

16.08.12  Schalk writes further on Eezham

13.08.12  Indian protest to Eezham provocative: Peter Schalk

Related Articles:
09.08.12   New Delhi infringes into historical and cultural rights of E..
02.08.10   Assert Eezham Tamil identity in international arena: Es Po
28.02.10   Langkaa / Ilangkai / Sri Lanka
01.01.10   Eezham / E'lu / He'la
14.12.09   Sinhala / Chingka'lam / Ceylon
23.09.08   Eezham Thamizh and Tamil Eelam: Understanding the terminolog..


External Links:

BBC Tamil:

'ஈழம், ஹெல, சிஹல, சிங்கள ஆகிய சொற்களின் பொரு&#

Indian protest to Eezham provocative: Peter Schalk

[TamilNet, Monday, 13 August 2012, 06:45 GMT]
The demand of Indian MEA to drop Eelam from the TESO conference title is provocative, gives food for thought and does not make sense, says Professor Peter Schalk in a note sent to TamilNet on Sunday. The decision comes from confusing Eelam, a Tamil toponym standing for the entire island, with Tamileelam. In usage Eelam predates Lanka. On Eelam and Cinkalam, Prof Schalk said they are of a parallel allocation and parallels never meet, but walk side by side. Meanwhile, BBC Tamil Service on Saturday cited Professor MA Nuhman saying that the connotations of the word became a problem only with the ‘secessionist movement’. He agreed with the word’s old Tamil usage meaning the entire island, but questioned its Dravidian origins. The TESO response was naïve or sly by equating Eezham/ Ilangkai with the politically invented and Tamil -rejected term Sri Lanka.

The full text of the note on Ilam sent by Professor Peter Schalk [His transliteration of Tamil words following Madras Tamil Lexicon system, but without diacritical marks, is retained as it was in the text sent by him]

Professor Peter Schalk

The demand by the Indian External Affairs Ministry that Ilam/Eelam should be dropped from the title of the Conference named Eelam Tamil Rights Protection Conference (TamilNet 9.8. 2012) is provocative and gives food for thought. The Ministry probably thought that Ilam stands for Tamililam. If so, the Ministry should have stopped the whole conference making a political evaluation in accordance with India’s evaluation of the Tamil resistance movement being still a threat to the integrity of India. If the Ministry thought that Ilam is an alternative name for Lanka as a whole there was no reason to demand that Ilam should be dropped. The decision by the Ministry does not make sense.

I have observed for many years that in talk and writing by Tamil and Sinhala speakers, but also by Western scholars and journalists, Ilam stands often for Tamililam. The confusion started already in the 1970s with the famous slogan by EROS: nam ilavar, namatu moli tamil, nam natu ilam ‘we are Ilavar, our language is Tamil, our country is Ilam’. The country that EROS wanted was of course Tamililam, not the whole island. Tamililam’s citizens should be called Ilavar and their language be Tamil. Kumar Ponnampalam tried to re-introduce the word ilavar as self-designation, but he was killed in 2000. There was a journal called ilavar kural, a network called eelavar alumni, an eelavar web ring, and a Club Sportive Eelavar. They all had in mind Tamililam, not Ilam.

Historically, Ilam is a Tamil toponym for the whole of the island. It can be documented from the 1st century CE, before “Lanka” was introduced in Dīpavamsa 9:1. “Lanka” was Tamilised to “Ilankai” and alternated with Ilam in use by Tamil speakers. Tamil speakers also used the toponym Cinkalam, which is a Tamilisation of the toponym Sinhala. All three, Ilam, Ilankai and Cinkalam were used by alternation in the wordbooks (nikantu, akarati) throughout the centuries up to the modern period.

There is a tradition by Sinhala speakers on the ethnonationalist front to insist that Ilam is derived from Sinhala, that Ilam is nothing but Sinhala. This derivation was introduced by the Christian missionary Robert Caldwell in the 1850s. It is a typical orientalism. It is therefore ironical that it should be exploited by Sinhala ethnonationalists. It has no support in the Tamil and Sinhala history of linguistics and is from a modern linguistic point of view wrong. Unfortunately, some Tamil scholars went into Caldwell’s trap giving the derivation their blessing. The relation between Ilam and Cinkalam is that of a parallel allocation. Parallels never meet. They walk along side by side.

* * *

BBC Tamil service on Saturday said that it was interviewing Professor M.A. Nuhman, following the advice of India to TESO conference on dropping the word Eezham and as the word has became controversial in the last few decades.

New Delhi has not advised TESO but has made it a condition for permitting foreign participants to the conference. BBC Tamil service was blatantly twisting the truth.

Professor Nuhman cited the use of the word Eezham in the Changkam Tamil literature.

But the Dravidian origin of the word is questionable, Nuhman said.

The word has no entry in the Dravidian Etymological Dictionary (DED). The Madras Tamil Lexicon traces the origin of the word to Pali. In pre-Christian Brahmi inscriptions I’la, Eezha, Hela, Sihala, E’lu and Sinhala come with the same meaning. Researchers have said that they were words in different languages meaning a particular ethnicity of people. Even according to Veeramaamunivar [a 17th century Tamil philologist] Eezham means the country of Sinhalese, Nuhman was cited saying by the BBC Tamil Service.

The term Eezham, meaning the entire island became controversial only after the ‘secessionist’ movement, but writers generally use it in the sense of the entire island, Nuhman said.

* * *

The following comments are from an Eezham Tamil academic in the diaspora:

The word in fact has an entry in the Dravidian Etymological Dictionary (entry no. 549), in the meaning toddy. DED normally accommodate entries only when cognates of the word are found in other Dravidian languages. The word Eezham in the meaning of toddy has cognates in other Dravidian languages.

But the earliest Tamil literary usage of the word found in the Changkam text Paddinappaalai definitely shows that Eezham meant a territory (Eezhaththu u’navu: food items from Eezham).

The earliest objective written evidence in the form of Tamil Brahmi inscription dateable to the dawn of the Common Era also implies the same (Eezha-kudumpikan: the house-holder or clan member from Eezham).

The meaning of toddy for the first time appears only in inscriptions of 8th century CE and literature of 10th century CE.

The toddy-tapper community known as Eezhavar in Kerala traces their origins to the island of Eezham.

The word Seehala cited by the Madras Tamil Lexicon (MTL) as the Pali original of Eezham, is for the first time found in an inscription dateable to c. 3rd century CE, roughly 300 years after the inscriptional usage of Eezham.

Hence, there is no historical linguistic possibility for Eezham to derive from Seehala and the MTL etymology is not convincing.

Meanwhile, there is another Tamil Brahmi inscription that comes out with a geographical identity Chai-a’lam, which could mean red-earth country in Dravidian and could help tracing even the etymology of Seehala/ Sinhala/ Chingka’lam to Dravidian.

Literary and inscriptional evidences for the usage of the Sinhala words E’lu and He’la are found only from 8–10 century CE onwards (nearly 800 –1000 years after the usage of Eezham was found).

Again there is no historical linguistic possibility for Eezham to derive from E’lu or He’la. But it could be the other way round.

Pre-Christian Brahmi inscriptions never tell us that I’la, Eezha, Hela, Seehala, E’lu and Sinhala mean the same, and that they all stand for one ethnicity of people.

Prof Indrapala who conjectures that the prefix I’la found with some personal names in the Brahmi inscriptions could be a cognate of Eezha, and could stand for an ethnicity, concedes that it could also mean a junior or a younger person.

The word Eezham is also equated to Pon in Tamil, by the old lexicons. The word Pon in its early usages in Tamil generally meant any metal. There were specific usages in which it meant iron (DED 4570). The word Eezham in many inscriptional usages meant metal objects.

The earliest dateable inscriptional reference to the island is Tampapa’n’ni, found in Asoka’s Prakrit inscriptions of 3rd century BCE. Tampa-pa’n’ni possibly means anything ‘copper-coloured’.

It seems that the earliest terms so far noted, i.e., Tampapa’n’ni, Eezham, Seehala/ Chai-a’lam, all come from the geography: copper-coloured, having iron or metal and red-coloured earth.

These earliest available words, one being in Prakrit and the other two in Dravidian, are independent in origin. They may be rough synonyms but not cognates. The word Lanka is of another origin, probably Austro-Asiatic, simply meaning an island. Its Tamilised form Ilangkai found used from Changkam times also stood for any island in general.

Territories usually get their original names from geography, not from people or mythologies.

Coming to the comment related to the word Eezham that it became a controversy only after the ‘secessionist’ movement, there is another side of the story, which any unbiased person could see.

Eezham was preferred for political usage by the Tamil youth organisations that wanted to break away from the older generation polity, only when the State in Colombo imposed a Sinhala-Buddhist constitution against the wishes of Tamils and associated an innovated term Sri Lanka with that constitution in 1972. All Eelam organisations or Tamil Eelam organisations came out only after the Sri Lanka of 1972.

At least Eezham has the long historical legacy and justifiability to go beyond any current political connotations. New Delhi and media working for its agenda would only look fools by asking to drop the word or by subtly trying to discredit its usage. But the term Sri Lanka they all try to uphold has a historical legacy of nothing but 40 years of genocide.

Related Articles:
10.08.12   Eezham Tamil politicians not issued with Indian visa until T..
09.08.12   New Delhi infringes into historical and cultural rights of E..
02.08.10   Assert Eezham Tamil identity in international arena: Es Po
28.02.10   Langkaa / Ilangkai / Sri Lanka
01.01.10   Eezham / E'lu / He'la
14.12.09   Sinhala / Chingka'lam / Ceylon
23.09.08   Eezham Thamizh and Tamil Eelam: Understanding the terminolog..


External Links:

BBC Tamil:

'ஈழம், ஹெல, சிஹல, சிங்கள ஆகிய சொற்களின் பொரு&#

Why are children kept in concentration camps, asks Prof. Peter Schalk

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 28 October 2009, 14:24 GMT]
Stating that a list of details of children ranging from 1 month to 18 years, within the internment camps in Vavuniyaa, was being composed by concerned western academics and rights activists, Prof. Peter Schalk, of Uppsala University, Sweden, on Tuesday said out of 1,200 names they have composed 1,082 were orphans. The information is documented by human rights’ organisations in the field in August/September 2009. "The list gives unfortunately only a part of the total number of children in all concentration camps," he said adding that the list could be ordered from him. "The list makes it possible to follow up the fate of each child over time and makes denials by the Government of killings through neglect of children impossible," he said in a note sent to TamilNet.

Professor Peter Schalk

"More than 250,000 humans are kept in concentration camps for 'screening' by the Government of Sri Lanka, allegedly to discover 'terrorists'. The question arises why children are kept there, even babies."

Professor Peter Schalk is long connected to Sri Lankan affairs, Buddhism and Tamil Studies and has contributed a number of scholarly publications.

Full text of the note follows:

Children in Sri Lanka’s Concentration Camps

More than 250 000 humans are kept in concentration camps for “screening” by the Government of Sri Lanka, allegedly to discover “terrorists”. The question arises why children are kept there, even babies. These Concentration camps are called “welfare camps” by the Sri Lankan Government.

I refer to the latest report by Human Rights Watch from October 10, 2009:

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/10/09/sri-lanka-tensions-mount-camp-conditions-deteriorate. It is in agreement with other international human rights organisations’ reports. In addition, I refer to the EU Commission’s report with an evaluation of Sri Lanka on 19 October 2009: http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2009/october/tradoc_145141.pdf

The following information is documented by human rights’ organisations in the field in August/September 2009. Names of the children have been left out here. The list makes it possible to follow up the fate of each child over time and makes denials by the Government of killings through neglect of children impossible. The list can be ordered from me. The world has an eye on every child listed. The list gives unfortunately only a part of the total number of children in all concentration camps.

1. Total number of children on the list: 1200
2. Names of the concentration camps and the number of children:
   1. Vavuniya Anantha Kumarasami Camp: 118
   2. Vavuniya Arunachchala Camp: 65
   3. Vavuniya Kathirkamar Camp: 8
   4. Vavuniya Sheriliana: 50
   5. Vavuniya Ulukkulam Camp: 959
3. Age of the children: Youngest: 1month. Oldest: 18 years.
4. Number under 5 years: 308
5. Girls: 536 Boys: 664
6. Orphans: 1082

The following is an eye witness report with special regard to children from a prisoner in a concentration camp. The prisoners managed to get free in August 2009. The whole report was published in October 2009 (http://www.tamilnet.com/img/publish/2009/10/Living_in_Menik_Farm.pdf), but the section on children was slightly revised for this message by the former prisoner who rightly prefers to be anonymous.

"I was interned in the ---- camp of Menik Farm----. During those four months in the camp, it is the condition of the children at the camp that I found most depressing. I was too timid to go around collecting statistics though it would have been easy to collect statistics because of the proximity of the people crowded within a small area. However, I observed carefully and was overwhelmed by the wasting away of the children.

"Newborn babies are sent to the camp conditions, which are unsuitable for adults, just few days after being born. Toddlers play in the filthy area right in front of the toilets. I have never seen flies and mosquitoes in such numbers in my life. While eating, one hand is fully occupied with chasing the flies; a practice that children will not adopt thus consuming food contaminated by flies that come straight from the toilets very nearby. Children of well off families who appeared well cared for on arrival at the camp were visibly wasting away during the stay in the camp. The contributory factors were poor diet, the hostile weather, and continuous illness.

"Majority of the children including infants did not have milk (powder) except an occasional packet handed out by some charity. Once a father of a seven month old baby came begging for some sugar to put in the plain tea (black tea) to be given to his seven month old baby because the mother did not have enough breast milk and the baby was hungry. Plain tea had become the regular diet for this baby.

"The diet was most definitely inadequate for the children despite some nutritional supplement that were distributed. There was no milk, meat or vegetable in their diet. Sometimes soya bean was given but they were of rotten quality and children would hardly eat them.

"Illness among children was pandemic and it wasted them. Small injuries became infected and caused problems. Vomiting, fever or diarrhea seemed a natural condition in most children. Measures of malnutrition maybe a standard way of measuring worst affected children but it does not capture the general condition of children wasting away. When a child runs a fever most parents worry a lot fearing Hepatitis-A infection.

"The queues are very long at the OPD clinics inside the camp and the doctors work at break neck speed. I have seen a doctor writing a prescription to a 12 year old boy without finding out what is wrong with the boy. The medicines that are dispensed are arranged in a table and the total list of medicines consists of around 30 different medicines. The medicine dispensers too work with breakneck speed in dispensing them. Once an educated mother told me that she visited the doctor for treatment for her baby as well as for herself. The medicine dispensers mixed up the medicines and gave the baby what should have been given to the mother. Since the mother had some awareness of the medications she spotted it. Most mothers in the camp who do not have such awareness would have given the adult medicine to the baby. God only knows how many babies, children and even adults died due such medical negligence. Who is there in the camp to watch, monitor and investigate? Deaths are just that, deaths and no investigations are done as to the cause of it.

"Patients often queue up for doctors for hours even before the doctors arrive from outside. No one in the OPD clinic will know when the doctors are likely to arrive. One just waits around taking one’s chances. For all this the level of sickness among inmates is far higher than among the population at large and it is obvious.

"Take the eight tent group where I was staying. Five of the tents out of the eight had children under 10. One child died; one became seriously ill and taken away to Vavuniya hospital and all the other children had frequent fever, vomiting and diarrhoea. The children were wasting away and it was visibly obvious. Some of the children had persistent skin disease despite several visits to the doctors and treatment. Four of the children contracted HepatitisA and the parents were told by the doctors to just take good care of them and give lots of fruits because the hospitals had no medicine. Fruits were very expensive in the camp. There is a native treatment for HepatitisA involving a plant named “Keelkainelli” in Tamil. Even to get this plant was a struggle because it meant someone has to bring it from outside and handover to the inmates at the meeting spot as described later.

"People young and old suddenly dying after a few days of fever is a common occurrence. All of us were left puzzled as to the cause and no one gave any explanation. All of us without exception have suffered diarrhoea at least once and most of us many times.

"I used to keep telling myself during the stay in the camp how lucky I was that I do not have any young children under my care. The unhygienic living, especially the play area and the continuous illness is an ordeal for the young mothers. Even thinking about the condition of newborns and their mothers who are sent back to the camp conditions soon after birth is an ordeal. Perhaps the most telling scenes of the camp conditions and the health service can be found by visiting the OPD clinics and observing young mothers with very sick babies waiting for long time in queues with tears trickling down their face.

"Children went to makeshift schools staffed by teachers who were also interned in the camp. Many teachers have lamented how they can teach while living under such conditions. The school is made up of sheds with uneven floor covered with tarpaulin. The children cannot even place their books on the uneven floor to write. They have to keep the soft cover books on their knees to write.

"Most of the young children have to carry very heavy buckets of water to assist their parents who are also struggling to care for the children often as a single parent. The little bodies bent like a question mark under the weight surely would have done permanent damage.

"If we can tolerate the incarceration of the entire population of young children from a community which is clearly leading to long term damage to their development, how does this measure up in any of the international humanitarian/human rights laws? Can the long term damage done to them be measured and judged?"

Finally, a song for the children in the concentration camps:



- Peter Schalk