Devaneya Pavanar

Devaneya Pavanar

மொழி ஞாயிறு ஞா. தேவநேயப் பாவாணர்
"Sun of Language, Ña. Tevaneyan Pavanar"
Born (1902-02-07)7 February 1902
Sankaranayinarkoil or Sankarankovil
Died 15 January 1981(1981-01-15) (aged 78)
Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India
Occupation Author, Tamil Activist, Etymologist

Devaneya Pavanar (ஞா. தேவநேயப் பாவாணர்; Ñānamuttaṉ Tēvanēya Pāvāṇar; also known as G. Devaneyan, Ñanamuttan Tevaneyan; lived 1902–1981) was a prominent Indian Tamil author who wrote over 35 books. Additionally, he was a staunch proponent of the "Pure Tamil movement" and initiated the Etymological Dictionary Project primarily to bring out the roots of Tamil words and their connections and ramifications.

In his 1966 Primary Classical language of the World, he argues that the Tamil language is the "most natural" (iyal-moḻi) and also a proto-world language, being the oldest (tol-moḻi) language of the world, from which all other major languages of the world are derived. He believed that its literature, later called Sangam literature and usually considered to have been written from 200 BCE and 300 CE, spanned a huge period from 10,000 to 5,500 BCE.[1] These datings gain popularity by journalists such as in Graham Hancock's book Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization. His above ideas are fringe ones and mainstream linguists, geologists and historians do not acknowledge them to be true.

Devaneya Pavanar composed many musical pieces (Isaik kalambakam) and many noteworthy poems, including the collection of Venpa. The title Senthamiḻ Selvar was conferred on him by the Tamil Nadu State Government in 1979, and he was also addressed as Moḻi Ñayiru (மொழி ஞாயிறு) "Sun of language".[2]

Biography

Gnanamuthu Devaneyan Pavanar was born on 7 February 1902 in Sankaranayinarkoil or (Sankarankovil),Tamil Nadu to his parents Thiru.Gnanamuthu Devendrar and Paripuranam Ammaiyar. He was educated in the C.M.J. High School, Palayamkottai, S.S.L.C. (1916–1918) and trained as a teacher in Madras University. He married in 1930 and had four sons and one daughter, the daughter being the fourth child.

He worked as a Tamil teacher in several High Schools, 1922–1944. During this time, he pursued autodidactic studies of Dravidian philology and comparative linguistics.

He was Tamil professor at Municipal College, Salem, 1944–1956. From 1956–1961, he was the head of Dravidian department at Annamalai University.[3] He was a member of the Tamil Development and Research Council, set up by the Nehru government in 1959, entrusted with producing Tamil school and college textbooks. From 1974, he was director of the Tamil Etymological Project, and he acted as president of the International Tamil League, Tamil Nadu. (U. Tha. Ka.)

Devaneya Pavanar studied his elementary education in Murumbu and worked as a First Teacher also in Murumbu under the control of Young Durai. Devaneya Pavanar's life size statue, research library, centunary arch, reading room is located in Murumbu, near Sankarankovil, Tamil Nadu.

The Chennai District Central Library is named after Devanaya Pavanar and is located at Anna Salai, Chennai.

Views on Tamil versus Sanskrit

"Lemuria" according to Pavanar, connecting Madagascar, South India and Australia (covering most of the Indian Ocean). Mount Meru stretches southwards from Sri Lanka.

Pavanar's Vadamoli Varalaru argues that hundreds of Sanskrit words can be traced to a Tamil origin, and at the same time he insisted that pure Tamil equivalents existed for Sanskrit loan words. He claimed that Tamil is a "superior and more divine" language than Sanskrit. In his view the Tamil language originated in "Lemuria" (இலெமூரியா Ilemūriyā), the cradle of civilisation and place of origin of language. He believed that evidence of Tamil's antiquity was being suppressed by Sanskritists.

Pavanar's timeline for the evolution of mankind and Tamil is as follows:

In the preface to his 1966 book The Primary Classical Language of the World he wrote:

There is no other language in the whole world as Tamil, that has suffered so much damage by natural and human agencies, and has been done so much injustice by malignant foreigners and native dupes.

The general belief that all arts and sciences are progressively advancing with the passage of time, is falsified in the case of philology, owing to the fundamental blunder of locating the original home of the Tamilians in the Mediterranean region, and taking Sanskrit, a post-Vedic semi-artificial composite literary dialect, the Indian Esperanto, so to speak, for the prototype of the Indo-European Form of Speech.

Westerners do not know as yet, that Tamil is a highly developed classical language of Lemurian origin, and has been, and is being still, suppressed by a systematic and co-ordinated effort by the Sanskritists both in the public and private sectors, ever since the Vedic mendicants migrated to the South, and taking utmost advantage of their superior complexion and the primitive credulity of the ancient Tamil kings, posed themselves as earthly gods (Bhu-suras) and deluded the Tamilians into the belief, that their ancestral language or literary dialect was divine or celestial in origin.

In a chapter entitled Tamil more divine than Sanskrit, Pavanar gives the reasons why he judges Tamil to be "more divine" than Sanskrit, arguing for "Primary Classicality of Tamil", he enumerates:

Tamil Language Sanskrit Language
Primitive and original. Derivative.
Spoken and living language. Semi-artificial literary dialect.
Scriptural studies exoteric. Scriptural studies esoteric.
Inculcation of cosmopolitanism. Division of society into numerous castes on the basis of birth and parentage.
Admission of all to asceticism.
Holding higher education common to all.
Encouragement of gifts to all the poor and needy. Enjoinment on the donors to give only to the Sanskritists.
Love of truth. Love of imposture and plagiarism.
Laying of emphasis on love, as means of attaining eternal bliss. Laying of emphasis on knowledge, as means of attaining union with the universal soul.
Having monotheistic Saivism and Vaisnavism as religions. Having a system of sacrifices to minor deities as religion.
Literary description natural. Literary description imaginary.

Reception

Pavanar was considered by his followers to be a groundbreaking scholar in Dravidology with political leanings towards Dravidian nationalism. He does figure in works on language activism and national mysticism (Ramaswamy 1997, 2004) and of Indian nationalism (Kaiwar et al. 2003).

The Cultural Heritage of India; vol. V: Languages and literature, p. 641 (ed. Chatterji, The Ramakrishna Mission, Institute of Culture, 1978) states that "but for his (Pavanar's) efforts the purity and antiquity of Tamil might have been a myth."

Publishing history

The Central Plan Scheme for Classical Tamil of the Centre of Excellence for Classical Tamil[5] recommends

"To publish the translated but not yet published Sattambi Swamigal's Adhibhasa which seeks to establish that Tamil is the most ancient language. When published, it will provide an impetus to Pavanar's findings"

The literary works and books of Pavanar have been "nationalised" by the Government of Tamil Nadu in the course of the "Golden Jubilee year of National Independence" (2006). This means that the copyright for Pavanar's work is now owned by the state of Tamil Nadu, his legal heirs having been compensated financially.[6][7] Pavanar Trust's website has the full texts of a number of Pavanar's books in PDF.[8]

Thamizh Mozhi Kaavalar G. Elavazhagan of Tamilman Patippakam has brought out all the works of Pavanar for his centenary celebrations, 2000–2001.

Awards and honours

Bibliography

English
Tamil

posthumously:

See also

References

  1. ↑ Historical Heritage of the Tamils By Ka. Ta. Tirunāvukkaracu, Ca. Vē. Cuppiramaṇiyan̲, International Institute of Tamil Studies (1983), p. 178
  2. 1 2 Tamil Nadu Government press release
  3. ↑ PRudrayya Chandrayya Hiremath, Jayavant S. Kulli, "Proceedings of the Third All India Conference of Dravidian Linguists", 1973
  4. ↑ a term of Edgar Thurston's: see Ajay Skaria, Shades of Wildness Tribe, Caste, and Gender in Western India, The Journal of Asian Studies (1997), p. 730.
  5. ↑ a body of the Central Institute of Indian Languages, Department of Higher Education, Language Bureau, Ministry of Human Resource Development (under Arjun Singh, Government of India; First National Consultative Meeting (November 18 & 19, 2005)
  6. ↑ CM presented consideration amounts for the Nationalised books at Secretariat, Tamil Nadu, India
  7. 1 2 Directorate of Tamil Development, Government of Tamil Nadu
  8. ↑ Pavanar Books, Pavanar Trust website
  9. 1 2 3 Dr.Mozhignayiru Devaneyap Pavanar
  10. ↑ The Hindu, 19 February 2006, Indiapost

External links

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