Menu
Home Explore People Places Arts History Plants & Animals Science Life & Culture Technology
On this page
Extended Tamil script

Extended-Tamil script or Tamil-Grantha refers to a script used to write the Tamil language before the 20th century Tamil purist movement. Tamil-Grantha is a mixed-script: a combination of the conservative-Tamil script that independently evolved from pre-Pallava script, combined with consonants imported from a later-stage evolved Grantha script (from Pallava-Grantha) to write non-Tamil consonants. Some scholars posit that the origin of Tamil-Grantha is unclear: the script could also be a direct descendant of the Pallava-Grantha script which extensively developed during the Middle Tamil period to write Middle-Tamil.

The Modern Tamil script is a subset of Tamil-Grantha alphabet, retaining only the 18 consonants taken from Tolkāppiyam-based Old Tamil which generally was written using Vatteluttu script. Tamil-Grantha has 36 consonants, hence covering all Indic consonants like Malayalam script. However, the Modern-Tamil standard allowed a few additional consonants from Grantha into its alphabet: ஜ (ja), ஷ (ṣa), ஸ (sa), ஹ (ha). But their usage is discouraged by Tamil purists and recommend to assimilate the sounds to approximate pure-Tamil phonology, respectively: ச (ca), ச (ca), ச (ca), க (ka). Another letter ஶ was also allowed in 2005 exclusively to write ஶ்ரீ (śrī); however purists enforce the usage of திரு (tiru) over ஶ்ரீ.

In terms of utility, the major difference between Modern-Tamil and Tamil-Grantha is that the former is a phonemic script (where voiced consonants are treated as allophones of the voiceless consonants, and no aspirated consonants), and the latter is a fully-phonetic script. Hence, if one were to write only pure-Tamil-derived words in their text, it is enough (and minimally efficient) to use the Modern-Tamil script. However if one were to include non-South-Dravidian words in their text, using the pure-Tamil script can cause errors in pronunciations since the phonemic-transcription rules of Tamil Grammar does not apply to such vocabularies. So depending on the domain of text (and number of loan words), writers used either the minimal-Tamil script or extended-Tamil script. To write or transliterate Sanskrit texts, the full Grantha script was used instead of Tamil-Grantha.

We don't have any images related to Extended Tamil script yet.
We don't have any YouTube videos related to Extended Tamil script yet.
We don't have any PDF documents related to Extended Tamil script yet.
We don't have any Books related to Extended Tamil script yet.
We don't have any archived web articles related to Extended Tamil script yet.

History

The Independent Tamil Movement of the colonial era purged Grantha characters from use (calling "Grantha" an Aryan "pollution" of Tamil) and with support from Dravidian parties, mandated to exclusively use the reformed minimal-Tamil script.6 They also successfully "cleaned" Tamil textbooks by replacing Indo-Aryan vocabulary with pure-Tamil words, especially Sanskritic/Prakritic words that entered via Middle-Tamil; hence making Grantha characters almost useless in modern formal-Tamil.7 According to Kailasapathy, this was a part of Dravidian nationalism and amounted to regional ethnic chauvinism.8

Although the predominant amount of classical Tamil literature is written in Middle Tamil, Tamil purists regard only Old Tamil as the authentic source for Tamil grammar and literature. Based on vocabulary, Tamil is classified into two registers: செந்தமிழ் (centamiḻ) meaning 'good' (or 'pure') Tamil and கொடுந்தமிழ் (koṭuntamiḻ) meaning 'horrible' (or 'corrupt') Tamil. Purists classify Middle Tamil as belonging to the latter class, thereby enabling the Dravidian movement to call Tamil-Grantha as impure.

Hence in the present day, only a few religious texts have the inclination to choose Tamil-Grantha; all other domains have adapted to Modern-Tamil.

Digital usage

Since Modern-Tamil unicode does not support all the missing consonants from Extended-Tamil, generally it is not possible to digitally encode it easily. It is possible to use fonts like Lopamudra and Agastya on top of Malayalam text to render it like Extended-Tamil. Or one can also use modified fonts that support rendering Grantha Unicode.

There were proposals to reunify Grantha into Modern-Tamil Unicode;910 however, the proposal triggered discontent by some.1112 Considering the sensitivity involved and rejection13 of the proposal by the Tamil Nadu government, it was determined by the Indian government that the two scripts should not be unified, except numerals14 and a separate Unicode block was allocated to Grantha.

Computing resources

Non-Indic consonants

Tamil script can also be extended with ஃ (ஆய்த எழுத்து, āyda eḻuttu, equivalent to nuqta) to represent phonemes of foreign languages, especially used to write Islamic and Christian texts.

Adapted-TamilLatinPerso-ArabicDevanagari
ஃஜzaزज़
ஃகqaقक़
ஃபfaفफ़
ஃவwaو15व़
ஃஷzha16ژझ़
ஃஸSa or 9صस़
ஃக்ஹkhaخख़
ஃஹHa or 7حह़
ஃதTa or 6طत़

See also

Notes

Works cited

  • Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju (2003). The Dravidian Languages. Cambridge Language Surveys. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-77111-5.
  • Mahadevan, Iravatham (2003), Early Tamil Epigraphy from the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D, Harvard Oriental Series, vol. 62, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, ISBN 978-0-674-01227-1
  • Meenakshisundaran, T.P. (1965), A History of Tamil Language, Poona: Deccan College
  • Ramaswamy, Sumathy (1997). Passions of the Tongue: Language Devotion in Tamil India, 1891–1970. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-585-10600-7.

References

  1. Kailasapathy, K. (1979). "The Tamil Purist Movement: A Re-Evaluation". Social Scientist. 7 (10): 23–51. doi:10.2307/3516775. ISSN 0970-0293. JSTOR 3516775. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3516775

  2. Meenakshisundaran 1965, pp. 145–146 - Meenakshisundaran, T.P. (1965), A History of Tamil Language, Poona: Deccan College

  3. Mahadevan 2003, pp. 208–213 - Mahadevan, Iravatham (2003), Early Tamil Epigraphy from the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D, Harvard Oriental Series, vol. 62, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, ISBN 978-0-674-01227-1

  4. "Extended Tamil font". Retrieved 2021-07-03. http://www.virtualvinodh.com/projects/agastya

  5. "The two ways to represent Tamil Shri". Unicode. Retrieved 11 December 2021. https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2018/18054-tamil-shri.txt

  6. Ramaswamy 1997 - Ramaswamy, Sumathy (1997). Passions of the Tongue: Language Devotion in Tamil India, 1891–1970. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-585-10600-7. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft5199n9v7/

  7. Krishnamurti 2003, p. 480 - Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju (2003). The Dravidian Languages. Cambridge Language Surveys. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-77111-5.

  8. Kailasapathy, K. (1979). "The Tamil Purist Movement: A Re-Evaluation". Social Scientist. 7 (10): 23–51. doi:10.2307/3516775. ISSN 0970-0293. JSTOR 3516775. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3516775

  9. Sharma, Shriramana. (2010a). Proposal to encode characters for Extended Tamil. https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2010/10256r-extended-tamil.pdf

  10. Sharma, Shriramana. (2010b). Follow-up to Extended Tamil proposal L2/10-256R. http://unicode.org/L2/L2010/10379--extended-tamil.pdf

  11. Eraiyarasan, B. (2011). Dr. B.Eraiyarasan’s comments on Tamil Unicode And Grantham proposals. https://unicode.org/L2/L2011/11055-tamil-grantha.pdf

  12. "Attempts to Pollute Tamil Unicode with Grantha Characters". 2020-03-06. Archived from the original on 2020-03-06. Retrieved 2024-08-22. https://web.archive.org/web/20200306030655/http://www.tamiltribune.com/18/1201.html

  13. Tamil Nadu government (2010) Rejection reason. https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2010/10464-tamil-nadu.pdf

  14. Government of India (2010). Unicode Standard for Grantha Script. https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2010/10409-grantha-meeting-sum.pdf

  15. Pronounced as /v/ or /w/ based on context of letter

  16. Not to be confused with Tamil ழ ( [ɻ] / ḻ ) /wiki/Help:IPA/Tamil