custom has gradually established in the countries where they are spoken. The languages of the south of India, i. e. the Telinga, Karnatic, Tamil, Malayala, and Cingalese, while they have the same origin with those of the north, differ greatly from them in other respects: and especially in having a large proportion of words, the origin of which is unascertained.”—To this testimony Dr. Wilkins adds the weight of his authority, when he says in the preface to his Grammar of the Sanscrit—“the Tamil, the Telugu, the Carnatic, the Malabar, together with that” (the idiom) “of the Marratta states and of Gujarat so abound with Sanscrit, that scarcely a sentence can be expressed in either of them without its assistance.” Mr. Colebrooke, also, in his dissertation on the Sanscrit and Pracrit languages in the 7th Volume of the Asiatick Researches, though he has not given so decided an opinion, yet, by including these under the general term Pracrit, appropriate only to dialects of Sanscrit derivation and construction, and by the tendency of his remarks, appears to favor the received notion of their origin; he states indeed in express terms that the Tamil (which word he writes Támla, deducing it from Támraparnà, the Sanscrit name of the river of Tirunelvéli) is written in a character which is greatly corrupted from the present Dévanágari, and that both the “Carnata” and “Telingana” characters are from the same source. In arrangement the two latter, which are nearly the same, certainly follow the Nágari, but in the form of the letters, mode of combination, and other particulars, there is no resemblance; and the Tamil is totally different, rejecting all aspirates, and having many sounds which cannot be expressed by any alphabet in which the Sanscrit is written.
It is the intent of the following observations to shew that the statements contained in the preceding quotations are not correct; that neither the Tamil, the Telugu, nor any of their cognate dialects are derivations from the Sanscrit; that the latter, however it may contribute to their polish, is not necessary for their existence; and that they form a distinct family of languages, with which the Sanscrit has, in latter times especially, intermixed, but with which it has no radical connexion.
