Page:Tamil studies.djvu/367



The home-speech of about seven millions of people in Southern India is Malayalam. It is at present an important language of the Dravidian family; and yet, the exact relationship which it bears to the other members of that family is a subject of some hot discussion among the Dravidian scholars. The solution of this problem is not an easy matter. Unless one has made an historical study of the Tamil and Malayalam languages his conclusion must remain for ever vague and indecisive. Some scholars believe it to be a sister of Tamil like 'Telugu or Kanarese, others regard it as a highly developed dialect of old Tamil, while a few Indian scholars of Malabar are prone to think that it is a dialect of Sanskrit and that it had nothing to do with Tamil from its very origin. The last seems an extreme view prompted by a false sense of patriotism ; and the subject is interesting and important enough to deserve an examination at some length.