Table Of Content

TAMIL CIVILIZATION N.Nandhivarman General Secretary Dravida Peravai India 1 Title ID: 3485186 ISBN: 1453831339 EAN-13: 9781453831335 Price: $ 20.00 Publisher: Aringnar Anna Foundation 53-B, Calve Subburayar Street Pondicherry 605001, India www.dravidaperavai.org.in 2 Content: Research papers: 1. Is Indus Valley the cradle or catacomb of Dravidian Civilization? 007 Paper presented at the National Seminar on The Indus Valley : A Review of Recent Research organized by the Pondicherry Institute of Linguistics and Culture on 28.9.2003 at the Chief Secretariat Conference Hall and inaugurated by the Pondicherry Education Minister K.Lakshminarayanan and Presided by Dr.Pa.Maruthanayagam, Director of Pondicherry Institute of Linguistics and Culture. 2. Nagas are Dravidians 026 [This article was written to be published in a book planned by e-magazine Voice of Voiceless which appeared in Canada. Neither the book got published nor does the e-magazine survive today] 3. The Enviro-History of Pondicherry 046 Paper presented by: N. NANDHIVARMAN, General Secretary DRAVIDAPERAVAI in the Seminar organized by Pondicherry Institute of Linguistics and Culture on 30th January 2000. 4. Saving Tamilnadu Coast 057 5. Historical Atlas of South India 061 6. Arikamedu: Cradle of Crafts and Its exports 065 7. Toponymical probe tracing oneness of humanity 069 8. Universal Festival of Harvest 073 3 9. Pandya-Chozha-Chera History 076 10. Tamil music through ages 084 11. Pallava Iconology: A Study 087 12. A Fort with 1000 year History 091 13. Gingee Fort: Story of Valour 095 14. The Dutch connections 100 15. Tamils of Re-Union and their hybrid culture 103 16. Stone Inscriptions Speak 108 17. Marching ahead in Tamil computing 111 18. Narayana Guru and Tamil soil 115 19. Singapore surges Ahead 118 20. Tamil-French Literary Connections 123 21. The greatest Bard Bharathiar 127 22. Mother tongue as Medium of Instruction 132 23. Citadel of Saiva Sidhantha and Ceylonese Scholars 136 24. A Journey in Rhythm 140 25. Nethaji’s Vietnamese Connections 144 26. Mayyazhi: The French Colony 148 4 27. Mount Mohsin or Everest? 151 28. Colonization-De-colonization-Re- Colonization 154 NATIONAL SEMINAR ON INDIA AND FRANCE-PAST-PRESENT AND FUTURE organized by Centre for Nehru Studies School of International Studies Pondicherry University and sponsored by Government of Pondicherry and Indian Council for Historical Research New Delhi held on 26-28 October 2004 29. Coolie from French India 177 30. Romain Rolland Library: 177 years 181 31. National Archives 185 32. Mystics & Men of Medicine 188 33. Chevalier MadanaKalyani 191 34. Log in, be prepared 194 35. To preserve Villupaattu 198 36. Drama on extinction route 201 37. Pleasant blend of painting & dance 203 38. New Musical Instrument 206 39. Earth quakes, continental drifts 209 40. Slice of Paris 215 41. Dance of Kaali 213 42. Man of Letters: Gnanou Diagou 218 5 43. Language Labour 225 44. Wales Connection 227 45. Lessons from London 232 46. Pope and People’s hope 234 47. Hygenic Fish Markets 237 48. Poongodi Parangusam 240 49. Dancing Peacock of Swiss 243 50. Priyan’s Paintings 248 6 In the Threshold……… Dedicating to the memory of my mentor Aringnar Anna…. Thanking the Management of New Indian Express, leading Indian English daily which allowed me to write for 52 weeks in the Pondicherry Edition of its Week End pages, I have attempted to compile these articles on Tamil culture, history, literature, music, and personalities in the field of arts. All these articles came to public light through New Indian Express. The Pondicherry Government organization Puducherry Institute of Linguistics and Culture organized a National Seminar on Indus Valley Civilization, and my paper which appeared in the PILC Journal of Dravidic Studies, is also in this book. The paper on Nagaland meant for a book planned by Voice of Voiceless e-magazine of Canada, but did not see the print too finds place here. Hope that readers will have a bird’s eye view on Tamil culture and civilization…… N.Nandhivarman General Secretary Dravida Peravai 7 IS INDUS VALLEY THE CRADLE OR CATACOMB OF DRAVIDIAN CIVILIZATION? Nandhivarman General Secretary Dravida Peravai Paper presented at the National Seminar on The Indus Valley : A Review of Recent Research organized by the Pondicherry Institute of Linguistics and Culture on 28.9.2003 at the Chief Secretariat Conference Hall and inaugurated by the Pondicherry Education Minister K.Lakshminarayanan and Presided by Dr.Pa.Maruthanayagam, Director of Pondicherry Institute of Linguistics and Culture. Humanity is engaged in an endless quest to unravel the mysteries of Nature. The origin of the human race, the original homeland of the first human being, the first civilization on earth, the birth of the language and its multiplicity and the puzzles of continental drifts, sea floor spreading, etc are some of the fields wherein new evidences are coming out every now and that which makes such a quest towards truth a must for proper construction of the history of the human race. The greatness of the Indus Valley Civilization and various clues that it provides to discover the first civilization on earth needs to be evaluated in the context of changing needs of our times, wherein claims and counter claims or even doctored claims are made to establish the Dravidian or the otherwise content of that civilization. In India Sir John Marshall deserves the credit to be the first scholar to suggest that the language of the Indus Valley civilization was Dravidian. Piero Meriggi in his book “ 8 Zur_Indus Scrift “ (which means On the Indus Script) written in the German language was of the opinion that Brahui, spoken even now in Baluchistan, is the Dravidian Language which must be the original language of the Harappans. Henry Heras in his book “Studies in Proto-Mediterranean Culture” turned more than 1800 Indus texts into Proto-Dravidian sentences. In their book “Proto-Indica: 1979,Report on the investigation of the proto-Indian texts by Yu.V.Knorozov, M.F.Ali Bedil and B.Ya.Volchok have carried out a computer analysis of sign distribution in the Indus texts and had proven beyond an iota of doubt that it belonged to the Dravidian language family. David W.McAlphin in his book “Proto-Elamo- Dravidian and F.C.Southward in his book “The Reconstruction of Prehistoric South Asia language contact” had successfully used the Dravidian roots to reconstruct the language of the Indus Valley. As Dr.Ira.Mathivanan had too proven that the Indus script is Dravidian, there is no necessity to question the collective wisdom of all these scholars, yet there are schools of thought, which want to deny the Dravidian roots of the Indus Valley civilization. Let me quote elaborately from Professor Irafan Habib, who puts up a strong case for the Dravidian family language. “The Dravidian languages constitute the second largest family in India. Tamil, Malayalam, and Kannada belong to the Southern group, Telugu (in Andhra) and Gondi (in widely scattered pockets of Madhya Pradesh) to the South Central, Kolami (in Maharashtra) to the Central, Kurukh (in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh 9