The present study is an attempt to find out pre Tamil Malayalam form of Phonological, Morphological and Lexical elements attested in early middle Malayalam which is represented by the following literary works (i) Ramacaritam (c. 1300-1325 AD) (ii) Kannassaramayanam (c. 1400 AD) and (iii) Krsnagatha (c. 1400-1450 A.D.). Malayalam language of this period is worthy to note due to heavy borrowings from Sanskrit. As the present study aims to bring out the pre-Tamil Malayalam features, treatment on Sanskrit is waived here.
Data for the present study is collected from the Ph.D. dissertations of P.Gopalakrishnan Nair, Puthusseri Ramchandran and V.R. Prabodhachandran Nayar. (Vide Grammar of Ramacaritam' (1978), Descriptive Grammar of Kannassaramayanam (1971), Description of the language of Krsnagatha (1965) respectively). Phonological and Morphological rules found in the above dissertations were relied upon for suggesting the pre-Tamil Malayalam forms. Principles of linguistic reconstruction were followed as far as possible in this study. Comparative Dravidian vocabulary does not contain proto Dravidian reconstructions. The object of this vocabulary is to provide material for proto- Dravidian reconstructions.
My thanks are due to late Dr. V.I. Subramoniam, Hon. Director, ISDL for offering me a senior fellowship during 2006-2007 academic year and travel expenses for visiting ISDL Library after the tenure of that fellowship. I am also grateful to him for giving me valuable suggestions and proper guidance during the course of this research. I feel a deep sense of gratitude to Dr. B. Gopinathan Nair, the then Hon. Director, ISDL for his valuable guidance and help. I also thank Prof. Rama, the Director of ISDL for taking necessary steps for the publication of this work. My thanks are due to the members of the Council of Directors ISDL for giving me all encouragements.
The present work Early Middle Malayalam is a product of the research work done by Prof. Naduvattom Gopalakrishnan during 2006-2007. It is an attempt to reconstruct the Malayam language of the early period of its development. The data collected for the same are from written texts of ancient periods such as Kannassa Ramayanam, Krisnagatha etc. I thank Dr. S. Kunjamma for going through the manuscript and recommending the work for publication. This work I hope will be useful for the researchers of both Malayalam and Tamil.
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