Eelam

For other uses, see Ilam (disambiguation).
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Eelam (Tamil: ஈழம், īḻam, also transcribed as Eezham, Ilam or Izham) is the native Tamil name for the South Asian island of Sri Lanka (Ceylon).[1]

Since the 1980s the words Eelam and Eelavar have been taken up by the Sri Lankan Tamil irredentist movement. In this usage, Eelam refers to Tamil Eelam, an area corresponding to the former Jaffna Kingdom. Eelavar refers to the inhabitants of Tamil Eelam.[2]

Eelam is also a name for the spurge (a plant), toddy (an intoxicant) and gold.[3]

Early attestations

The earliest use of the word is found in a Tamil-Brahmi inscription as well as in the Sangam literature. The Tirupparankunram inscription found near Madurai in Tamil Nadu and dated on palaeographical grounds to the 1st century BCE, refers to a person as Eela-kudumpikan, interpreted as "householder from Eelam".[4] The inscription reads,

erukatur eelakutumpikan polalaiyan "Polalaiyan, (resident of) Erukatur, the husbandman (householder) from Eelam." .[2]

The Paṭṭiṉappālai mentions Eelattu-unavu ("food from Eelam"). One of the prominent Sangam Tamil poets is known as Īḻattup pūtaṉtēvaṉār "Pūtaṉtēvaṉār of Eelam".[5] The Tamil inscriptions from the Pallava & Chola period dating from 9th century CE link the word with toddy, toddy tapper's quarters (Eelat-cheri), tax on toddy tapping (Eelap-poodchi), a class of toddy tappers (Eelath-chanran). Eelavar is a caste of toddy tappers found in the southern parts of Kerala. The Tamil lexicons Thivaakaram, Pingkalam and Choodaamani, dating from c. 8th century CE, equate the word with the Sinhala language and with gold. Eela-kaasu and Eela-karung-kaasu are found in inscriptions on medieval coinage of Tamil Nadu.[4] Eela and Eelavar are etymologically related to Eelam. The stem Eela is found in Prakrit inscriptions dated to 2nd century BCE in Sri Lanka in terms such as Eela-Barata and Eela-Naga, proper names. The meaning of Eela in these inscriptions is unknown although one could deduce that they are either from Eela, a geographic location, or were an ethnic group known as Eela.[4][6]

The word Eelavar in South Indian medieval inscriptions refer to the caste or function of toddy-drawers, drawn from the Dravidian word for palm tree toddy, Eelam.[2]

Etymology

The etymology and the original meaning of the word are not clearly known, and there are number of conflicting theories.

Sihala

Late 19th century linguists took the view that the name Eelam was derived from the Pali (An Indo-Aryan language) form Sihala (itself derived from Sanskrit Simhala) for Sri Lanka. Robert Caldwell, following Hermann Gundert, cites the word as an example of the omission of initial sibilants in the adoption of Indo-Aryan words into Dravidian languages.[7] The University of Madras Tamil Lexicon, compiled between 1924 and 1936, follows this view.[3]

According to Peter Schalk, a professor of theology from University of Uppsala who has done studies on Sri Lankan Tamils and their culture, Caldwell and the Madras Tamil lexicon were wrong in deriving Eelam from Sihala. He concludes that Eelam is attested well before Sihala in India and Sri Lanka, in inscriptions and literature in the 1st century BCE. Whereas Sihala is attested for the first time in present-day Andhra Pradesh to refer to a vihara meant for Buddhist monks from Sri Lanka in the third century. He further concludes that it is a word used exclusively for toddy beginning from the common era up until the medieval period.[2]

Toddy palm

Thomas Burrow, in contrast, argued that the word was likely to have been Dravidian in origin, on the basis that Tamil and Malayalam "hardly ever substitute (Retroflex approximant) l peculiarly Dravidian sound, for Sanskrit -'l'-." He suggests that the name originates as the Dravidian word for "toddy" (palm wine) or "toddy palm".

Burrow further suggests that this word may have been the source for the Pali Sihala.[8] The Dravidian Etymological Dictionary, which was jointly edited by Thomas Burrow and Murray Barnson Emeneau, marks the Indo-Aryan etymology with a question mark.[9]

Indrapala (2007) claims that Eela, the stem of Eelam, is attested in Sri Lanka before the Common Era as a name of an ethnic group and eventually it came to be applied to the island as Eelam, and that it was the name of the island that was applied to the coconut trees rather than vice versa. He also believes the early native names for the present Sinhalese ethnic group such as Hela is a derivation of Eela that it was Prakritized as Sihala and eventually Sanskritized as Simhala in the 5th century CE.[6]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Krishnamurti 2003, p. 19
  2. 1 2 3 4 Schalk, Peter. "Robert Caldwell's Derivation īlam < sīhala: A Critical Assessment". In Chevillard, Jean-Luc. South-Indian Horizons: Felicitation Volume for François Gros on the occasion of his 70th birthday. Pondichéry: Institut Français de Pondichéry. pp. 347–364. ISBN 2-85539-630-1. delete character in |contribution= at position 35 (help).
  3. 1 2 University of Madras (1924–36). "Tamil lexicon". Madras: University of Madras. (Online edition at the University of Chicago)
  4. 1 2 3 Akazhaan. "Eezham Thamizh and Tamil Eelam: Understanding the terminologies of identity". Tamilnet. Retrieved 2008-10-02.
  5. ↑ Akanaṉūṟu: 88, 231, 307; Kuṟuntokai: 189, 360, 343; Naṟṟiṇai: 88, 366
  6. 1 2 Indrapala, Karthigesu (2007). The evolution of an ethnic identity: The Tamils in Sri Lanka C. 300 BCE to C. 1200 CE. Colombo: Vijitha Yapa. ISBN 978-955-1266-72-1.p. 313
  7. ↑ Caldwell, Robert (1875). "A comparative grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages". London: Trübner & Co., pt. 2 p. 86.
  8. ↑ Burrow, Thomas (1947). "Dravidian Studies VI — The loss of initial c/s in South Dravidian". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (Cambridge University Press) 12 (1): 132–147. doi:10.1017/s0041977x00079969. JSTOR 608991. at p. 133
  9. ↑ "A Dravidian Etymological Dictionary" (2nd ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1984. |first1= missing |last1= in Editors list (help); |first2= missing |last2= in Editors list (help) (Online edition at the University of Chicago)

External links

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