Title of this article might surprise many, one would think what might be the relationship between a south Indian language Tulu and that a language named Brahui.
As we all know Tulu is an ancient language spoken mainly in Tulunad region spread across the state of Karnataka and Kerala. The language has it’s own script with rich oral and written traditions. Earliest available inscription of Tulu language and script is dated back to 10th century(A.D 980), after that we have seen consistent effort by local chieftains to publish many inscriptions in Tulu language. Tulu has close association with it’s sister languages of Dravidian branch. According to the linguists Tulu has separated from it’s parent language at very early stage and isolated in the region bordering Western ghat and Arabian sea, this is evident by the fact that Tulu still retains many features of the proto-dravidian language and least affected by the influence of other languages. Robert Caldwell in his pioneered work regarding the comparative study of Dravidian languages quoted that “Tulu is one of the most highly developed languages of the Dravidian family”.
Dravidian languages are not just limited to the Southern India. There are many groups of people who speak Dravidian languages are situated in the parts away from current Dravidian homeland. One such language is Brahui.
Brahui is spoken primarily in the central part of Balochistan province in Pakistan. Linguists have identified it to be belonging to the northern branch of the Dravidian language family.
There are many articles comparing the Brahui with Tamil/Kannada/Telugu.Number of books have been written on comparative study of various Dravidian languages with Brahui. But one could find no article written on the Tulu-Brahui relationship. In this article I have hinted some of the possible relationship between Tulu and Brahui through some closely related words. some extensive study is needed in this area to understand the significant relationship between these languages. If one consider the number system of Brahui only Two-irat ( radd/Tulu, eradu/Kannada) and Three-musi/musit( mūji/Tulu, mūru/kannada, mūn/Tamil) are of Dravidian origin, rest of the numbers seems to be a borrowing from Indo-Aryan languages. Due to it’s isolation from other languages of same family, it has lost most of its original words and as per the linguists it has retained only 15% of Dravidian rooted words. It’s grammar and structure too are greatly influenced by Indo-Aryan languages surrounding it.
English | Brahui | Tulu |
Two | Iraṭ | Iraḍḍ/raḍḍ |
Three | Musi | Mūji |
Eye | Xan | kaṇṇ |
Scorpion | Tels | Tēḷ |
Crow | Khakho | Kakkè |
Big | Balla | Malla |
Say | Pan | Paṇ |
He | æy | Āye |
Today | æhno | Ini |
How much? | āth? | ēth? |
Who | Dhēr | Yēr |
Come | Barr | Bala |
Cat | pishy | Puccè |
Worm | Pu | Puri |
Bridge | Pāl | Pāla/pāmpu |
Collapse | Burring | Būru |
Demolish | Darefing | Darpu |
Snoring | Kurukkav | Koreppu |
Grass | Puttar | Pajir |
You | Nī | ī |
Wood | Pal | Palāyi |
Milk | pālh | Pēr |
As listed above one could see many similar words between Tulu and Brahui, even retention of ‘pa’ sound is significant in both of these languages. This gives light to entirely a new set of observations. Linguists have compared Brahui with many prominent languages of south India, now if they concentrate on comparing Brahui with Tulu they might find many missing links and it will be a hot topic for linguistic researchers to explore.
Tulu is one such language always missed from the arena of linguistic spectra and with many hidden secrets within it. Misconception of Tulu being a non-independent language is widespread even though scholars have clearly rejected any such claim and also identified Tulu to be one of the ancient languages with a history of more than 2000 years.
This article was intended to provide the glimpse and explore the possibility of having a link between Tulu-Brahui. I sincerely wish someone take up this as a reference and do more research on the relationship between Tulu and Brahui language.