Sanskrit and Tamil -- Which one is older?

[rahul]

both Sanskrit and Tamil are almost contempory languages. In south India, Tamil and and in rest India, Sanskrit existed.Tamil widely spreaded in singapore, kambodia and other west asian countries.Sanskrit was mainly spreaded in rest india and in those places were todays nepal,afganistan exist.Also langauages like telugu, kananda, malayalam,bengali,hindi, all are derived from sanskrit. Also tamil, which is claimed to be purely different from Sanskrit, has comman words. Its mother of almost all the language in india except tamil.Even english and latin has comman words with sanskrit. Both of the language can 10,000 plus years old

[bhargavsai]

Sanskrit is the language of Vedas and Scriptures. But Tamil also is a great language and they have their own great literature. But there is something that is binding both Sanskrit and Tamil, and that is Sanatana Dharma. Sanatana Dharma binds both languages.

There are common beliefs, and common thought processes in both Tamil World and Sanskrit world, why? Because our Sanatana Dharma is just not limited to language, it is a path which encompasses and includes people of all languages and races. Therefore let us view our Sanatana Dharma separate from all worldly things like language, race etc etc. Let us compare it with only something Transcendental.

Pranams

[Sudarshan]

The question of ages comes into concern here and has always bugged me. According to the scriptures, the first Manvantara of Svayambhuva Manu is supposed to have existed almost 2 BILLION (solar) years ago! Is that even remotely true/possible? That human beings, quite advanced I might add, existed on earth almost 2 billion years ago? And they must have spoken Sanskrit because they had the Vedas etc. Any further speculation on this?

As some of my Tamil friends used to say, "Agastya codified Tamil in the morning and Sanskrit in the evening; thus Tamil is superior"! HAHAHAH.

Subham.

I think the concepts of these yugas are spiritual in nature and not periods of times. There is no arhaeological or genetic findings that demonstrate that mankind has lived on earth for more than 500,000 years. Advanced civilization is very new probably less than 6000 years old.

Both archeology and genetic engineering studies point to an 'out of Africa' theory. There is so much objective evidence to these findings and if anyone is interested these could be discussed on this forum ( subject to avail of time for me).

I have been a traditionalist for a long time but in the last few years my views have undergone a rapid transition and all my own understanding and research actually convince me that there is very little literal truth in the purANic accounts. The philosopher who rests in the armchair quoting from some unverifiable scripture is making tall claims against the painstaking research of many modern historians, archeologists, biologists who travel all over the world collecting fossils, specimens etc to provide objective evidence.

All languages are man made and that includes sanskrit too. Vedic Sanskrit is very similar to the language that was spoken in Persia ( iran) in olden days and there is no reason to hold that it was exclusive to India. Linguistic analysis shows that sanskrit and other similar languages have a common parent.( which maybe dead now).

God is above languages, nations, races, cultures etc - there is no point in fighting for any of these reasons. Tamil is likely to be older than sanskrit because it is a simpler language. It might be more reasonable to say that more complex languages evolved from simpler languages. This is not always true though because English is simpler than its paent languages such as Latin. So thr answer is no one really knows.

[soham3]

Sanskrit is born of intuition & spirit. Tamil is born of intelligence & mind.

[Sagefrakrobatik]

MaMma Namma Deepak. Thats what I remeber in India. Our professor took us to this university were someone taught us some sanskrit words and how to count to 10. It was hard enough trying to utlize the few malyam words i could remember.

[upsydownyupsy mv ss]

Sanskrit is born of intuition & spirit. Tamil is born of intelligence & mind.

I'm not Tamilian, but still...
Aren't you tired by now claiming Sanskrith as original primordial language????

I want to remind you that all sounds have come from Aum-kara and so are all languages.

You remind me of a past part of me, when I thought Sanskrith was the oldest, but then I came across some particular peculiar words in Tamil.

For example, the word 'Amma' of Tamil, came from 'Ambaa' or 'Ambika' of older Tamil. I thought over it, it is way different from Matha. Right?
But then again, I've always heard calves saying words like 'Ambaa', 'Emmaa', 'Ummaaa (Uma Maheshwari)', 'Umbaa (u sounding as U in Uganda)'
, 'Uwwaaa', 'Awwaaa' and other words, I was utterly dumbfounded! Most of them sounded like Amma and Amba. I don't was to say which is the oldest or suggest anything, but saying which is first brings a huge gap between North and south India.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb-dY...eature=related Cows mooing

There is one possibility, that Sanskrith and Tamil were dielects of an older language of ancient Humans in Africa, which later evolved to 2 different languages. The Ma-karic sound is common in Sanskrith and Tamil words for mother.

Finally Soham, I'd like to comment that you should comment with some gathered information.

Even today I don't know which language came first.

@ Rahul: Many South Indian scholars believe their languages are of Dravila (ancient Tamil origin). I thought it to be Sanskrith, I asked my Kannada teacher, he said its Dravila, the Prakrith language which is the origin of Kannada.

I'm not saying most of these things out of the plain mid air, or fiction, I've thought and gone through opinions of different people by media.

Its easy to prove which language is older (No one has yet proved). It is easier to assume which language is older(Be it Sanskrith or Tamil). But, it is hard to unite Indians, if they get divided again.It is very difficult to deal with people. Both Languages are great in my opinion, both the oldest, the parent languages of the world.
Usually there are two parents right?

[Believer]

Namaste "devotee",

1. Let's assume Sanskrit is older than Tamil. This gives North Indians a feeling of superiority over their dravidian brethren.

2. May be the first assumption is not true & we found out that Tamil is older than Sanskrit. This brings a sense of superiority in the mind of Tamil speaking Indians over the rest of Indians.

...........

So, where does either result lead us to ? Division of Indians on the linguistic lines. Mother India is already suffering from the wounds inflicted on her by the British & the present politicians with their Divide & Rule policy .... why rub salt on her wounds ??

We really don't own any language, region or a particular race or for that matter any tradition ... but we tend to "think" that way & feel possessive about it & create unnecesary avoidable boundaries. There is a necessity to preserve old traditions but that should not be at the cost of socio-economic-scientific-cultural-spiritual development or unity of the people.

Truer words have not been spoken in this forum.
How I wish there were more focused people like you here!

Bowing with reverence to the "devotee"....

[Kumar_Das]

Sanskrit is timeless. Tamil is 10,000 years old. All the languages on the earth & in the universe are daughters of sanskrit. Sanskrit is the mother language.

Father language! Sanskrit is a brutal language to be executed with a deep masculine voice with force.

[Kumar_Das]

1. Let's assume Sanskrit is older than Tamil. This gives North Indians a feeling of superiority over their dravidian brethren.

2. May be the first assumption is not true & we found out that Tamil is older than Sanskrit. This brings a sense of superiority in the mind of Tamil speaking Indians over the rest of Indians.

...........

So, where does either result lead us to ? Division of Indians on the liguistic lines. Mother India is already suffering from the wounds inflicted on her by the British & the present politicians with their Divide & Rule policy .... why rub salt on her wounds ??

Your "North Indian" languages arent anything special.

Sanskrit = language of Sanathana Dharma

Period.

I'm "North Indian" and Sanskrit means as much jack sh*t to my "North Indian" heritage as Tamil to Kannadigas, Malayalees and Telugu; which is absolutely zero.

Last time I checked Hindi like all things "Hindustani" is contaminated with islam, like "ra'aba", "ishq", "sahib", "mehboob", "zindagi", "sa'far", "tauba" thanks to the millenia of muslim rule.

Sanskrit is THE MOST superior language. Its highly scientific, philosophical and spiritual.

Its the Father of all "Indo European" languages.

[kallol]

Let me put some facts :

1. There is no Aryan or Dravidian : Check out - It was the figment of imagination of Max Mueller based on the Missionary knowledge of Bible. This theory was trashed (by him also) after Indus Valley civilization discovery

2. The movement of the Indians have been from south to north through scattered dwelling in south (the off peninsular coast is a gold mine yet to be unearthed) to saraswati valley in gujrat to indus valley and to ganges valley.

3. Check out the discovery off gulf of cambay in 2000 - going to 12000 BC - same type as harappa. The part of saraswati civilization. Subsea archeology is a big area where we lack penetration and expertise other wise the peninsular south India would be a delight for archiologists.

4. Recent dna mapping indicates - inhabition of India (south) in about 100000 BC then moving to north. Another branch from afrika came from north - around 50000 bc. A branch went out to central asia, another toward North east towards kamchakta penisula and another through bengal to south east. Andaman - 65000 yrs

5. We need to understand that the original Hinduism knowldege was much beyond sanskrit and was in form of sruti only as scripts were not there still. Sanskrit is a fully developed language which cannot evolve suddenly.

6. Old form of Tamil is a language with rudimentary script and as the language travelled towards north it evolved. The influx from outside also helped evolve into further refined language.

7. Tamil adapted a few alphabets from sanskrit later on (ha and ja). Other wise it has the first line and the last line. whereas the other languages have all the five lines.

By logic a language developed later cannot have rudimentary script.

Now you tell me by logic which should be older.

Who knows perhaps the seeds of the great knowledge of SD was from the south. Agyasta muni and many others are from south. Out of 100000 years of the human stay in India we hardly know anything !!!!

Love and best wishes