Intervocalic Plosives in Early Tamil

Abstract

In in 1914 M.Bloch published an article upon the intervocalic consonants Tamil in Mémoires de la Société de IAnguistique de Paris. It was published in an English translation in the Indian Antiquary, vol. 48, p. 191. He came to the conclusion based upon a passage from Kumārila Bhatta that before the Christian era Tamil possessed voiced plosives in initial, medial, and, presumably, final position, but that during a period, say from 100 A.C. to 1200 A.c, they were unvoiced and it was only after that date that intervocalic consonants again became voiced. M. Bloch directs attention to the striking parallelism of Indo-Aryan and Dravidic languages in the treatment of consonants, especially intervocalic plosives.His arguments have never been met even by the large school of Tamil-speaking scholars, which has never accepted them. Mr. Tuttle (Dravidian Developments, p. 9), in 1930, controverts Vinson's assumption that the sound-system of modern Tamil was in use when the anguage was first written and Dr. Sastri, in 1934 (History of Grammatical Theories in Tamil, p. 49), refutes CaldwelFs Law of the convertibility of Surds and Sonants, with the observation that Pope and Vinson state the same theory with a slight modification. Neither, surprisingly enough, refer to M. Bloch's article.