Future tense, Sourashtri unwraps all its presents

AHMEDABAD: Avo! Avo! Askitenu avO! (Welcome,welcome to all) Likkuvo! likkuvO! Amre bhaaSham likkuvo! (Write! Write! Write our language) Svaabhimaan sento seNOm saahityam Vruddhi kerO! (Develop Sourashtri literature with self-respect!)

These are the opening lines of the ‘Vishwa Sourashtri’ journal of a small bunch of Tamilians who speak a dwindling language — a mix of Gujarati, Tamil, Konkani, Maharashtri Sanskrit (a language of ancient and medieval India) and Prakrit. Only 2. 5 lakh Sourashtrus (a member of the Sourashtra community is a Sourashtru) can speak, read and write Sourashtri today and linguists fear the language may fade into oblivion soon.

This unique language is spoken by the descendants of families who had migrated from the Saurashtra region of Gujarat to Tamil Nadu around the 11th century. They comprised mostly weavers and traders who had settled in the temple town of Madurai. Their later generations settled in Trichy, Salem, Kumbakonam, Thanjavur and Tirunelveli.
The first few generations fiercely guarded the language, which is also peppered with old dialects from western Rajasthan and Sindh. Today, Sourashtri is striving hard to secure its future with films being made in the language and translated works and dictionaries being published.

The royal weavers
The Sourashtrus, a majority of them weavers, made silk robes for the royal families in Madurai during the reign of King Thirumalai Naicker from 1623 till 1669. During this period, many families from Saurashtra were invited to Madurai to be the ‘royal weavers’ for the Naickers.

Several sites have been found to be their early settlement zones. They include TrichyUraiyur, Salem-Shevapet, Tirunelveli-Palayamkottai, Paramakudi-Emaneswaram, and Kumbakonam-Thuvarankurichi belts. “Since the early settlers in Tamil Nadu were engaged in weaving silk, they were called Pattunuulkaaran,” says Subramanian. ‘Pattu’ in Tamil means silk; the expression itself may stand for ‘silkthread man’. The language’s earlier name was Pattunuli, reminiscent of ‘silk thread’ in Tamil.

Tussle over script
A part from fighting back influences from dominant languages like Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and even English, the Sourashtrus, about 15 lakh in number, are engaged in a bitter debate over their script. The question is whether to adapt to the original Sourashtri script or take to the Devanagari script. Sourashtri scholars have bitterly resisted any semblance to Gujarati as well.

“Sourashtri is not a dialect of Gujarati,as is wrongly classified by the Census of India’s Language Division,” says Sourashtri linguist, Obula Subramanian. He says that based on the assumption of the dialect, the department had merged the Sourashtra population with the Gujarati population much to the displeasure of Sourashtri scholars. “Our language is Indo-Aryan and is believed to be an offshoot of Sauraseni Prakrit,” argues Subramanian.

“Chaturvedi Pandit Lakshmanacharya (Madhwa), a Sanskrit professor at Madras Christian College, Chennai, published a version of the Sourashtri script during the 1876-1880 period using the lithograph method for printing,” says Sahitya Akademi’s Bhasha Samman Award winner, K R Sethuraman.

Later Lakshmanacharya’s student Prof T M Ramarai developed the script further to suit the printing needs. In 1898, the second Saurashtra Brahmins Conference had resolved unanimously to entrust the intellectual task of designing an independent Sourashtri script to Prof Ramarai. A special fund of Rs 500 was allocated for this purpose. Later, the Sourashtra community gave him the title of Medhavi (scholar). He died in 1913.

The Dravidian influence
Ramarai’s book, “First Catechism of Sourashtra Grammar”, published in 1905, caught the attention of Dr H N Randle, a librarian at India Office in London’s White Hall, while classifying books.

Randle wrote two articles, “An Indo-Aryan Language of South India – Saurashtra Bhasha” in the bulletin of School of Oriental and African Studies in 1943, and the “The Saurashtrans of South India” in the Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, London in October 1944. He wrote, “It certainly appears to belong to the Gujarati-Rajasthani linguistic type, but its inflections are not those of Gujarati. Its basic vocabulary is predominantly Marathi. So, it is not possible to regard it as a dialect of Gujarati. It has of course come under Dravidian influence. ”

Sethuraman says, “Sourashtri, which is struggling to be a preserve of emotions, relationships and kinship, must become a language to transact in reason, science and business, just like English. The walls have grown taller and thicker for us. ”

Several books and religious texts including the Ramayana and the Bible have been translated into Sourashtri. Films like “Hedde Jomai” are being produced to place the language on popular platforms.

Training programmes
In March 2009, when Narendra Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat, he had assured a large Sourashtra community gathering in Madurai of large-scale studentexchange programmes with Saurashtra University. In 2009, the varsity had already started a chair for Sourashtri language and there has been a number of research programmes. It has successfully trained over 1,000 individuals in the language at their institute in Thanjavur, said a senior official of the university.

Fonts destroyed
The Madurai Saurashtra Sabha, the oldest association of the Sourashtra community, had supported ‘Medhavi’ Ramarai. He had handed over the matrix and printing material to the sabha in Madurai. In turn, the sabha honoured him with a monthly pension. However, a bitter dispute erupted during the freedom struggle. His intellectual opponents began rallying behind the Devanagiri script and destroyed the matrix and the printing materials in 1930. But Ramarai’s followers printed his books and made photoblocks.

TRADITIONS DOCUMENTED
Several unique traditions followed by the community have been documented. One of these is ‘Bovlas’ (Bhogulvas), a wedding custom, where the elders sit facing each other and engage in a Q&A session on the migration of their families from Saurashtra and their settlements. There is also the ‘vesham’ that requires the bride and the groom to enact a scene after the mangalsutra ceremony. Sourashtri was originally spoken by the people living between Mahi River and the Konkan region, and by people living along Tapti River.
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