82 



ON THE CLASSIFICATION 



proud Dravidian has of the individual woman be ever 

 so low — and it cannot, be much lowered when the mother, the 

 wife, the sister is treated in speech on a par with beasts and 

 chattels, 129 — yet he cannot altogether deny that there exists a 

 certain connection between him and her. The rank he can 

 refuse to the individual, he is hardly inconsiderate enough to 

 withhold from the whole sex, which, together with his own 

 sex, constitutes the human species. Under these circum- 

 stances woman is raised to the higher class of rational beings 

 when she is in the company of other women, i.e^ when the 

 word is used in the plural. This is still the rule in Telugu 

 and Gond. In the other principal Dravidian dialects, in 

 Canarese, Tamil and Malayalam, " woman," as the female 

 representative of mankind, occupies as such a place among the 

 rational creatures, and has been freed from the slavery of 

 grammatical tyranny. 



The primitive genderless state of the language remains 

 unaffected by either concession. For while all animals 

 except men are consigned on the one hand to the lower rank, 

 and the difference of sex existing among them is not noticed, 

 the sexual distinction even between man and woman is only 

 noticed by adding the adjectives " male " and " female " to 

 the gender-ignoring root. Even Tamil, Canarese and Malaya- 

 lam comply with this rule. The Tamil grammarians acknow- 

 ledge this fact by calling all such words compounds : pagu 

 pattern, e.g., magan boy, is composed of mag + an (male), and 

 magal daughter of mag + al (female). 130 



(129) E.g., in Telugu, nd tdndri padinddu my father fell, nd talli padinadi 

 my mother fell, ndydvu padinadi my cow fell, nd pustakamu padinadi my 

 book fell. 



(130) The so-called masculine and feminine personal pronoun of the third 

 person singular is formed by adding, e.g., in Tamil the words for "male" 

 and " female " an and al to the root of the demonstratives. Av-an he, that 

 male, av-al she, that female ; iv-an he, this male, iv-al she, this female ; ev-an 

 who (male), ev-al who (female). The minor forms are respectively adii, idu 

 and edit. Telugu has only vadu, vidu, edit (evadu) for the majors, and adi, 

 idi and edi for the minors. To nouns, adjectives, and to verbs are added 

 those " male and female" (an, an, On for the former and al, al for the latter) 



