OF LANGUAGES. 



83 



Moreover this seeming distinction of gender is even in these 

 languages merely confined to the Singular, it disappears in 

 the Plural, where the primitive division of high caste and 

 low caste words reappears. The division of words into 

 majors (high caste) and minors (low caste) differs in principle 

 from a classification, which has gender as its base. The 

 exclusion from, or admission of, women into the higher set 

 does not aff ect the maxim ; it only concerns the status of the 



signifying syllables, e.g., nalla is good, nattmcm good he, a good man, nalla- 

 val, good she, a good woman ; ur is village, urdn a village-man, ural a village 

 woman ; vandan he came, vandal she came ; adaivan he will obtain, 

 adaival she will obtain. That the admission of woman to the higher class is 

 an event which happened in a later period, may be presumed from the analogy, 

 which is offered by the celestial beings as sun and moon now belonging to 

 the high caste, while they (the sun, nayiru and pontdu, and the moon, tingal 

 and nila) are in old Tamil ranked among the low caste beings. In this 

 particular case we ought not conceal from ourselves the fact that these celestial 

 bodies were also objects of divine worship. (See : Dr. Caldwell's Comparative 

 Grammar, second edition, page 118.) 



Considering the origin of the Tamil pronouns av-an he, and av-al she, we 

 cannot agree with the somewhat sweeping remark of the learned Bishop : 

 " In the Dravidian languages on the other hand, not only is there a full 

 equipment of sex-denoting pronouns, but there is the same development of 

 gender in the verb also" (1. c, page 147 and 148). 



" The full equipment of sex-denoting pronouns" to which the right reverend 

 scholar refers, can only be the third personal pronoun in the singular, and 

 even that only in some Dravidian languages. The primitive character of the 

 Dravidian tongues is on the whole clearly genderless, as has been stated 

 before, and which fact has also been admitted by Bishop Caldwell. The 

 Dravidian verbs add, as is the case in most agglutinative languages, to the 

 end of their verbal cases the pronominal terminations, but this can hardly be 

 called a development of gender in the verb. The pronominal terminations 

 are in fact only the representatives of the pronouns. E.g., the Telugu 

 common present is composed of the present verbal participle (satrarthakamu) 

 of the verb in question, of the present relative partioiple (vartamanartha- 

 kaviseshanamu) unna of unduta to be, and the pronominal terminations in 

 the singular ; 1-anu, 2-avu, 3-adu (for vadu) and adi (for adi) ; in the plural 

 1 : amu, 2 : aru, 3 : aru (for varu) and avi (for avi), as 1 : Sing. (kott,ucu+unna 

 ■4- anu, becomes) kottucunnanu, 2 : kottucunnavu y 3 : kottucttmiadu (applying 

 to the mahat) and Jcottucimnadi (applies to the amahat). The grammatical 

 division of Tamil nouns into " uyar tinai" and " ah rinai" is eo ipso gender- 

 ignoring. 



The modern Marathi exhibits a very complete system of gender, but it 

 is now an Aryanized abstract dialect. 



