Book Title: Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind
Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications
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APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VI
Saurashtran Script
Until 1943, very little was known in Europe of the character employed for the Saurashtri language. This form of speech was listed in the Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. IX, Part II (1908), pp. 447-8, as "Patanuli, also called Saurashtri (or the language of Surat) and Khatri," "the language of the silkweavers of the Deccan and Madras." The language is described there as "ordinary Gujarati with.. a slight addition of local words to its vocabulary."
The Saurashtrans, called by the Tamils Patnulkarens, or "silk-weavers," numbered, in 1931, 104,000 people, and were resident in the Tamil country, mainly in Madura and Madras. The great majority of them are bilingual, Tamil being their subsidiary language, while some are trilingual, knowing also Telugu. According to Mr. Randle, the Saurashtri language is, through and through, an Indo-Aryan language; it appears to belong to the Gujarati-Rajasthani linguistic type, but it should not be considered as a dialect of Gujarati, as its inflections are not those of Gujarati and its basic vocabulary is predominantly Marathi; besides, it has been strongly influenced by Dravidian. However, Mr. A. Master of the London School of Oriental and African Studies, does not think (according to the personal information he gave me) that Saurashtri belongs to the GujaratiRajasthani group, but should be considered as an independent Indo-Aryan language.
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Mr. H. N. Randle, the Librarian of the India Office, has recently brought to the knowledge of European scholars not only the existence of this language, but also the employment for the same of a peculiar script: See H. N. Randle, An Indo-Aryan Language of South India: Saurastra-bhasa, "BULL. OF THE SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON," XI, Part I (1943), PP. 104-121; and Part II (1944), PP. 310-327; idem, The Saurashtrans of South India, "JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY," 1944, PP. 151-164. Mr. Randle bases his philological reasearches concerning this matter on two little books, written in the Saurashtran script, by T. H. Rama Rou, First Catechism of Saurashtra Grammar, Madras, 1905; and Saurastrabodhini, 1906: the script, in the usual order of the Indian characters, and the lists of the complex combinations of all the vowels with all the consonants, published in the latter, have enabled Mr. Randle to read both these books.
Both, Mr. Randle and Mr. Master, suggest that there may be a connection between the modern Saurashtrans and the ancient community of silk-weavers whose activity is recorded in the famous inscription discovered in Mandasor (western Malwa), and dated in the years 493 and 529 of Malava era, corresponding to A.D. 437-8 and 473 (see J. F. Fleet,
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