Eelam - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Eelam also spelled Eezham, Ilam or Izham in English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

is the native Tamil

Tamil language

Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...

name for the South Asian island state of Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...

. Eelam is also a name for the spurge

Spurge

Euphorbia is a genus of plants belonging to the family Euphorbiaceae. Consisting of 2008 species, Euphorbia is one of the most diverse genera in the plant kingdom, exceeded possibly only by Senecio. Members of the family and genus are sometimes referred to as Spurges...

(a plant), toddy

Palm wine

Palm wine also called Palm Toddy also called "Kallu" written in Malayalam and கள்ளு in Tamil or simply Toddy is an alcoholic beverage created from the sap of various species of palm tree such as the palmyra, and coconut palms...

(an intoxicant) and gold

Gold

Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...

. The exact etymology and the original meaning of the word are not clearly known, although there are number of conflicting theories. The Retroflex approximant l in Eelam is a unique phoneme

Phoneme

In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....

for Dravidian languages

Dravidian languages

The Dravidian language family includes approximately 85 genetically related languages, spoken by about 217 million people. They are mainly spoken in southern India and parts of eastern and central India as well as in northeastern Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, and...

, retained in closely related Tamil

Tamil language

and Malayalam. Conventionally it has been represented in the Roman alphabet using the combination of zh.

History of the term

The earliest use of the word is found in a Tamil Brahmi inscription as well as in the Sangam literature

Sangam literature

Sangam literature refers to a body of classical Tamil literature created between the years c. 600 BCE to 300 CE. This collection contains 2381 poems composed by 473 poets, some 102 of whom remain anonymous The period during which these poems were composed is commonly referred to as the Sangam...

. The Thiruparankundram

Thiruparankundram

Thiruparankundram is a panchayat town in Madurai district in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. This Panchayat has been added to the Madurai Corporation and the first local body election for Corporation was held on 18th Oct 2011.-Demographics:...

inscription found near Madurai

Madurai

Madurai is the third largest city in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. It served as the capital city of the Pandyan Kingdom. It is the administrative headquarters of Madurai District and is famous for its temples built by Pandyan and...

in Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu is one of the 28 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by the union territory of Pondicherry, and the states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh...

and dated on palaeographical grounds to the 1st century BCE, refers to a person as a householder from Eelam (Eela-kudumpikan). The inscription reads,
The Sangam literature Pattinappalai, mentions Eelattu-unavu (food from Eelam). One of the prominent Sangam Tamil poets is known as Eelattu Poothanthevanar

Eelattu Poothanthevanar

Eelattu Poothanthevanar was one of the earliest known classical Tamil poets. His poems were included in the Tamil sangam or Cankam poetry anthologies compiled in Tamilakam before 250 AD...

meaning Poothan-thevan (proper name) hailing from Eelam. (Akanaanooru

Akananuru

Akananuru , a classical Tamil poetic work, is the seventh book in the Sangam literature anthology Ettuthokai. It contains 400 Akam poems dealing with matters of love and separation...

: 88, 231, 307; Kurunthokai

Kuruntokai

Kuruntokai ,a classical Tamil poetic work, is the second book of Ettuthokai, a Sangam literature anthology. Kuruntokai contains poems dealing with matters of love and separation content matter and were written by numerous authors. Nachinarkiniyar, a Tamil scholar living during the sixth or the ...

: 189, 360, 343; Nattinai: 88, 366) The Tamil inscriptions from the Pallava

Pallava

The Pallava dynasty was a Tamil dynasty which ruled the northern Tamil Nadu region and the southern Andhra Pradesh region with their capital at Kanchipuram...

& Chola period dating from 9th century CE link the word with toddy, toddy taper's quarters (Eelat-cheri), tax on toddy tapping (Eelap-poodchi), a class of toddy tapers (Eelath-chanran). Eelavar

Ezhava

The Ezhavas are a community with origins in the region presently known as Kerala. They are also known as Ilhava, Irava, Izhava and Erava in the south of the region; as Chovas, Chokons and Chogons in Central Travancore; and as Tiyyas, Thiyas and Theeyas in Malabar...

is a caste of toddy tapers found in the southern parts of Kerala

Kerala

or Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....

. The Tamil lexicons Thivaakaram, Pingkalam and Choodaamani, dating from c. 8th century CE, equate the word with Singhalam and with gold. Eela-kaasu and Eela-karung-kaasu are refers to coinages found in the medieval inscriptions of Tamil Nadu.

Since the 1980s the words Eelam and Eelavar have been taken up by the Sri Lankan Tamil resistance movement. In this usage, Eelam refers to Tamil Eelam

Tamil Eelam

Tamil Eelam , is the name given by certain Tamils in Sri Lanka and the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora to the independent state which they aspire to create in the north and east of Sri Lanka. Tamil Eelam has no official status or recognition by any other state or authority...

, an area covering what has been reconstructed by historians as the former Jaffna Kingdom

Jaffna Kingdom

The Jaffna kingdom , also known as Kingdom of Aryacakravarti, of modern northern Sri Lanka was a historic monarchy that came into existence around the town of Jaffna on the Jaffna peninsula after the invasion of Magha, who is said to have been from Kalinga, in India...

. Eelavar now refers to the future citizens of Tamil Eelam.

Sihala>Eelam

Late 19th century linguists took the view that the name Eelam was derived from the Pali

Páli

- External links :* *...

(An Indo-Aryan language

Indo-Aryan languages

The Indo-Aryan languages constitutes a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, itself a branch of the Indo-European language family...

) form Sihala (itself derived from Sanskrit Simhala) for Sri Lanka. Robert Caldwell

Robert Caldwell

Bishop Robert Caldwell was an Evangelist missionary and linguist, who academically established the Dravidian family of languages. He served as Assistant Bishop of Tirunelveli from 1877. He was described in The Hindu as a 'pioneering champion of the downtrodden' and an 'avant-garde social reformer'...

, following Hermann Gundert

Hermann Gundert

Rev. Dr. Hermann Gundert was a German missionary and scholar, who compiled a Malayalam grammar book, Malayalabhaasha Vyakaranam , the first Malayalam-English dictionary , and translated the Bible into Malayalam. He worked primarily at Tellicherry on the Malabar coast, in Kerala, India...

, cites the word as an example of the omission of initial sibilants in the adoption of Indo-Aryan words into Dravidian languages. The University of Madras Tamil Lexicon, compiled between 1924 and 1936, follows this view.

According to Peter Schalk a professor of theology from University of Uppsala who has done studies on Sri Lankan Tamils and their culture, Caldwell and the Madras Tamil lexicon were wrong in deriving Eelam from Sihala. He concludes that Eelam is attested well before Sihala in India and Sri Lanka, in inscriptions and literature in the 1st century BCE. Where as Sihala is attested for the first time in present day Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh , is one of the 28 states of India, situated on the southeastern coast of India. It is India's fourth largest state by area and fifth largest by population. Its capital and largest city by population is Hyderabad.The total GDP of Andhra Pradesh is $100 billion and is ranked third...

to refer to a Buddhist temple

Vihara

Vihara is the Sanskrit and Pali term for a Buddhist monastery. It originally meant "a secluded place in which to walk", and referred to "dwellings" or "refuges" used by wandering monks during the rainy season....

meant for monk

Monk

A monk is a person who practices religious asceticism, living either alone or with any number of monks, while always maintaining some degree of physical separation from those not sharing the same purpose...

s from Sri Lanka in the 3rd century CE. He further concludes that it is a word used exclusively for toddy beginning from the common era

Common Era

Common Era ,abbreviated as CE, is an alternative designation for the calendar era originally introduced by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century, traditionally identified with Anno Domini .Dates before the year 1 CE are indicated by the usage of BCE, short for Before the Common Era Common Era...

up until the medieval period.

Eelam>Sihala

Thomas Burrow

Thomas Burrow was an Indologist and the Boden Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford from 1944 to 1976. His work includes Dravidian Etymological Dictionary, The Problem of Shwa in Sanskrit and The Sanskrit Language....

, in contrast, argued that the word was likely to have been Dravidian in origin, on the basis that Tamil and Malayalam "hardly ever substitute (Retroflex approximant) l peculiarly Dravidian sound, for Sanskrit -'l'-." He suggests that the name "Eelam" came from the Dravidian word "Eelam" (or Cilam) meaning "toddy", referring to the palm trees in Sri Lanka, and later absorbed into Indo-Aryan languages. This, he says, is also likely to have been the source for the Pali '"Sihala". The Dravidian Etymological Dictionary, which was jointly edited by Thomas Burrow and Murray Emeneau, marks the Indo-Aryan etymology with a question mark.

Other theories

Sri Lankan historian Kathigesu Indrapala claims that Eela the stem of Eelam is attested in Sri Lanka in centuries before the common era

Common Era

as a name of an ethnic group and eventually it came to be applied to the island as Eelam. He also believes that the name of the island was applied to the popular coconut

COcOnuts

COcOnuts is the second album released by Jane, comprising Animal Collective member Panda Bear, and Scott Mou. It was originally self-released on CD-R's, but later became the first album released by Psych-o-path Records in 2005. The Psych-o-path version was remastered by Rusty Santos and Edik Kleyner....

tree or vice versa in Tamil. He believes the early native names for the present Sinhalese ethnic group such as Hela is a derivation of Eela that it was Prakrit

Prakrit

Prakrit is the name for a group of Middle Indic, Indo-Aryan languages, derived from Old Indic dialects. The word itself has a flexible definition, being defined sometimes as, "original, natural, artless, normal, ordinary, usual", or "vernacular", in contrast to the literary and religious...

ized as Sihala and eventually Sanskritized as Simhala in the 5th century CE.

Others claim that the word is a native Tamil word for home. Yet another theory based on archeological evidences suggests the word is a native Tamil word which originated from South India.

Cognate terms

Eela and Eelavar are etymologically related to Eelam. The stem Eela is found in Prakrit inscriptions dated to 2nd century BCE in Sri Lanka in term such as Eela-Barata and Eela-Naga, proper names. The meaning of Eela in these inscriptions is unknown although one could deduce that they are either from Eela a geographic location or were an ethnic group known as Eela. Although the two derivations Eelam and Eelavar are etymologically related, the word Eelavar in South Indian mediaeval inscriptions refer to the caste

Caste

Caste is an elaborate and complex social system that combines elements of endogamy, occupation, culture, social class, tribal affiliation and political power. It should not be confused with race or social class, e.g. members of different castes in one society may belong to the same race, as in India...

or function of toddy-drawers. From the 19th century onwards, sources appeared in South India

South India

South India is the area encompassing India's states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu as well as the union territories of Lakshadweep and Pondicherry, occupying 19.31% of India's area...

regarding a legendary origin for caste of toddy drawers known as Eelavar in the state of Kerala

Kerala

or Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....

. These legends stated that Eelavar were originally from Eelam. The consciousness of the South Indian Eelavar caste being of Sri Lankan origin is not older than 150–200 years. Not only the words Eezham, Eelavar, Eela, I'la, E'lu, He'la, Seeha'la, Simha'la and Sinhala but also the Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

Salai and Seiladiba, the Arab Serendib and the colonial Ceylon are cognates.

History of the term

Sihala>Eelam

Eelam>Sihala

Other theories

Cognate terms

Further reading

External links