Manipravalam (, ) is a

macaronic language Macaronic language is any expression using a mixture of languages, particularly bilingual puns or situations in which the languages are otherwise used in the same context (rather than simply discrete segments of a text being in different langua ...

found in some manuscripts of

South India South India, also known as Southern India or Peninsular India, is the southern part of the Deccan Peninsula in India encompassing the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana as well as the union territories of ...

. It is a hybrid language, typically written in the Grantha script, which combines Sanskrit lexicon and Tamil morpho-syntax.The Illustrated weekly of India, (1965). Volume 86. Bennett, Coleman & Co., Ltd. pp. 35-37 According to language scholars Giovanni Ciotti and Marco Franceschini, the blending of Tamil and Sanskrit is evidenced in manuscripts and their colophons over a long period of time, and this ultimately may have contributed to the emergence of Manipravalam. However, the 14th century

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...

work ''Lilatilakam'' states that Manipravalam is a combination of Tamil and Sanskrit. Generally, it is agreed that it was a combination of Middle Tamil and

. The twelfth century has been described as a watershed moment in the history of Malayalam, where it was finally accepted as a vehicle for literary expression. The two dominant schools in Malayalam writing were the ''pattu'' and the manipravalam, the former being influenced by Tamil poetic traditions and the latter designated for Sanskrit influences. Despite their extraneous regulation, the two schools would come to dominate the edifice of Malayalam poetry that they continue to shape its style to this day. ''Mani-pravalam'' literally means 'gem-coral', with ''mani'' referring to gems (mainly rubies) in Tamil, and ''pravalam'' referring to

coral Corals are colonial marine invertebrates within the subphylum Anthozoa of the phylum Cnidaria. They typically form compact Colony (biology), colonies of many identical individual polyp (zoology), polyps. Coral species include the important Coral ...

in Sanskrit. It likely played a role in the growth of the Malayalam literature and Modern

Malayalam script Malayalam script (; / ) is a Brahmic scripts, Brahmic script used to write Malayalam, the principal language of Kerala, India, spoken by 45 million people. It is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union ter ...

. The Kerala scholars distinguished Manipravalam from the aforementioned ''pattu'', the former being significantly influenced by Sanskrit and the latter predominantly

Tamil Tamil may refer to: People, culture and language * Tamils, an ethno-linguistic group native to India, Sri Lanka, and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka ** Myanmar or Burmese Tamils, Tamil people of Ind ...

. Manipravalam has been used for poetry manuscripts that combine Tamil and Sanskrit, as well as South Indian works on eroticism. The 14th-century '' Lilatilakam'' text states Manipravalam to be a ''Bhashya'' (language) where "Dravida and Sanskrit should combine together like ruby and coral, without the least trace of any discord".Ke Rāmacandr̲an Nāyar (1971). ''Early Manipravalam: a study.'' Anjali. Foreign Language Study. pp. 78

Influence on the Malayalam script

It is suggested that the advent of the Manipravalam style, where letters of the Grantha script coexisted with the traditional

Vatteluttu ''Vatteluttu'' (, ' and , ', ), also transliterated as ''Vattezhuthu'', was an alphasyllabic or syllabic writing system of south India (Tamil Nadu and Kerala) and Sri Lanka formerly employed for writing the Tamil language, Tamil and Malayalam ...

letters, made it easier for people in Kerala to accept a Grantha-based script ''Ārya eḻuttŭ'', and paved the way for the introduction of the new writing system. Eventually ''Vaṭṭeḻuttŭ'' was almost completely supplanted by the modern

References

{{reflist * Indian literature Malayalam language Malayalam script Sanskrit Tamil script Tamil languages Mixed languages Languages attested from the 14th century

Influence on the Malayalam script

See also

References