The poison of Linguistic chauvinism, bane of India, was started by the British and scrupulously followed by the Secularists of India.
One finds zealots who have been brainwashed thus incite passions based on Language and divide Bharatavarsha.
People do not realize that though there were fifty six major kingdoms in India since ancient times and Sanskrit enjoyed popularity and there were many languages in different parts of these kingdoms, no language or region was ridiculed or tgete was no religious chauvinism, though there are exceptions.
And the curious fact is that there was no National language or an official link language.
Parkrit was used in all the kingdoms and was de facto Link language.
People respected,enjoyed, promoted good literature.
Take the case of Thirukkural, the Great Tamil Ethical work by Thiruvalluvar, which has been translated into almost all world languages.
I personally value Thirukkural on par with Srimad Bhagavad Gita with a remark that Thirukkural contains Kama aspect of Human life as well, and makes it wholesome.
Now the curious fact is that Thirukkural was published ,as a manuscript, in Malayalam in 1595 much before Thirukkural’s publication in Tamil in 1812!
That is Bharatavarsha.
‘ Malayalam has seen the most number of Tirukkural translations than that of any other language in India. As of 2007, there are at least 21 translations of the Kural textavailable in Malayalam.
Malayalam also has the distinction of producing the first ever translation of the Kural text among the languages in India and the world at large. The Annual Report of the Cochin Archeological Department for the year 1933–34 reported an unpublished manuscript of a Malayalam translation of the Tirukkural made in 1595.‘
When was Thirukkural published in Tamil?
‘Save for the highly educated circle of scholars and elites outside the Tamil land, the Kural remained largely unknown to the outside world for close to one-and-a-half millennia. It had been passed on as word of mouth from parents to their children and from preceptors to their students for generations within the Tamil-speaking regions of South India.
It was not until 1595 when the first translation of the work appeared in
Malayalam that the work became known to the wider circle outside the Tamil-speaking communities. The work first came to print in 1812, with the Kural text getting published in Tamil, chiefly by the efforts of the then Collector of MadrasFrancis Whyte Ellis, who established the “Chennai Kalvi Sangam.”
Reference and citation.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tirukkuṛaḷ
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tirukkural_translations_into_Malayalam
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