namaste everyone.
I am glad that Vivek is reinstated and that he is back with his torrents of logical counterpoints with an intention to present them with mellowness.
Did not the Bhakti literature practically supplant the Brahman scriptures to a large extent, even in Brahman homes? To what extent Tabras have followed suit and replaced sanskrit mantras with Tamil ones in their homes and group worships?
The Brahmins made this choice voluntarily, and they chose to be Brahmins with Sanskrit as deva bhasha, superior to Tamil.
01. What is wrong in ******* using Sanskrit in home and group worships? How is it that the Bhakti literature is found only in Tamizh, when one can easily find it in many Sanskrit shlokas and stotras used in *******' worship at home? How many ******* conduct veda pArAyaNam or the vedic rituals of pancha yajna daily at home or read the purANas in their Sanskrit originals?
The fact is that most ******* are not literate in Sanskrit at all!
Even the Sanskrit shlokas and stotras they chant in pujas are in most cases from their transliterated text in Tamizh, often chanted with faulty pronunciation, so it is imperative for ******* who depend on transliteration to learn rudimentary Sanskrit urgently, or else face their chantings to go waste or even bring in negative results!
******* do participate in the bhajan sessions that are popular today, where the bhajans are in many languages. ******* are as cosmopolitan as any other Tamizh community, at home and society.
02. Surely, Sanskrit is the deva-bASha and Tamizh mAtru-bASha for *******, but as Swami said in post no.227, the fact is that ******* "consider both Tamil and Sanskrit worthy of adoration", and as Vivek pointed out in post no.275, they chant a hymn in its original language. I have come across many ******* who regularly chant AbirAmi AntAdi and Kanda ShaShTi Kavacham at home and do pArAyaNam of these hymns while they are commuting to office.
What about the mlechcha-bASha, English, which every Tamilian these days--TB or TNB, or plain B and NB, to borrow Nara's phrase--is fluent at? Why are the reformists not bothered about this language invading our homes and culture in the name of modernity and communication?
The Western Hindus out there, indulge in all sorts of mimicry and farce in their chanting and pujas in the name of devotion. Thus, one can easily find GaNesha rap chants or Heavy Metal Shiva hymns on the Net and YouTube, to which our Hindu youths readily take, so the day is not far when English would enter our religious worship--or rather religious entertainment--with our children in the near future, if we do not do something about it now.
If ******* supposedly use more Sanskrit than Tamil at home, which is not true, let me ask if there are any Tamizh NBs who speak solely in Tamizh at home, so they become "pure Tamils" in the yardstick of shrI Sangom? Do the reformists themselves--both native and diaspora--use Tamizh without mixing English words in their conversation?
As for the Tambra Tamizh dialect, Cho Ramaswamy pointed out in a Tuglaq issue, that it is nearer to grammatically right Tamizh than the other dialects. How many Tamizh politicians, TV news readers and announcers speak Tamizh correctly? I for one am nostalgic about the TV and AIR news readers Shobana Ravi, Fathima, Varadarajan, Vijayam, Sendamizh Arasu and many others who spoke correct and crystal clear Tamizh.
Here is an informative article about Sanskrit and Tamizh and how the use of 'pure Tamil' is threatened by English and not by Sanskrit:
Sanskrit: some questions
Whatever path did the Tamizh and Sanskrit scripts take in their evolution from the Brahmic family of scripts, I find striking resemblances (pun intended) between the Sanskrit and Tamizh alphabets in many letters in the way they are written today:
अ and அ उ and உ ए and ஏ (mirror)
क and க ण and ண त and த
न and ன प and ப म and ம
य and ய ल and ள ह and ஹ
The visarga signs are dots in both languages, although they differ in number and arrangement.
My point is that we should look for unifying similarities and cognates in our Indian languages in the substratum of our religion, culure and civilization, rather than fall prey to the academic research by the Westerns and non-religious intellectuals who always look for ways to part and divide.