Manipravalam

Manipravalam (Tamil: மணிப்பிரவாளம், romanized: Maṇippiravāḷam, Malayalam: മണിപ്രവാളം, romanized: Maṇipravāḷam) is a macaronic language found in some manuscripts of South India. It is a hybrid language, typically written in the Grantha script, which combines Sanskrit lexicon and Tamil morpho-syntax. 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 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 Sanskrit. 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 in Sanskrit. It likely played a role in the growth of the Malayalam literature and Modern Malayalam script.¶

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Manipravalam”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.¶

Manipravalam is Lilatilakam, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition.¹¶

The source record links this tradition to 3 external registers, which can be verified through the citation.¹¶