In my previous articles, I wrote about the history of material everyday objects in Kerala — idangazhi, muzham, tuvara, mund — suggesting a connection to ancient Egypt before 2000 BCE. I have also written about words in Malayalam: amma, maan, onam, chera, and others, highlighting their unique meanings, cultural connections, and possible etymologies stemming from ancient Egyptian. In this article, I touch on grammar: prepositions, to be exact.
The Malayalam word for the preposition “back” is pin പിൻ. Thus, the Malayalam translation of the clause, “put in the back of the boat” is “ചന്പയുടെ പിന്നിൽ ഇട്.” chanpa ചന്പ is an archaic term for a fishing boat — bear with me for a minute here.¹ This preposition pin പിൻ is encountered in a slightly different form in a grave inscription of the Old Kingdom of Egypt in Saqqara, dating roughly to 2400 BCE: the mastaba of Nianch-Khnum and Chnoum-hotep, rock chamber, scene 33 called “Hunting in the Papyrus Thicket.”²
The Egyptian word is phwi “back,” which is a fricative version of the Malayalam word pin minus the nasal ending [n]. The inscription wid em phwi senbe translates as “put in the back of the boat” and it is exactly the Malayalam clause in reverse word order, with each word matching its Malayalam counterpart: wid = idu ഇട് “put”; em = il ഇൽ “in”; phwi = pin പിൻ “back”; and senbe = chanpa ചന്പ, “boat.”
In another example, the Malayalam word for the preposition “before” is mun മുൻ. mun മുൻ is a root form; it rarely, if ever, is used as such. Its stand-alone forms are munnil മുന്നില്‍; mumpil മുമ്പിൽ; and mumpe മുമ്പ്. It is used as a prefix with other words, as in munnada മുന്നട “going before.” It refers to space as in അവൻ മുമ്പിൽ നിൽക്കുന്നു “he stands before me” and time as in “അവൻ അതിനു മുമ്പ് രാജാവായിരുന്നു “he was king before that.”
This preposition occurs in the Egyptian Pyramid Texts carved in the tomb of Pharaoh Pepi I (ca. 2200 BCE) as membelh. The inscription is vatch ek madu en membelh ek, “you will command those who are before you.”³ It corresponds to archaic somewhat poetic Malayalam as nin mumbile evarodu mindu ni katcham നിൻ മുമ്പിലെ ഏവരോട് മിണ്ടു നീ കച്ചം, with more or less exact correspondence of Malayalam to Egyptian in reverse word order with Malayalam evar ഏവർ “those” missing in Egyptian: vatch = katcham കച്ചം “command”; ek = ni നീ nin നിൻ, “you”; madu = mindu മിണ്ടു “speak”; en = odu ഓടു “to”; membelh = mumbile മുമ്പിലെ “before.” In Egyptian, like in Malayalam and English, the preposition had both spatial and temporal usage.
I end with the very interesting prepositions il ഇല്‍ and aal ആൽ, both of which have multiple usages. il ഇല്‍ is used to mean a location “in,” for example എന്നില്‍ “in me.” It is also used in a manner like English “under” as in ente kalpanayil എൻ്റെ കൽപ്പനയിൽ “under my command.” It also means “in case of” as in cheykil ചെയ്കില്‍ “in case of doing”. aal ആൽ means “by” “through” “as a result of” “with”, for example, avanaal aakunnathu cheyyatte അവനാൽ ആകുന്നത് ചെയ്യട്ടെ “let him do what can be done by him”; kshaamathaal yuddham undaayi ക്ഷാമത്താൽ യുദ്ധം ഉണ്ടായി “the war was a result of famine.” It has other forms aakal ആകല്‍, aakil ആകില്‍ and aayi ആയി, for example, avale kuttiyumaayi kandu അവളെ കുട്ടിയുമായി കണ്ടു “saw her with the child.”
The Egyptian counterpart of all these prepositions is thel.⁴ It seems to have either lost its initial [th] sound or replaced it with [k] in Malayalam. An example of this Egyptian preposition is carved on the north face of the coffin chamber of Pharaoh Unas in his pyramid (ca. 2360 BCE) in Saqqara: me thel hetep-nzew, “come with royal offering.”⁵ The Malayalam correspondent is: vanchi meethumaayi va വഞ്ചി മീത്തുമായി വാ. Again, we see the reverse word order and one-to-one correspondence: nzew = vanchi വഞ്ചി “king”;⁶ hetep thel= meethumaayi മീത്തുമായി “with offering”;⁷ me = va വാ “come”.⁸
In the above three examples, most of the Malayalam nouns are archaic. The style of the sentences is similar to poetic Malayalam, not the kind used in everyday language. These are to be expected, for the examples quoted are from ancient Egyptian inscriptions meant to be poetic and grand; besides, Malayalam has evolved significantly away from its ancient native roots. What I have tried to show here is the relationship between ancient Egyptian and Malayalam in words and syntax, suggesting a real link between the two. The relationship is not obvious at first, because Malayalam has a reverse word order compared to Egyptian, but this reversal is consistent across sentences, suggesting that somewhere along the way, Malayalam moved away from the Egyptian sentence structure and embraced that of its neighbors in the Indian subcontinent.
My studies over the course of the past several years on the relationship between ancient Egypt and Kerala have merely scratched the surface of this enormous topic. More rigorous linguistic studies can shed even greater light on Malayalam’s rich heritage and its ancient lineage, based at least in part on the large web of trade and other cultural exchange that existed between Kerala and ancient Egypt.
Notes
[1] Herman Gundert, 1872, Malayalam and English Dictionary, 347 (Mangalore: C. Stolz).
[2] https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/sentence/IBUBd2PHVS7hv0LXjSxruKirCd8.
[3] https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/sentence/IBUBd5fp7UwxFkSntPyrquHxLuc.
[4] https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/850794.
[5] https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/sentence/IBUBd2XKmCNpfUOZnzKXfeILq7g.
[6] https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/88040. The Malayalam correspondent is a reverse form of this word, with the [w] moving to initial position by metathesis.
[7] https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/400524. Here too, the Malayalam correspondent is a reverse form by metathesis. In addition, the Egyptian [p] presents as Malayalam [m]. meethu മീത്തു is used in reference to lesser deities such as family deities and demons, rather than offerings in temples. See Gundert, Malayalam and English Dictionary, 822.
[8] https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/67770. Imperative form of the word. In Malayalam, [m] presents as [w], and is also monosyllabic in the imperative, just as in Egyptian.
