Robert Caldwell - Criticism

Criticism

Charles E. Gover, in his book The Folk Songs of South India, heaps criticism on Caldwell and exposes some glaring mistakes in his deductions. Gover, in particular, refutes Caldwell's theory that Tamils are a Turanian people. He says that recent researches conducted by German writers have proved this theory wrong. He also demonstrates how most of the Tamil words, which Caldwell, in his book, asserts to be of Scythian origin, had Indo-Aryan roots. He gives the example of the Dravidian root pe- from which the Tamil word Pey meaning "devil" is derived, which Caldwell proclaims to be independent of Sanskrit, and shows how it is related to the Sanskrit pisacha.

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