Log 1

Place: Sarandib West, NJ, USA.

Time: Friday a.m., Sha'ban, 12, 1418/ December 12 1997.

Revised:
         Monday a.m. Shawwal 28 1419/ February 15 1999.


Welcome.

An aim of this journal is to keep in touch with the Muslims of the world, including in regard to furthering our understanding of the history of what may be appropriately called Arwi Muslim culture.

In case you don't know what ARWI stands for.

The first word in the name of this publication is adopted from "Lisan al Arwi" - the name of one of the traditional speech and writing systems of the Muslim populations of Sri Lanka, southern India, Malaysia, and other regions of that part of the Muslim world. It is now known only among specialists and in a few households such as that of the author of this introduction.

Arwi or Arwi style English communications are welcome. For instance Professor Hamidullah in his Introduction to Islam has demonstrated how English can be written using Arwi or Urdu type orthographies.

However, the primary language of this web site will be English. We want to encourage the development of the knowledge of Arwi and other similar under- powered languages. We believe that English is a good vehicle for such an effort.

Among recent English language scholarly publications, the late Dr. Uwise's "The language and literature of the Muslims" in M. M.M. Mahroof et. al. ed. An Ethnological Survey of the Muslims of Sri Lanka from earliest times to Independence: 150-165, published in Colombo, (1986/c. Hijri 1406 ) discusses Arwi. He spelled it as "Arvi" and used it to denote all of the literary works written in"Arabic-Tamil".

The more recent 823 page book Arabic, Arwi and Persian in Sarandib and Tamil Nadu, by Afdalul`Ulema Dr. Tayka Shu`ayb `Alim, a son of the much revered Shaykh Nayagam Tayka Ahmad `AbdulQadir `Alim - published by the Imamul `Arus Trust, Madras, 1993/c. Hirjri 1414- provides much more detail and food for thought on the subject, in English.

It is unfortunate that most of the Muslims now inhabiting the regions where Arwi was apparently invented, and is known to have flourished, seem unaware of its existence, nature, history or significance.

The writer's enhanced interest in Arwi began in earnest in the summer of 1987, precisely Dhu-al-Hijja 1407, when during a trip to Sri Lanka as part of initiating what was aimed to be led an "Islamic Community Development Planning" project, he found a copy of a tafsir of the Qur`an, containing a commentary on Qur`anic verses in Arabic, as well as translations of the Qur`anic knowledge into Lisan al Arwi.

The tafsir had been authored by a scholar originally from Cairo, Egypt, and schooled in the Shafi`i Ash`ari knowledge tradition. He had spent sufficient time in southern India to have mastered Arwi- a local dialect. The decorative art at the top of the ENTER page of this site is inspired by the adornments contained in the beginning pages of the tafsir in its original edition, released in Bombay, India.

Arwi, linguistically related to other Dravidian tongues now spoken in many parts of the world, predominantly in southern India, is believed to be also related to Brahui, "a Dravidian language spoken today by nearly 350,000 in East Baluchistan", in Pakistan.


The linguistic "marriage" of Arabic with, most commonly Dravidian and other southern Indian and Sri Lankan dialects, a process that has been active in the region for several centuries, is a problem of considerable ethnological, linguistic, and Islamological interest. More information regarding this matter will be published in future Arwi Muslim Chronicle pages, insha Allah. For now it insufficient to note that:

a. The distinctiveness of the speech behavior of so-called "Tamil speaking" Muslims of Sri Lanka, has been referred to as Arabic-Tamil, Arabuthamul, Arwi, Muslim Tamil, or Shonakam among Sri Lankan Muslims. It enjoys a religious knowledge affinity with a dialect of Jawi, used by the"Malays" of the island, as well as with other northern India derived languages such as Urdu, used by smaller groups of Muslims in the country.

b. The linguistic medium, here referred to as Arwi, is composed of more than one set of grammars and vocabularies that a speaker may switch back and forth from, depending on the situation. Compared to many among the Singhalese, Tamil, or Burgher peoples who live in Sri Lanka, who have traditionally tended to be monolingual, Muslim males are much more at home with Singhalese and Tamil, and in some instances English, as well as Arwi.

c. As a written language Arwi employs an invented orthography for a creolized, or mixed, system of speech patterns. Research on its history has only very recently begun to appear in print. It is believed to have originated during the early stages of Islamizing contact between Dravidian speaking peoples with Arab and Persian traders. The principles of its development and structure are possibly related to similar systems known for other similar Islamized speech and writing systems such as Indian Muslim Tamil, or Malayalam, as well as other systems such as Maldivian, Jawi, Urdu, and Persian.

d. The orthographic systems of some of those languages have been analyzed by professor C. M. Naim of the University of Chicago as part of a widespread, “non-Arabic” Islamic historical trend toward the making of orthographic systems for non-Arabic tongues. He has described and analyzed the trend as a process of "borrowing" words from Arabic by new Islamic groups and their literati and of adapting Arabic orthography for the languages of new Muslim groups, even in instances where an earlier writing system existed.

Of the nine languages that Professor Naim has analyzed none have a Dravidian or other pre-Indo-Aryan Indic history. Naim has analyzed "structural similarities" among the nine, and of the nine to "Classical Arabic," "without implying a simultaneous historical relationship".

e. In tracing the history of orthographies and graphemic notation practices, similar in type to that of Arwi, Professor Naim has not referred to Ibn Khaldun's Arabic practice for transliterating non-Arabic sounds, such as from Berber tongues, explained in the Muqaddima.

Ibn Khaldun's discussion includes comments on the awareness that existed among the Arab literati of his time and prior to him regarding the problem of Arabizing non-Arab sounds. He derived his technique for dealing with the problem from "the way the Qur`an scholars write sounds that are not sharply defined, such as occur, for instance, in as-sirat according to the Khalaf reading" of, for instance, Surah Fatihah, (Qur`an I:6). His comments as well as other research cited by Rosenthal suggest that the development of an additional orthographic system where the basic alphabetic characters of Arabic were insufficient, had begun very early in the history of Islamic writing, including in the earliest writings of the Qur`an.

f. The well known American anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber has examined the general phenomenon of the invention and history of some such scripts among non-Muslim groups. Some of them did not have a written language previously. To Kroeber such scripts provide evidence for a kind of human inventiveness, by which the "total mass" of a culture expands. Alfred Kroeber’s theoretical insights regarding the interesting case of Sequoya's invention of a script for Cherokee is useful in regard to the kind of leads they provide for further research regarding the mental dimensions of changes that have taken place in the history of Islam.

g. Arwi is known to be a matter of at least scholarly interest in some parts of Sri Lanka today, but other languages such as English have replaced it in many contexts. Shu`ayb`Alim has noted interesting and important reasons for the decline of Arwi. Among them the conflict with English and the lack of competitive printing facilities. However, the early 20th century adoption of an Urdu dominant Islamic school curriculum, by scholars ethnocentrically unconcerned with Arwi, which has a different, southern South Asia based cultural and historical genesis is also, according to him, a reason. The story of its decline and of attempts by some such as that of Shu`ayb Alim to revive it in recent decades are characteristically modern Islamic stories.