Malayalam

Malayalam is a major Dravidian language spoken predominantly in the Indian state of Kerala and in the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (Mahé district). It functions as the principal language of the Malayali people and is one among the twenty-two officially recognised languages of India. Malayalam received the designation of a Classical Language of India in 2013, reflecting its significant antiquity and rich literary heritage. In addition to its primary speech regions, Malayalam is also used by linguistic minorities in parts of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu and by large expatriate communities across the Middle East and other global centres.

Geographic Distribution and Demographics

Malayalam is spoken by more than thirty-five million people in India. It dominates everyday communication in Kerala, where it plays a central role in education, administration, media, and cultural life. The language is also widely spoken in Lakshadweep, in Puducherry’s Mahé region, and in urban centres throughout India due to heavy internal migration.
Outside India, Malayalam-speaking communities are especially prominent in the Gulf countries, where economic migration has created a substantial diaspora. Malayalis form notable linguistic communities in Dubai, Doha, Abu Dhabi, Muscat, and other major Middle Eastern cities. Smaller communities exist in Europe, North America, Southeast Asia, and Australia.

Historical Development and Origins

The origins of Malayalam have long been debated by linguists. The mainstream view holds that Malayalam evolved from a western coastal dialect of early Middle Tamil. This divergence is thought to have occurred between the ninth and thirteenth centuries. The western dialect preserved several archaic features, suggesting that the spoken forms along the Kerala coast may have begun diverging from Tamil earlier than the literary records indicate.
A second school of thought proposes that Malayalam and Tamil developed separately from Proto-Dravidian or Proto-Tamil-Malayalam in the prehistoric period. This view emphasises archaic elements shared by Malayalam and several West Coast Dravidian speech varieties that are absent from early literary Tamil. Such features include morphological and phonological traits not recoverable from classical Tamil sources.
Despite these divergences, Malayalam shares multiple innovations with Tamil that emerged during the early Middle Tamil period, linking the two languages through historical development. Scholars generally agree that Malayalam cannot be viewed as an entirely independent offshoot from Proto-Dravidian, but rather as a language that evolved through sustained interaction with Tamil alongside its own regional influences.

Early Records and Literary Beginnings

Some scholars identify the Quilon Syrian copper plates (849–850 CE) as the earliest inscriptions written in Old Malayalam. These plates also bear signatures in a range of scripts, including Arabic Kufic, Pahlavi, and Hebrew, signifying Kerala’s long-standing contact with international trade communities. Other scholars argue that the language of the Chera Perumals’ inscriptions is a diverging form of contemporary Tamil rather than a distinct Malayalam.
The earliest known literary work clearly identifiable as Malayalam is the Ramacharitam (late twelfth or early thirteenth century). While connected to Tamil literary traditions, it displays distinct linguistic features unique to Malayalam. The language drew heavily from Sanskrit over subsequent centuries, shaping its lexicon, phonology, and literary style.
Kerala’s medieval poets, including several esteemed writers of Old Tamil, such as Paranar, Ilango Adigal, and Kulasekhara Alvar, were associated with regions that now form modern-day Kerala. The linguistic interaction between Middle Tamil and emerging Malayalam shaped early regional literature and ultimately contributed to Malayalam’s separate identity.

Script and Writing System

The earliest script associated with Malayalam was Vatteluttu, a rounded script historically used across Kerala and parts of Tamil Nadu. The modern Malayalam script evolved from Vatteluttu but incorporated additional characters from the Grantha script to represent Indo-Aryan loanwords, particularly those from Sanskrit. This combination gave Malayalam its characteristic large set of letters, accommodating a rich inventory of phonemes.
The Malayalam writing system is closely related to the Tigalari script, historically used for Tulu and Sanskrit in regions bordering Kerala. This historical linkage reflects the shared cultural and religious practices of the west coast.
Malayalam’s modern grammatical structure is based on Kerala Panineeyam, composed by A. R. Raja Raja Varma in the late nineteenth century. This work established the standardised framework for Malayalam grammar that is still in use today. The earliest travelogue in an Indian language, Varthamanappusthakam (1785), was also written in Malayalam, indicating the language’s early literary maturity.

Etymology and Historical Naming

The name Malayalam is often interpreted as deriving from the Dravidian roots meaning “mountain region”, referring to the hilly terrain of Kerala and the Western Ghats. Tamil sources from as early as the seventh century describe the people of Kerala as malaiyar, or mountain-dwellers.
Historically, the term Malabar was used in external trade to denote Kerala’s coastal region. Foreign merchants and travellers used Malabar to refer to both the land and its language. Malayalam itself was known by several names before the nineteenth century, including Kerala Bhasha, Malayanma, and Malayayma. These terms often referred to both the spoken language and the writing system.
The distinctive identity of Malayalam as a clearly separate language became fully established only by the sixteenth century, as noted by Portuguese traveller Duarte Barbosa, who recorded that the people from Kumbla in the north to Kanyakumari in the south spoke a unique language referred to as Maliama. Prior to this, the inhabitants of Kerala commonly used the term Tamil to describe their language, reflecting long-standing cultural continuity across the region.

Linguistic Characteristics and Relationship with Tamil

Malayalam shares a number of archaic features with other West Coast Dravidian languages. These include phonological patterns, grammatical forms, and vocabulary items that are absent from early Tamil literature. Such features support the view that Malayalam developed from a distinct spoken variety that gradually diverged from Tamil over centuries.
Malayalam also possesses features derived from early Middle Tamil, including personal pronouns and verbal morphology that entered the language during its formative period. Early literary Malayalam retained strong connections with Tamil before moving towards an independent identity through Sanskritisation and regional literary development.
The nineteenth-century linguist Robert Caldwell argued that literary Malayalam branched from Classical Tamil and gradually evolved through extensive borrowing from Sanskrit and the loss of verbal personal endings. Modern scholarship, however, presents a more complex picture of Malayalam’s evolution, acknowledging both Tamil influence and independent linguistic pathways.