Tying The Knots
It is on this canvas that we locate the Konkani people, their land and their language. We have made a feeble attempt to describe the Konkani land; based on certain historical records, we have placed it somewhere in the north-western quarter of the Indian peninsula, with Karnātā or Kānnadā in the south and the Teḷugu country on the east, extending up to the western sea coast. We have toyed with Kane’s contention that the word Konkan is derived from the Tamil word kon-hanam meaning ‘the forest wherein it is legitimate to plunder’; somehow echoing the Sangam literature stories of Dandaranyam and vadukar as robbers by profession habitually engaged in cattle-lifting. (Kane, 1920 : Notes On The Ancient History And Geography Of The Konkan, 390; Aiyangar, 1923 : Some Contributions Of South India To Indian Culture, 3) We need to probe that further; trans-Sahyadri Konkan is still an uncertain space.
We have also tried to look into the diversity that composes the Konkani identity. We have dealt with the enigmatic chadd’ddi, and tried to trace them to the Kshatriyas. But that has sprung more questions than answers : whether they were warriors or shepherds or farmers, is just one of them. The story of sārasvata seems to be relatively simpler; but probably not as simple as we had thought it would be. How did the sārasvata forsake their patrimony of the ‘spiritual pre-eminence’ post the first millennium BCE, as the ārya disowned and denounced the Sarasvatī fed region of Surāśtra, Aparānta, Āraṭṭa, Punjāb, Sindhu and Sauvira, their cradle ? But that touches upon only the tip of the Konkani identity, leaving out a vast mass of Konkanis who do not belong to these two communities. We need to complete the Konkani mosaic.
The most intriguing perhaps is their language. Transcending the simple label of Middle Indo-Aryan, Konkani seems to have had a far more enigmatic evolution. The closeness of the old Marathi - Jñānēśvarī, Taṁjāvarī Kōṣa, Sabhāsada Bakhara, etc - to contemporary Konkani has baffled many a scholar. Even old missionary texts have been jostled between the two languages, never sure which language the padres wrote in ! The Tāmiḷ influenced vaḍuku fifth liquid in Salcete Konkani has been the probably the least studied. Linguists have even drawn parallels between Konkani and Paisachi, the ghost language. (Taraporewala, 1955 : Elements Of The Science Of Language, 238)
