Carnatic

India map from 1831, the Karnatik in the southeast in red

Karnatik ( English Carnatic ) is an outdated name for a landscape in southern India . The area between the Eastern Ghats and the Coromandel Coast belongs to the Carnatic . The Encyclopædia Britannica of 1911 counts the districts of Nellore , Chingleput , North Arcot , South Arcot , Tanjore , Trichinopoly , Madura and Tinnevelly as part of the Carnatic . This corresponds to most of today's state of Tamil Nadu and the southern part of Andhra Pradesh .

Karnatik is the Germanized form of the English Carnatic . This in turn provides a Anglicisation the Sanskrit designation Karnataka ( Karnataka is). Originally, the term referred to the Kannada -sprachige area in the southwestern part of the highlands of the Deccan , according to today's state of Karnataka . The Sanskrit names Karṇāṭa and Karṇāṭaka appear early in ancient Indian literature (as in the epic Mahabharata and in the Bhagavatapurana ) as a designation for a country and the people living there. It comes from the Dravidian words karu for "black" and nāṭu for "land" and refers to the black earth of the Deccan highlands. The language name Kannada ( Kannaḍa ) or Canarian language has the same etymological origin. The Muslims , who ruled over parts of the dean from the 14th century, also extended the name to the southeastern lowlands below the Eastern Ghats. During the British colonial era , the Anglicized term Carnatic was eventually narrowed down to the latter meaning in the 18th and 19th centuries. At the same time, the term Canara , which was also derived from Karnata (ka) via Kannada, was transferred to the narrow coastal strip in the west.

The term Karnatik can be found in the names of the Carnatic Wars that Great Britain and France fought out in the region in the 18th century, as well as the ruling dynasty of the Nawabs of the Carnatic, which are mostly known as the Nawabs of Arcot after their residence city of Arcot , as well as the designation Carnatic music for the southern of the two main directions of classical Indian music . As a geographical name, Karnatik is no longer used today. In contrast, the state of Mysore, which was formed after the language borders of the Kannada, was renamed Karnataka in 1973. In this way, the term was returned to its original meaning in its Sanskrit form.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Imperial Gazetteer of India, Volume 9, Oxford 1908, pp. 301 f.
2. ↑ Carnatic . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape 5 : Calhoun - Chatelaine . London 1910, p. 361 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).
3. ↑ For use in German, see Karnatik . In: Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon . 6th edition. Volume 10, Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig / Vienna 1907, p.  663 . Herders Conversations-Lexikon, Freiburg im Breisgau 1855, Volume 3, p. 555. Carnătik . In: Universal Lexicon of the Present and Past . 4., reworked. and greatly increased edition, Volume 3:  Bodmerei – Chimpansee , self-published, Altenburg 1857, p.  701 .
4. ↑ Great Petersburg Dictionary . Edited by Otto Böhtlingk and Rudolph Roth. Volume 2. St. Petersburg 1855, p. 126.
5. ^ Robert Caldwell: A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages, 4th ed. Repr., Madras 1961, pp. 30 f. See also TA Burrow & MB Emeneau: Dravidian Etymological Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford 1984, entries "1278 (a) Ta. Karu"  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , "3638 Ta. Nāṭu"  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. and "1284 Ta. kar (u) nāṭakam, kaṉṉaṭam"  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .      
6. ^ Henry Yule: Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, London 1903, entry "Carnatic" ( Memento of the original from July 14, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and still Not checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 
7. ↑ Hobson-Jobson, entry “Canara”  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .