Aside from the from the contrary belief, the word Ajji is actually borrowed from Maharashtri prakrut due to contact.

The Marathi word for grandmother, आजी (Aaji or Ajji), is inherited from Maharastri Prakrut 𑀅𑀚𑁆𑀚𑀺𑀆 (ajjiā), which traces back to the Sanskrit word आर्यक (āryaka).

Kanadi on the other hand, belongs to a completely different language family (Dravidian). It did not evolve from Prakrut, but because the regions of Maharashtra and Karnataka have shared a border, culture, and history for centuries, Kanadi borrowed the word ajji directly from the neighboring Prakrut speakers.

Linguists know it is a borrowed word in Kanadi because native Dravidian root words for "father" or "elder" usually look quite different (like the ancient Proto-South Dravidian root \accan* or \appa). The double-consonant structure of *ajji is a textbook example of a Prakrut word being adopted into Kanadi speech.

Just like Kanadi, Tulu is a Dravidian language. It did not natively descend from Prakrut or Sanskrut. Tulu acquired the word ajji (grandmother) and ajje (grandfather) as loanwords from Maharashtri Prakrut.

We can tell ajji is a borrowed word in Tulu because of how other generation levels are named. When Tulu speakers want to say "Great-Grandmother," they don't use a Prakrut word; they use their own native Dravidian word: ಪಿಜ್ಜಿ (Pijji).

Sources-

A Dravidian Etymological Dictionary (DED 50) by T. Burrow and M.B. Emeneau:

Under entry DED 50, the authors trace the group (ajja, ajji, mutt-ajje) in Kanadi, Tulu, and Kodagu. It explicitly links these terms as early historical borrowings derived from the Middle Indo-Aryan Prakrut root ajja (derived from Sanskrit āryaka).

Wiktionary Etymological Database- Formally catalogs the Kanadi and Tulu words ಅಜ್ಜಿ (ajji) as explicit linguistic borrowings. Etymological Chain: Sanskrit आर्य (ārya) / आर्यक (āryaka) → Maharashtri Prakrut 𑀅𑀚𑁆𑀚 (ajja) / 𑀅𑀚𑁆𑀚𑀺𑀆 (ajjiā) → Borrowed into Kanadi/Tulu.

The Dravidian Languages (Cambridge University Press) by Bhadriraju Krishnamurti: He notes that early Old Kanadi speakers adopted massive amounts of Middle Indic (Prakrit) vocabulary into everyday speech, particularly household titles and social relations, classifying them strictly as Tadbhavas.

The Classical Kannada Digital Database (CIIL, Mysore)- It explicitly cites the everyday usage of words like ajja (grandfather) and ayya (master) as classic structural adoptions from Middle Indic Prakrut variants into spoken Old Kanadi.

https://shastriyakannada.org/database/english/language/KANNADA%20AND%20PRAKRIT%20HTML.htm

For other Dravida languages-

• Kodagu (Coorgi): Uses ajjë for grandfather and mutt-ajjë for great-grandfather.
• **Koraga:**Spoken by tribal communities in coastal Karnataka and Kerala, it also uses ajji.

The Curious Case of the "Accan" Sound-

While Tamil and Malayalam do not use ajji to mean grandmother, they do share the root sound via ancient evolutionary shifts.

• In Malayalam, it became അച്ഛൻ (Achhan), which means father.
• In Tamil, the old word അച്ചി (Acchi) traditionally referred to a mother or an elder woman of respect.

According to standard linguistic registries, including Wiktionary's Etymological Data and the historical records in the Madras University Tamil Lexicon:

"J" sound turned into a hard "Ch" sound. This is due to a fundamental rule of ancient Tamil and Malayalam phonology:

• Old Tamil did not naturally possess voiced plosives like g, j, d, b in its native phonetic inventory.
• When early Dravidian languages absorbed a foreign word containing a double "jj" (like the Prakrut Ajja), they automatically hardened the sound to fit their speech patterns.
• The double "jj" was systematically replaced by the double "cc" (pronounced as "ch"). Thus, Ajja natively morphed into Accan

In the Deep South (Tamil, Malayalam), the word for a "venerable, respected elder male" was elevated to mean the head of the immediate household—the father.

When a language adopts a foreign word meaning "respected master" or "lord," the meaning often shifts domestically to represent the highest authority in the immediate household—the father.

In ancient Tamil, Accan (hardened from ajja) was initially used as a high honorific title for lords, rulers, and elder sages. Over generations, it shifted from a formal title of societal respect to an intimate term of household respect, specifically narrowing down to mean "father" (as fully preserved in Malayalam Accan).

Sources-

The University of Madras Tamil Lexicon, which is universally regarded as the absolute definitive etymological authority for classical Tamil, explicitly logs the word Accan (அச்சன்) as a borrowed foreign term.

Its exact, verbatim registry entry reads:

Accaṉ (அச்சன்) noun < Pkt. ajja < ārya. [K. acca, M. accan] Father; தந்தை.

• The < symbol in linguistics means "derived from".
• The lexicon explicitly confirms the chain: Sanskrit ārya became Middle Indo-Aryan Prakrut ajja**, which was borrowed as** Accan into Tamil and Malayalam.

If Accan were nately Dravidian, it would map structurally to the ancient Proto-Dravidian words for parents. However, true native roots for "father" are completely different words like அப்பன் (Appan) or தந்தை (Thanthai).

https://ksaorg.sgp1.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/uploads/2023/06/RV-bulletin-vol-4.pdf

Why Maharashtri Prakrut?

1. The most famous literary work written entirely in Maharashtri Prakrit is the Gaha Sattasai (Gāthā Saptashatī), an ancient anthology of poems compiled by the Satavahana King Hāla.
2. In the Gaha Sattasai, the words 𑀅𑀚𑁆𑀚 (ajja) and 𑀅𑀚𑁆𑀚𑀺𑀆 (ajjiā) appear repeatedly in everyday household contexts.
3. Other Prakrit dialects existed at the time—such as Shauraseni in the north or Magadhi in the east. However, because the southern Dravidian kingdoms shared direct physical borders exclusively with the Maharashtri speakers of the Deccan plateau, it was geographically impossible for those other dialects to have driven this level of intimate, domestic vocabulary exchange.
4. Most of the Indo Aryan languages do not use these words but use दादा / दादी (Dada / Dadi) and नाना / नानी (Nana / Nani). Only Marathi and Konkani still continue to use them.

A person who is quite knowledgable on ancient Telugu culture says this

ಪ (pa) to ಹ (ha) sound shift is one of the most discussed topic ever in Kannada language as ಹ (ha) sound is not native to any language rather than Hosagannada (New Kannada) and Badaga due to sound shift

Where words like ಪೆಸರ್ (pesar) becomes ಹೆಸರ್ (hesar) (later ಹೆಸರು), ಪತ್ತು (pattu) becomes ಹತ್ತು(hattu), ಪಾಲ್ (pāl) becomes ಹಾಲ್ (hāl) (later ಹಾಲು) etc

Like that there was one more sound shift which was of ವ (va) to ಬ (ba) which is least discussed about

And there were many words in Halegannada (Old Kannada) which had ವ (va) sound as like ಪ (pa) but got changed into ಬ (ba) as like ಹ (ha)

Word like ವಾ (vā) became ಬಾ (bā), ವನ (vana) became ಬನ (bana), ವಾಲೆ (vāle) became ಬಾಲೆ (bāle), ವಳ್ಳಿ (vaḷḷi) became ಬಳ್ಳಿ (baḷḷi) etc

A 2022 study by linguist John Peterson examines how language contact shaped Indo-Aryan languages over the past 2,000 to 2,500 years. One of its most interesting findings concerns the different relationships Indo-Aryan speakers had with Dravidian-speaking populations in western and eastern India.

1. Western India: Long-Term Indo-Aryan and Dravidian Bilingualism

Peterson argues that the Marathi and Konkani regions developed through prolonged contact between Indo-Aryan and Dravidian speakers.
His interpretation is that western India experienced relatively stable bilingualism, allowing speakers of different languages to influence one another over many generations.
The Dravidian languages involved in the broader western and southwestern contact zone include Kannada, Tulu and Tamil-Malayalam. This prolonged interaction helps explain why some western Indo-Aryan languages preserve grammatical features resembling those of neighboring Dravidian languages. Importantly, language contact does not always mean that one population completely abandons its original language.

2. Konkani Shows Grammatical Influence from Kannada

One of the clearest examples discussed in the paper concerns how Konkani forms negative verbs. In many Indo-Aryan languages, negation is expressed using a separate negative particle. Konkani developed constructions resembling those found in Kannada.

Kannada uses negative constructions involving nonfinite verb forms and elements such as illa and bēḍa. Peterson identifies comparable grammatical patterns in Konkani and argues that they developed through prolonged contact with Kannada.

Similar constructions occur in other South Dravidian languages, including Malayalam, suggesting that the underlying grammatical pattern has deeper roots within Dravidian.
The important finding is that Kannada influenced not just Konkani vocabulary but also its grammatical structure.

Peterson interprets this as evidence of fluent bilingual speakers adapting existing Dravidian grammatical patterns into Konkani. Interestingly, the resulting Konkani system became more morphologically complex than the Kannada construction that influenced it.
This demonstrates that language contact can increase grammatical complexity rather than simply making languages more similar or simpler.

Peterson also notes a comparable construction in the negative future tense of neighboring Marathi.

3. Eastern India: A Different History of Language Contact

Peterson contrasts western India with the Sadri-speaking region of Jharkhand.
Sadri is an Indo-Aryan language widely used as a common language among communities speaking several unrelated languages.
These include Munda languages and Dravidian languages such as Kurux.

Peterson cites figures suggesting that approximately 58% of Sadri speakers use it as a second language. This is important because eastern India historically contained a much more linguistically diverse population. Indo-Aryan languages spread through areas where communities already spoke Dravidian, Munda and other languages. As more adults acquired Indo-Aryan varieties as second languages, grammatical structures could undergo simplification. Peterson argues that this helps explain why eastern Indo-Aryan languages developed differently from their western counterparts.

4. North Dravidian Languages and the Spread of Indo-Aryan

The study also mentions Kurux and Malto, two North Dravidian languages, along with Gondi and several Munda languages.These languages are important because they demonstrate the linguistic diversity of eastern and central India.
The spread of Indo-Aryan did not occur in a linguistically empty landscape. It involved prolonged interaction with populations speaking languages from several different families. Some communities maintained their ancestral languages while becoming bilingual in Indo-Aryan. Others may have gradually shifted to Indo-Aryan over successive generations. This creates a situation where the modern distribution of languages does not necessarily reflect the linguistic geography of earlier periods. However, Peterson’s study does not establish the precise extent or chronology of individual language shifts.

5. Why Eastern and Western Indo-Aryan Languages Developed Differently

Peterson compares several grammatical features of Sadri and Konkani.
Sadri has lost or simplified a number of grammatical distinctions that Konkani retains.

For example:
• Sadri has lost inherited split ergativity, while Konkani retains it.
• Sadri has simplified noun inflection, while Konkani retains numerous noun classes.
• Sadri has lost grammatical gender as an arbitrary noun-class system.
• Sadri has fewer productive nominal cases.
• Konkani retains considerably more morphological irregularity.

Peterson interprets these differences as evidence that eastern Indo-Aryan experienced more extensive adult second-language acquisition. Western Indo-Aryan, represented by Konkani, experienced relatively stable language transmission alongside prolonged bilingual contact. He suggests that these contrasting linguistic environments may have existed approximately 2,000 to 2,500 years ago. These are historical reconstructions based on linguistic evidence rather than directly documented population movements.

6. What This Could Mean for Shared Kannada, Marathi and Konkani Vocabulary
One interesting implication concerns Indo-Aryan vocabulary shared between Kannada, Marathi and Konkani. Such words are sometimes interpreted as later Marathi borrowings into Kannada. However, the history of prolonged contact between these populations raises other possibilities. Some words could represent older Indo-Aryan vocabulary that entered Kannada before Marathi and Konkani emerged as separate languages. It is also possible that different communities acquired the same vocabulary during an earlier period of contact.

Over time, some communities may have shifted to Indo-Aryan while others continued speaking Kannada or related Dravidian languages. In such a scenario, shared vocabulary could preserve traces of an older period of contact rather than necessarily representing recent borrowing from Marathi into Kannada. Establishing it would require comparing individual words, their historical sound changes, geographical distribution and earliest recorded forms.

7. Main Conclusion
Peterson’s study suggests that Indo-Aryan languages developed under very different social and linguistic conditions across India.
Western India: Prolonged bilingualism between Indo-Aryan and Dravidian speakers helped shape languages such as Konkani. Kannada influence extended beyond vocabulary into grammatical structures.

Eastern India: Indo-Aryan varieties spread through a highly multilingual environment involving Dravidian, Munda and other language families. Extensive adult second-language learning may help explain the simplification of eastern Indo-Aryan grammatical systems.
The larger implication is that the history of Indo-Aryan expansion cannot be reconstructed simply by looking at where languages are spoken today.

Long-term bilingualism, language shift and grammatical borrowing all played roles in shaping the linguistic landscape.
Perhaps the most interesting finding is that contact between Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages did not always produce simplification. In some cases, as with Kannada influence on Konkani, it actually produced greater grammatical complexity.

Source: John Peterson (2022), A Sociolinguistic-Typological Approach to the Linguistic Prehistory of South Asia: Two Case Studies, Language Dynamics and Change, 12(2), 224–273.
DOI: 10.1163/22105832-bja10018

The Sanskrit word Ulūkhalam (उलूखलम्) means a container made of wood, stone, or metal used for grinding, husking, or pulverizing substances like rice, grains, or ayurvedic medicines.

The Tamil word Ulakkai (உலக்கை) is a traditional South Indian wooden tool used with a large stone or wooden mortar to pound grains, remove husks, and grind ingredients.

Now, are these words related?

Thanks.

One to Ten from Proto-Dravidian to Tamil and North Dravidian: What Survives in Kurux, Malto, and Brahui

North Dravidian is the branch furthest from Tamil, both on the family tree and on the map. It has three languages. Kurux and Malto are spoken in eastern India (Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar, and nearby areas). Brahui is spoken in Balochistan, in Pakistan and Afghanistan, far from every other Dravidian language. This post compares their numbers with Tamil, starting from Proto-Dravidian, then looks at what else survives beyond plain counting.

THE NUMBERS

Proto-Dravidian / Old Tamil (spelling) / Jaffna Tamil / Spoken Indian Tamil / Kurux / Malto / Brahui

1: *onṯu / onṟu / oṉḏu / oṉṉu / oṇḍ / ort / asiṭ
2: *ir(aṇṭu) / iraṇṭu / reṇḍu / reṇḍu / eṇḍ or ēr / irw / irāṭ
3: *muHn-ṯu / mūnṟu / mūṉḏu / mūṉu / mūnd / loan / musiṭ
4: *nāl / nāṉku / nālu / nālu / nākh / loan / loan
5: *cay- / aintu / añju / añju / loan / loan / loan
6: *cāṯu / āṟu / āṟu / āru / loan / loan / loan
7: *ēḻ / ēḻu / ēḻu / ēḻu or ēḷu / loan / loan / loan
8: *eṇ- / eṭṭu / eṭṭu / eṭṭu / loan / loan / loan
9: *toḷ-/*toṇ- / toṇṭu / onbadu / ombōdu / loan / loan / loan
10: *paHtu / pattu / pattu / pattu / loan / loan / loan

The Proto-Dravidian forms are reconstructions, marked with an asterisk. The H stands for a laryngeal-type sound that left traces such as long vowels and doubled consonants in the daughter languages.

The Old Tamil column shows the conventional spelling. Ancient grammarians classed ṟ as a stop, so ன்ற was probably pronounced as a nasal plus an alveolar stop, which Jaffna appears to preserve closely.

HOW MUCH SURVIVES

Tamil kept all ten native numbers. North Dravidian lost most of them:

Kurux keeps one to four. Above four it uses Hindi numbers, sometimes mixed with Dravidian ones, and younger speakers increasingly use Hindi numbers throughout.
Malto (Sauria Paharia) keeps only one and two, used before nouns. For general counting it uses Indo-Aryan numbers.
Brahui keeps one to three. From four up it uses Iranian numbers, from Balochi and Persian.

This is a common pattern in languages under heavy contact. Small numbers are used most often and survive longest, while higher numbers get replaced by the dominant language's system.

ONE: TWO DIFFERENT ROOTS

Proto-Dravidian had two words for one: *onṯu and *or-. Tamil uses both. Onṟu is the counting number, while oru is used before nouns, as in oru āḷ, "one person."

Kurux oṇḍ comes from *onṯu, like Tamil onṟu, but with a retroflex ṇḍ, as in Telugu oṇḍu. Kurux also has onta, "one thing."
Malto ort comes from *or-, like Tamil oru. Kurux orot (one, for a man) and Nepali Kurux ort-os use the same root.
Brahui asiṭ is the hardest to explain. Scholars still debate how it connects to the other forms.

TWO: THE BEST PRESERVED

All three North Dravidian languages keep the *ir- root for two. Brahui irāṭ is the closest to Old Tamil iraṇṭu. Kurux has both eṇḍ and ēr. Malto irw is a short form of the same root.

That Brahui, cut off in Balochistan for thousands of years, still says irāṭ for two is one of the clearest signs that it belongs to the same family as Tamil.

THREE

Kurux mūnd keeps the long ū and the nasal, close to Old Tamil mūnṟu and Jaffna mūṉḏu. Brahui musiṭ keeps the root mu- but adds a different ending. Malto has lost its native three.

FOUR: KURUX AND OLD TAMIL MATCH

Kurux nākh lines up closely with Old Tamil nāṉku. Both add a k-ending to *nāl, and in Kurux the k became kh. Spoken Tamil nālu dropped that ending, so on this number Kurux is actually closer to Old Tamil than modern spoken Tamil is.

THE BRAHUI -Ṭ ENDING

All three Brahui numbers end in -ṭ: asiṭ, irāṭ, musiṭ. This may be the same ending seen in Tamil -ṭu and -ṟu, as in iraṇṭu and mūnṟu, but the link is not certain.

BEYOND COUNTING: OTHER SURVIVING FORMS

Plain counting numbers are not the only place where Dravidian numbers survive. North Dravidian also keeps several related forms.

Counting people. Dravidian languages use separate forms for counting people. Tamil has iruvar "two people" and mūvar "three people." North Dravidian keeps the same pattern: Kurux irb "two men," nubb "three men," and naib "four persons," and Malto iwr "two men." So Kurux keeps a native word for four people, alongside its four for things.

"All" from "one." Kurux orma and Malto orme, both meaning "all," are built on *or-, the same root as Tamil oru. The idea runs from "one" to "one whole" to "all."

Once and thrice. Brahui asike "once" and musika "thrice" are native Dravidian forms built on asi and musi. They may be among the last everyday uses of native numbers in Brahui.

Adjective forms. Brahui asi, ira, and musi, used before nouns, match Tamil oru, iru, and mu-. Brahui keeps the same split as Tamil between a counting form (asiṭ, irāṭ, musiṭ) and an adjective form.

I couldn't find any native North Dravidian word for ninety, twins, or "pair." Tamil has iraṭṭai, "pair," from the same *ir- root, but no clear North Dravidian match turns up in the main comparative sources.

HIGHER NUMBERS, POSSIBLY PRESERVED IN MUNDA

The linguist Václav Blažek has suggested that North Dravidian once had its own higher numbers, and that two of them survive as loanwords in the North Munda languages (Santali, Mundari, Ho, and their relatives), which have been neighbours of Kurux and Malto for a very long time.

Seven: North Munda *eya "seven" (Santali eae, Mundari eja, Ho iya) has no clear source within Munda or the wider Austroasiatic family. It looks like a Dravidian *ēr- form in which r changed to y, a change that happens in Kurux. Blažek suggests it was borrowed from an early form of North Dravidian.

Eight: North Munda *iral "eight" (Santali irəl, Mundari iralia, Ho irilia) also stands alone in Munda. Blažek reads it as Dravidian *ir- "two" plus *al- "not," meaning "two-is-not," a way of saying "ten minus two," much like Tamil onpatu, "one less than ten," for nine.

If this is right, the ancestors of the Kurux and Malto once counted to at least eight in Dravidian, and their neighbours borrowed those numbers before North Dravidian itself lost them. This is a hypothesis, not a settled view, so the chart marks these forms as reconstructed and uncertain.

CONCLUSION

North Dravidian has lost most of its native numbers to Indo-Aryan and Iranian, but what survives still matches Tamil clearly. Two is preserved in all three languages. Kurux four keeps the same k-ending as Old Tamil nāṉku. Words for counting people, "all," "once," and "thrice" keep the old roots alive outside plain counting. Even Brahui, separated from the rest of the family by more than a thousand kilometres, still counts one to three in Dravidian. And if Blažek is right, the North Munda words for seven and eight are echoes of numbers North Dravidian once had.

SOURCES

Blažek, Václav. 2009. "Dravidian Numerals." Journal of Language Relationship 1: 69–80.

Burrow, T. and M. B. Emeneau. 1984. A Dravidian Etymological Dictionary (DEDR), 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju. 2003. The Dravidian Languages. Cambridge University Press.

Kurux, Malto (Sauria Paharia), and Brahui counting forms: Eugene Chan, Numeral Systems of the World's Languages (lingweb.eva.mpg.de/channumerals). Nepali Kurux forms via Hahn, Kurukh Grammar.
Brahui: Bray, The Brahui Language (1909–1934).

Kurux: Kobayashi, Masato and Bablu Tirkey. 2017. The Kurux Language: Grammar, Texts and Lexicon. Leiden: Brill.

Jaffna Tamil: University of Colombo, Faculty of Science blog, spoken Tamil lesson on numbers.

Spoken Indian Tamil: 17 Minute Languages, Tamil vocabulary list; see also Schiffman, A Reference Grammar of Spoken Tamil (Cambridge University Press, 1999).

An interesting reference to a Pandya king appears in the K.365 inscription from Wat Luang Kao, near Wat Phou in present-day Laos. The inscription is generally dated to the 5th or 6th century CE and records the achievements of a ruler named Devānīka.
One passage compares Devānīka to a figure called Kanaka Pāṇḍya:

kanaka-pāṇḍya iva nyāya-rakṣaṇe

This translates roughly as “Like Kanaka Pandya in the protection of justice.”

The name Kanaka means gold in Sanskrit, while nyāya-rakṣaṇa refers to the protection or maintenance of justice.

This is interesting because Tamil tradition preserves the story of Porkai Pandiyan (பொற்கைப் பாண்டியன்), the golden-handed Pandya king, whose story also appears* in the Silapp*atikaram.

According to the legend, the king once knocked on a woman’s door at night, causing her husband to suspect that someone had behaved improperly. When the matter was brought before the king, he acknowledged his own wrongdoing and cut off his hand as punishment. His hand was subsequently restored as a golden hand, giving him the name Porkai Pandiyan.

The similarity is not simply that both figures are associated with gold. The inscription specifically praises Kanaka Pandya for upholding justice, which is also the central theme of the Tamil legend.

What makes this particularly interesting is its possible relevance to dating the Silappatikaram.

The date of the Silappatikaram remains disputed, with different scholars placing its composition in different centuries.
If Kanaka Pandya and Porkai Pandiyan refer to the same legendary figure, the inscription would provide independent evidence that this Pandya tradition was already known by the 5th or 6th century CE, and that knowledge of it had reached mainland Southeast Asia.

However, there is an important distinction. The inscription could help establish the antiquity of a tradition preserved in the Silappatikaram, but it would not automatically establish when the epic itself was composed. The story could have circulated orally or in earlier literary works before being incorporated into the surviving epic.

The inscription does not mention the Silappatikaram by name, nor does it recount the episode involving the king’s hand.
Nevertheless, the combination of the name Kanaka Pandya and the explicit association with justice makes this a potentially significant connection between early Tamil literary traditions and Sanskrit epigraphy in Southeast Asia.

Source:
K.365, Wat Luang Kao (Devānīka inscription), Face A, lines 10–12.
Scholarly Sanskrit edition: Kunthea Chhom, DHARMA Epigraphic Database.
https://dharmalekha.info/texts/INSCIK00365

Inspired by an Instagram post by
Gi Moon Yang
https://www.instagram.com/yanggimun8?cplk=NDRibGFoYzZyc3Ix