Hermann Gundert

Hermann Gundert

Hermann Gundert (Stuttgart, 4 February 1814 – 25 April 1893 in Calw, Germany) was a German missionary, scholar, and linguist, as well as the maternal grandfather of German novelist and Nobel laureate Hermann Hesse. Gundert is chiefly known for his contributions as an Indologist, and compiled a Malayalam grammar book, Malayalabhaasha Vyakaranam (1859), in which he developed and constricted the grammar spoken by the Malayalis, nowadays; a Malayalam-English dictionary (1872), and contributed to work on Bible translations into Malayalam. He worked primarily at Thalassery on the Malabar coast, in Kerala, India. Gundert also contributed to the fields of history, geography and astronomy.

Scholarly Works

During his stay in Illikunnu near Tellicherry (Thalassery), he published around thirteen books in Malayalam including a translation of the Bible, Old Testament from Hebrew and New Testament from Greek. The archives of information he collected from Tellicherry are kept in the University of Tübingen and were collected and compiled by the scholar Dr. Scaria Zacharia as Thalassery Rekhakal.

 

In Kerala, he took a deep interest in the local culture and the Malayalam language, attempting a systematic grammar of the language. This was one of the prominent non-Sanskrit-based approaches to Indic grammar. Gundert considered Malayalam to have diverged from Proto-Tamil–Malayalam, or Proto-Dravidian.

 

Apart from the early inscriptions found on copper and stone, Gundert traced Malayalam to the Rāma Charitam, a poem predating the Sanskrit alphabet. Gundert is highly regarded among linguistic experts and his dictionary has been described as "monumental" in a review of the work on Dravidian languages.

Publications 

Year published	Title	Description
1843	Keralolpathi	Origin of Kerala, translation from Malayalam Keralolpathi.
1845	Pazhancholmala	String of Malayalam proverbs for Christian theological idioms.
1851	Malayala Bhasha Viyakaranam	Malayalam Grammar
1860	Paathamala	First textbook in Malayalam
1868	Kerala pazhama	33 years of Malayali history, from Vasco da Gama's arrival in 1498
1871	Malayalam-English Dictionary
1879	Malayalarajyam	The land of Malayalam
1847 June	Rajyasamacharam (News of the Kingdom)	Newspaper
1847 October	Paschimodayam	"Rise of the West" or "Dawn of the West", a magazine

Other Contributions

1.      He was the one who introduced the punctuation marks – full stop, comma, semicolon, colon, and question mark – into the Malayalam language.

 

2.       Malayalam-English Dictionary. He returned to Germany in 1859. There he took ten more years to complete the dictionary. (1872)  A number of words in this dictionary are not in use these days. But this is a priceless treasure for those who study the development of Malayalam.

Years in Germany 

Due to poor health Gundert had to leave India in 1859. In Calw, the Black Forest, he joined the Calw Publishing House and became its director in 1862. He published many books and articles as well as several magazines, including a children’s magazine. Julie Gundert died in Calw on 18 September 1885, and Hermann Gundert on 25 April 1893. Both were buried on the Calw cemetery, where the family grave still exists. The Noble laureate, Hermann Hesse was his grandson through his daughter, Marie Gundert (1842-1902).

Though Gundert came to Kerala as a missionary, he is remembered today mainly for his literary contributions. In the city of Thalassery (Tellicherry), he has been honored with a statue. The bungalow in which he used to live is now the home of the Nettur Technical Training Foundation (NTTF).

Gundert's statue near Thalassery Stadium