TAMIZHI

ORIGIN OF TAMIL

● Tamil is the oldest dravidian language of the world. Tamil is spoken by many
countries like Malaysia, Singapore, and Indian states such as Kerala, Karnataka,
Andhra pradesh and Telungana.
● It is said that Tamil is the root of every language in the world. Tamil is the longest
surviving classical language in the world.
● It is recorded in Tamil literature for over 2000 years. According to an
Archaeological survey of India about 600,000 inscriptions 100,000 inscriptions
were in Tamil.
● Mount Girnar in Gujarat has old inscriptions in it., which no one can read. In the
13th century Muhammad-bin-tuglaq tried to read those inscriptions using old
pundits, but they failed. In the 17th century British were very well interested to
know more about our religions, scripts, spiritualities, etc..
● With the assistance of James Prinsep a British treasury in 1784, found that the
inscription was not Sanskrit, it was more older than that.
● While searching for more clues using fossils Chrisitan Lassen, a orientalist
professor, found a coin called BILINGUAL COIN. It has two different languages
printed on it. One was Greek and the other was weird. He matched the greek
words and matched it with the weird words and found that the oldest language of
India is BRAHMI SCRIPT.
● A Jain book titled as “Samavayanga Suddha” listed the ancient languages in
India, like Brahmi it is also mentioned as the language Tamizhi.
● In the 1st century AD in a Buddhist book called “Lalithavistra”, is listed 64
ancient languages, Brahmi has mentioned but instead of Tamizhi they had
mentioned Dravidi.
● So far, in all the excavations that have been carried out in other parts of India, no
pot shards or any materials with brahmi script were found. But wherever
excavations were handled we found plenty of Tamizhi scripts.
● In the recent excavation held in Porunthal they found a pot written in Tamizhi
script. When they gave it for carbon dating they found that it was from 490 BC.
● After this they determined that Tamizhi was used from the 5th century BC.
● Whatever the sangam literature talks about ancient Tamizh language, if those are
found in Tamizhi script then Tamizh are not just a myth and it can be proved with
evidence that it was ancient Tamizh people’s culture.
● From North India till Deccan plateau like Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu etc.. In this
region during the iron age a script was found everywhere which is called
GRAFFITI. This graffiti is the same from gujarat till sri lanka. So, instead of calling it
as graffiti, it was believed by people and historians that it is an undeciphered
script.
● 5000 years ago, the ancient continents like the Egyptian, Mesopotamia and
Indus valley, the people who lived during then had used such graffiti to write their
language.
● Before the era of Tamizhi scripts which is the 6th century BC as the excavation
results proved this graffiti was used to write Tamizhi and it is the same one found
everywhere up to Gujarat, it establishes a strong relationship with Indus valley
civilization graffiti.
● Tamil Nadu graffiti was obtained as the continuation of Indus valley graffiti, not
just that in the archaeological excavations that took place in Tamil Nadu
continuity and links to indus valley civilization were found.
● The habit of writing in palm leaves has been prevalent in Tamil Nadu, the letters
have taken a circular form wherever there was usage of palm leaves. Not only in
Tamil Nadu, but also in Andhra, Odisha, till Burma the change of circular shape in
letters happened, says Caldwell in his book of Comparative grammar of Dravidian
languages.
● The year of Raja raja cholan that is after 2nd century AD, the circular letters were
called “Vatteluttu script”.
● When Tamizh people were using Tamizh language and Vatteluttu scripts, the
Pallavas who came to power after capturing the Tamizh land used prakrit and
Ashokan brahmi. People were anxious if Pallavas will accept Tamizh as their
administrative language or will they declare prakrit as the official language.
● They created a new script to solve the complications, they called it “GRANTHA”
which means script. It is now named as Pallava Grantha. It is declared as a new
administrative language.
● In the chola empire they continued the Pallava Grantha script.
● To avoid the confusions of reading the Tamizh language for Buddhists monks
THOLKAPPIYAR introduced a new technique as keeping dots for mei eluthukal.