TAMIL' (more properly spelled Tamir', but erroneously written Tamul, and errone ously termed by the earlier Europeans "the Malabar") is the name of the language ear liest cultivated of all the idioms which the rev. R. Caldwell designates as Dravidian— this term comprising, according to him, besides the Tamil, the Telugu; Canarese; Malay tilam, or Malayfirrna; Tul'u, or Tul'uva; Toda, or Tuda, or Tudava; Mita; Gond; and Khond, or Kund, or Ku. " The Tamil language," this learned author says in his Com parative Grammar of the Draldclian or South-Indian Family of Languages, spoken throughout the vast plain of the Carnatic, or country below the Ghauts, from Pulicat to cape Comorin, and from the Ghauts, or central mountain-range of southern India, to the bay of Bengal. It is also spoken in the southern part of the Travancore country, on the western side of the Ghauts, from cape Comorin to the neighborhood of Trivandrum; and in the northern and north-western parts of Ceylon, where Tamil'ians commenced to form settlements prior even to the Christian era, and from whence they have gradually thrust out the Singhalese. All throughout Ceylon, the coolies in the coffee-plantations are Tamil'ians; the majority of the money-making classes even in Colombo are Tamillans; and ere long the Tamil'ians will have excluded the Singhalese from almost every office of profit and trust in their own island. The majority of the domestic servants of Euro peens, and of the camp-followers iu every part of the presidency of Madras being Tamil' people, Tamil' is the prevailing language in all military cantonments in southern India, whatever be the vernacular language of the district; hence, at Cananore, in the Malayfila country; at Bangalore, in the Canarese country; at Bellary, in the Telugu country; and at where Hindustani may be considered as the vernacular, the language which most frequently meets the ear in the bazaar is the Tamil'. The majority of the Elingi, or Hindus who are found in Pegu, Penang, Singapore, and other places in the further east, are Tamil'ians Including Tamil'ians resident in military stations and distant colonies, and the Tamil'ian inhabitants of s. Travancore and northern Cey
lon . . . . the people who speak the Tamil' language may be estimated at about ten millions." " Tamii' includes two dialects, the classical and the colloquial, or the ancient and the modern, called respectively the Shen-Tamil' and the Kod'un-Tamil'. The former is the language of poetry and of the ancient inscriptions; it contains fewer words bor rowed from the Sanskrit than the colloquial Tamil', and among these chiefly such as express abstract ideas of philosophy, science, religion, and technical terms of the more elegant arts; and, in general, it so considerably differs from the colloquial Tamil' that it is almost unintelligible to the unlearned Tamil'ian. Of all the Indian languages, Tamil' has the most imperfect alphabet. The latter consists of 12 vowels—viz., a, a, i, f, u, , g, o, 4, di, and au—and of 18 oonsonants—viz., k, eh, t', t, p, B. ng, it, n', n, m, a final n, y, r, 1, v, r', t. Compared to the Devanagari alphabet of Sanskrit, it is deficient there fore in the vowels r'i, and lr'i, though it possesses a short e and a short o, which the Devanagari has not; it has but one sound fol k, g, gh; for eh, chh, j, jh; for t', VA; for t, th, d, dh; and for p, ph,b,bh. It is destitute, moreover, of the Sanskrit aspi rate h, of the Sanskrit sibilants, s, s', and sh, and of Annswa'ra and Visarga. Of com bined consonants, which abound in the Devanagari alphabet, it admits only the junction of the nasal and the mute, as n-t, n'-t', etc.; doubled nasals, as n-n, M-74, etc.; doubled surds, as k-k, eh-eh, etc. ; also t'k, t'p, Rk, 1?eh, Rp, yy, ll, vv, and nR; of triple conso nants, only end and ynd. If Sanskrit derivatives, therefore, are Tamil'ized, various devices are resorted to in order to separatd Sanskrit groups of consonants. Thus, Sanskrit pra becomes Tamil' pica; Sanskrit kr'ishn'a becomes Tamil' kirutTina-n or kit't'ina-n (t't' instead of sh).