TAMIL, the name of a language and of a region where that tongue is in general use. The Tamil land is the satue with Dravira, and com prehends all the districts in which that language Is spoken, enclosing a portion of the eastern parts of the Peninsula. 1Vhen the Dravira dominion was confined to the Chola, Paridya, and Chem principalities, its northern boundary was the Palar river. When the Chola princes colonized Tonda.- 1 mandala, it was extended westward to Tripati, in line with Pulicat. Tamil was the language of three ancient dynasties of whom we have record, —the Chola of Tanjore and Combaconum, who were settled on or near the Caevery and Colerun rivers, and who, as smile suppose, gave their names to the Coromandel or Cholathandel coast ; the Pandya, whose capital is now occupied by the inhabitants of Madura ; and the Chera, who ruled at Kerala on the Malabar coast. Dravidian is term recently applied to the vernacular tongues of the great Majority of the inhabitants of Southern India. With the exeeption of Orissa, and of those districts of Western India and the Dekhan where Gujerati and the Mahrati are spoken, the whole of the peninsular portion of India, from the Vindliya mountains and the river Nerbadda to Cape Comorin, from tbe earliest period, appears to have been peopled by different branches of one and the same race, speaking different dialects of one and the same language; and scattered offshoots from the same stem may be traced still farther north and weat, as far as the Rain-10ml Hills and the mountain fastnesses of Baluchistan. Dr. Caldwell, excluding the Rajmahal, the Uraon, and the Brahui, deignates as Dravidian nine idioms current in Sonthern India, viz. Tamil, Telugu, Canarese, Malealarn, Tutu, Toda, Kota, Gond, Kliond or Kund or Ku ; and It liaa been remarked that in the cultivated languages of the Dravidian tongue, Sanskrit words aro not at all, or but very rarely einployed.
Tamil is called Aravam by the Dalian Muham mad:ins, and the Teling and Canarese races. The Tamil was formerly called by Europeans the Malabar language, but oven the educated classes write it erroneously as Tamul. It was the earlieat developed of till the Dravidian idioms, is the most copious, and contains the largest portion of indubitably ancient forms. It includes two
dialects, the classical and colloquial, the ancient and the modern, called respectively the Shen Tamil and the Kodun-Tatiiil, which so widely differ that they may almost be regarded as differ ent languages. The Tamil language is spoken throughout the vast plain of the Carnatic or country below the ghats, the country termed the Carnatic Paen Ghat by the late Muhammadan sovereigns and by the British who have succeeded them, from Cape Comorin to Pulicat, and from the Bay of Bengal to the Eastern Ghats or eastern mountain range of Southern India. It is also spoken in the southern part of theTravancore country, on the side of the Western Ghats, from Cape Comorin to the neighbourhood of Trevan drum ; and in the northern and north-western parts of Ceylon, where Tamilar formed settle ments prior to the Christian era, and from whence they have gradually thrust out the Singhalese.
The Tamil race is the least scrupulous or super stitious, and the most enterprising and persever ing, of all the IIindu people, and swarm wherever money is to be made, or wherever a more apa thetic or a more aristocratic people is waiting to be pushed aside. The majority of the Hindus found in Pegu, Penang, Singapore, and other places in the east, where they are known as Klings, are Tamilians. All throughout Ceylon, the coolies in the coffee plantations are Tamilians ; the tnajor ity of the money-making classes, even in Colombo, are Tamilians ; and ere long the Tarnilians will have excluded the Singhalese from almost every office of profit and trust in their own island. The majority of the domestic servants, and of the camp followers in the 3fadras Presidency, and nlong with its army, are Tamilians. The half of its army are Tamilians ; and the coolies who elaig,rate so largely to the Mauritius and the )Vest India Islands, were mostly of the Tamil people. including the Tamil people who are residing in tile militaty cantonments and distant colonies, aild those in South Travancore, and excluding Northern Ceylon, the people who, in 1881, speak the Tamil lang,uage are 13,068,279.