TAMILS. A Dravidian people of southern llindustan and northern Ceylon, who number more than 16,000,000. They are, perhaps, the most important of the civilized Dravidian peo ples of India. The filings of the seaports of Farther India and certain parts of Malaysia are Tamils, who have emigrated temporarily or per manently from their native land. To the Tamil group belong also, in all probability, some of the wilder tribes of the hills and the region of Tinnevelli and South Travancore.
The Tamil language is the most important of the Dravidian languages. (See DRAVIDIANS.) It is spoken in the northern half of Ceylon, and the territory between Cape Comorin and Pulicat, north of Madras, extending inland about half way across India. Tamil is divided into Old or Aon Tamil, and Modern or Kodun Tamil. The differences between the two epochs of the language are very marked. Of all the Dravidian tongues Tamil is the most archaic. It has nine cases, two numbers, and in gender distinguishes between 'high caste' (men, gods, spirits, etc.) and low caste' (animals, inanimate things, and abstract ideas). The verb is formed by suffixing the personal pronouns to a predicative verb stem. The same base, therefore, when case-suf fixes are added, serves as a noun, and when the pronouns are affixed as a verb. The original
tenses are the present, the preterite, and the future, but periphrastic formations denote the continuative or durative, the perfect and plu perfect, and the future perfect. Moods are alto gether lacking. In its vocabulary Tamil is ex ceedingly rich, especially in compounds and syno nyms. The alphabet, which is closely akin to that of the Telugu (q.v.), is based on one of the old forms of the Sanskrit Devanagari script. (See DEVANAGARI.) Tamil literature is abun dant and important. An outline is given under the title DRAVIDIANS.
Consult: Mateer, Native Life in Travancore (London, 1883) ; Caldwell. Tinnevally and the Tinnevally Mission (Madras, 1869) ; id., Com parative Grammar of the Dravidian. or South Indian Family of Languages (2d ed., London, 1375) ; Rhenius, Grammar of the Tamil Lan guage (4th ed., Madras, 1888) : Pope, First Les sons in Tamil (5th ed., Oxford, 1891) ; ITultzsch, South Indian Inscriptions, Tamil and Sanskrit (Madras, 1890-95) ; Burnell, Elements of South Indian Talrrography (2d ed.. London, 1878) ; Graul, Itiblioarca Tamulica (Leipzig, 1854-65)„