Tamil people

“ To be admired their backs must be turned.
The Tamil people, who inhabit this part of India, are an exceedingly black and ugly race, and the Brahmins are the only people who have any pretensions whatever to fair skins. On the whole the peasantry in the country between the Neilgherry and Pulney hills appeared to be tolerably well off, and the country was well cultivated, considering the unpropitious climate and poor soil. ”

“ After these two examples it is quite superfluous to expatiate any more to the reader on the great qualities of the commentator. The Tamil people have preserved this commentary with the most religious care. Indeed it as well as the Kural have been among the greatest sources of inspiration to the princes of the Tamil country for a good and just rule and for successful statecraft. Even thirty years ago the Zemindars of the Tamil land were great lovers of the Kural and their children were carefully initiated into the rules of state policy and good government that abound in it and in Parimêlajahar. ”

“ It was an ideal instrument to use if, without any loss of face, some informal contacts were to be initiated in a context in which clearly the Tamil people in the Vanni are increasingly oppressed and resentment is rising. ”

“ THE division of the Tamil people, over fifteen million strong, into Classes and Masses, though convenient and simple, is far too simple to be of value in giving an accurate idea of the matter as it is understood from within. As we said, it is only an outside view of things. A study of Caste from an Indian point of view is a study from which you rise bewildered. ”

“ In the passage describing the despatch of monkey soldiers in search of Sita, they are directed to go to the countries of the Andhras, the Pandyas, the Cholas and the Keralas in the South, and are told that they will there see the gate of the city of the Pandyas adorned with gold and jewels [55] These descriptions in the Ramayana go to show that during Valmiki’s time, the Aryas had some knowledge of the Tamil people and considered them as a civilized nation, and that they knew the Pandyan capital to be a very wealthy city. ”

“ According to the census of 1881, the number of Tamil-speaking people throughout the province was 12,413,517, inclusive of 21,992 Yerkalas, 3843 Kurumbas, and 287 Irulas, three tribes speaking rude dialects of the language. To these should be added about 160,000 in the French possessions. But, as of all the Dravidian languages the Tamil shows the greatest tendency to spread, its area becomes ever larger, encroaching on that of the contiguous languages. ”

“ THERE was one—he has joined the company of Indian saints in glory now—the poet of the Mission, and our friend,—one so true in all his ways that a Hindu lad observing him with critical schoolboy eyes, saw in him, as in a mirror, something of the holiness of God, and, won by that look, became a Christian and a winner of souls. Some of the noblest converts of our Mission are the direct result of that Tamil poet's life. There is another; he is old, and all through his many years he has been known as the one-word man, the man of changeless truth. He is a village pastor, whom all the people love. ”

“ Tamil is the language of southern India, and is used here by the Moormen as well as by the Tamils proper. There is a Portuguese patois still spoken by European descendants and half-breeds, while the Dutch language is quite unknown, though that people remained here nearly a century and a half after the Portuguese were driven out of the island. The English tongue is becoming more and more common in all populous centres like Colombo, Trincomalee, Kandy, and Point de Galle. The Singhalese are nearly always Buddhists, while the Tamils, as a people, are Hindus. ”

“ When the Portuguese rounded Cape Comorin, they found the pearl fisheries of the Gulf of Manaar in the hands of the Paravas, whom tradition shows to have had control of this industry from time immemorial. Of the origin of these people we know extremely little. We know, however, that in the old days, from 600 B.C. and for 1,500 years or more thereafter, the country now comprehended in the districts of Madura and Tinnevelly formed the great Tamil kingdom of Pāndya. ”

“ The women have the same kindly nature as the women of the Classes, and there is surprising responsiveness sometimes, where one would least expect it. We have known a Tamil woman, distinctly of the Masses, never secluded in her girlhood, but left to bloom as a wild flower in the field, as sensitive in spirit as any lady born. The people are rough and rustic in their ways, but there are certain laws observed which show a spirit of refinement latent among them; there are customs which compare favourably with the customs of the masses at home. ”

“ Though the pure Tamil castes present a favourable contrast to the Telugu settlers in point of domestic morals, they are con sidered to be, and probably are, more untruthful and slippery. They are commonly regarded as the least scrupulous and as the most adventurous of Hindu races. One can hardly fail to read n their very look the habit of gaining their purpose by a circuitous path, and of overcoming opposition not by open resistance, but by a feigned, temporary compliance.
No Indian people, not even, I think, the Brahmans, have reached a higher point of civilization than the Tamilian Siidras ”

“ Tamil National Alliance or TNA [R.SAMPANTHAN] ; Tamil United Liberation Front or TULF [V. ANANDASANGAREE] ; United National Party or UNP [Ranil WICKREMASINGHE] ; Up-country People's Front or UPF [P. CHANDRASEKARAN] ; several ethnic Tamil and Muslim parties, represented in either Parliament or provincial councils Political pressure groups and leaders: Buddhist clergy; labor unions; Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam or LTTE [Velupillai PRABHAKARAN] (insurgent group fighting for a separate state) ; radical chauvinist Sinhalese groups such as the National Movement Against Terrorism ”

“ It was not long however before the Tamils followed, also from India; and since then, and through a long series of conflicts, the latter have maintained their position, and now form the larger part of the population in the north of the island, while the Cinghalese are most numerous in the south. Great numbers of Tamil peasants—men, women, and children—still come over from the mainland every year, and go up-country to work in the tea-gardens, where there is a great demand for coolie labour. ”

“ The Canarese, the Moguls, the Telugu Naiaks, the Mahrattas, and the Mahomedan adventurers of the Dekhan successively invaded the Tamil country within the last six centuries, and threatened to destroy every vestige of the Tamils; but at last a sterner and superior race of pale-faced men dropped, as it were, from the clouds, and saved the Tamils and all other races of India from anarchy and misrule. ”

“ The men's langútis, on the other hand, are not the inadequate rags in use in the Tamil country, but broad and flowing affairs which often reach to their knees both before and behind, and the ends of which flap about so much that they are often tucked into the waist-string. The men are less particular about wearing a turban than in the south and the women follow the Tamil fashion of dispensing with the tight-fitting bodice. ”

“ No ships of foreign nations call at their seaports for fine spun cloths, and other articles manufactured by Tamil workmen. Not only are the Tamils dead as a nation, but their industries and arts and even their old gods are dead For, Indra and Balarâma are no longer invoked by them ”

“ The present article deals with Tamil in its restricted sense only.
The Tamils, taken as the type and representatives of the Dravidian race, do not now, owing to early intermixture with the Aryan immigrants, materially differ in physical character from the other curly-haired indigenous population of India. They were at one time, on the ground of the general structure of their language, classed with the Mongoloid (Turanian, Scythian) and even the Australian races, but that classification is rejected by all the leading ethnologists. ”

“ In the interior below the ghats, Venkadam or the modern Tirupaty was the northern limit of the Tamil land. It is most remarkable that after the lapse of eighteen centuries, during which many, a kingdom rose and fell, and the Tamils, Telugus, Mahrattas, Musalmans, French and English successively rose to political power, the language boundary has remained unaltered on the eastern coast. The same cannot be said of the boundary of the Tamil land on the western coast, for, it has advanced there from Badagara to Kasaragod, a distance of about sixty miles. ”

“ They are devoted to friends, respectful to women charitable to the poor, fervent in piety and tireless in industry. “Wherever money is to be made, wherever a more apathetic or a more aristocratic people is willing to be pushed aside, thither” says a European Missionary who long resided among them, [2] “swarm the Tamils, the Greeks or Scotch of the east: the least superstitious and the most enterprising and persevering race of Hindus.” They are still the most literate people among the native races of India. ”

“ In fact, in the ancient Tamil classical works, the terms relating to Music, Grammar, Astronomy and even abstract Philosophy are of pure Tamil origin; and they indicate most clearly that those sciences were cultivated by the Tamils long before the arrival of the Brahmins or other Aryan immigrants. The Tamils obtained a knowledge of these sciences most probably from China, through Bengal or Burma, with both of which countries they had direct and constant intercourse. ”

“ The Northern portion of the island of Ceylon, where the Tamils are settled for the last eight centuries, may also be now regarded as a part of the Tamil-land. Even within these narrow limits, the Tamils were many a time in danger of being overwhelmed by other races, but a merciful Providence appears to have arrested every invading force before it could completely overrun the country. ”

“ As the Tamil immigrants came into Southern India at distant intervals of time and in separate tribes, and were fewer in number than the aboriginal Nagas and Dravidians, they had to adopt the ancient Dravidian language, and in course of time, they modified and refined it into the language now known as Tamil. ”

“ One of the greatest facts of ancient Tamil society was religious toleration, the spirit of free enquiry, or the liberty of the human understanding. The monarchs themselves openly encouraged religious discussion, for, they invited teachers of every sect to the public halls, and allowed them to preach their doctrines during festivals and other occasions of public gathering. They protected impartially the temples and monasteries of all sects ”

“ Dr Pope, however, believed Tamil to be a corruption of tenmoli, southern speech, in contradistinction to vaḍugu, the northern, i.e., Telugu language. As in the case of the Kafir, Turkish, Tagala and other typical languages, the term Tamulic or Tamulian has occasionally been employed as the designation of the whole class of Dravidian peoples and languages, of which it is only the most prominent member. The present article deals with Tamil in its restricted sense only. The Tamils proper are smaller and of weaker build than Europeans, though graceful in shape. ”

“ Accordingly we find that the Sanscrit literature of the first century of the Christian era is now a perfect blank. Curiously enough, a considerable portion of the Tamil literature of that very period has come down to us, almost intact, and reveals to us the condition of not only the Tamils, but also of other races who inhabited the rest of India in that remote age.
The vast field of ancient Tamil literature is like an unknown land into which no traveller hath yet set foot. Many of the ancient classical works in Tamil have but recently seen the light. ”

“ The percentage of beggars in the Tamil districts to the total population is '97, or more than twice what it is in the Telugu country,while in Malabar it is as low as .09. The Telugus are certainly not richer as a class than the Tamils, and the explanation of these differences is perhaps to be found in the fact that the south is more religiously inclined than the north, and has more temples and their connected charities (religion and charity go hand in hand in India) , and so offers more temptation to follow begging as a profession. Āndis are Tamil beggars. ”

“ I have mentioned before, that according to the Dravidian traditions, all the dominant tribes of S. India migrated from Northern provinces to Peninsular India. It is a distinct and a definite characteristic of essential nature, in the Tamil language, that an initial of a word can never be formed of double consonants, and compound letters formed of consonants different Varga can occur nowhere in a word. If we refer the changes under consideration to the essential peculiarities of the Tamil speech, our problem will be solved. ”

“ They to my mind are more guilty than the poor Tamil youngsters who found no protection from those who should and could have done better, but who compromised shamefully and allowed these youngsters to be dragooned to their deaths. ”

“ All the religious and philosophical poetry of Sanskrit has become fused into Tamil, which language contains a larger number of popular treatises in Occultism, Alchemy, etc., than even Sanskrit; and it is now the only spoken language of India that abounds in occult treatises on various subjects.” Going on to speak of the Tamil Adepts, the author of this article says: “The popular belief is that there were eighteen brotherhoods of Adepts scattered here and there, in the mountains and forests of the Tamil country, and presided over by eighteen Sadhoos ”