Page:Origin and spread of the Tamils.djvu/50



SPREAD OF TAMIL CULTURE ABROAD 39 footing here. Tradition records that during the time of Manikkavāsagar (9th century A.D.), the reigning Buddhist king of Ceylon paid a visit to Chidambaram and became converted to Saivism. This we can take as the starting point of the rise and growth of a Tamil kingdom in North Ceylon. Ibn Batuta who visited Ceylon in 1344, pays a tribute to the Tamil king in Ceylon as one versed in Persian. Later iť became part of the Vijayanagar empire. Ever since, it has remained Tamil and today all Jaffna including the northern part of Ceylon is all Tamil besides the emi. grants. The term Elam in Mesopotamia is suggestive and shows that to be a name given possibly by the emigrants from Ceylon who settled there and were responsible for the growth of the town. For, is not Ceylon known as Ilam ( u) in literature and epigraphy ? The people of Elam were non-Semitic and closely related to Sumerian culture. Their language was agglutinative but did not belong to the group Alarodian like the Sumer tongue. In the same way, Caria 1 adjoining Lycia was very probably Cera after a settlement from Kerala. The linguistic affinity between Somali langu. age and Tamil is remarkable. A distinct contribution of the ancient Dravidian to world culture is the Dravidian tongue. The group of agglutinative dialects with a few exceptions look to the ancient Tamil language primarily as their parent. Can we say that the service of Drāvida was to give the tongue to the tongueless?