Page:Origin and spread of the Tamils.djvu/71



60 ORIGIN AND SPREAD OF THE TAMILS the country in Milyas, and earlier inhabitants in the Solymi and Termiloi or Termilai. Thesc tribes were regarded as being extremely ancient, for to Bellerophon was ascribed the change of the name of Tremilai into Lycians. Yet even in the time of Herodotus the the name Tremilai was still familiar. In the later population scholars are inclined to see a stock that migrated from the Island of Crete, which the poet of the Odyssey, or his interpolator, recognized as a land of ninety cities in which were many peoples and among them the Pelasgoi. Wild as tbis corner of Asia is, it has preserved more records, in the form of non-Greek inscriptions, than any other districts as yet of the western littoral of Asia Minor. But though the inscriptions are numerous, it cannot be said that they throw light upon the origins of the language, which, after discussions protracted over many years, cannot certainly be referred to any of the known families of language. In many respects the Lycian customs resembled those of the Carians, but in one they were conspicuously different. The Lycians counted kin through the mother, legitimatized the offspring of the union between a woman who was a citizen and a slave, and deprived of rights the children of a male citizen and a slave woman. (The Cambridge Ancient History, Edited by J. B. Bury, S. A. Cook and F. E. Adcock, Vol. II, the Egyptian and Hittite Empires to C. 1000 B.C., p. 9.) 11. Mr. Kanakasabhai says that the oldest of the Mongolian tribes who invaded Southern India and conquered the Nagas appear to have been the Marar, and the Chief of this tribe was ever afterwards knową as Palayan or "the ancient," being the most ancient of the Tamil settlers in the southern part of India. The next tribe of Tamil invaders was the Tirayar or Sea Kings. They were & great seafaring race, whose