Page:Tamil studies.djvu/386

Rh ly any literature worth the name before the middle of the thirteenth century, whereas Tamil literature dates from the opening years of the Christian era. Tamil has a grammar written three centuries before Christ, whereas Malayalam had none till so late as A. D. 1860. Tamil, at least the literary phase of it, had been well defined and formed two millenniems ago, while Malayalam is even to-day in a state of formation. It is inconceivable, therefore, how the early Malayalam literature could have been influenced by the early Tamil poets, particularly when we remember that all social intercourse between Kerala and the Tamil country had ceased at least one century before the birth of the Malayalam literature, unless it be that early Tamil literature was the literature of the early people of Kerala also.

The statements of Dr. Caldwell that the separation of Malayalam' from Tamil evidently took place at a very early period, before the Tamil was cultivated and refined', and that Tamil •bids fare to supersede the Malayalam' are thus opinions which need stronger evidence before they could be accepted.

Returning now from our digression to the copperplate grants of Malabar, we find in the Mainballi inscriptions of Sri Vallavan Kodai (A. D. 973) the language used is pure colloquial Tamil interspersed with a few Malabaricms like Poirot for 2017 @T, F5b o for ES & T 60, oli for Qui &c. Verbs are inflected as in BL-425@ 300 g srcT 1 ; and the datives of Fun and

1. The word அட்டி in the expressions அட்டிக்கொடுத்தல் and