Page:Tamil studies.djvu/409

382 is a living tongue ; and so the early Tamil differs slightly from the mediæval and the modern forms of it. Owing to its great antiquity and its classic perfection with a settled grammar and vocabulary, so early as the second or third century B. C., literary Tamil differs very much from the colloquial ; and colloquial Tamil differs from the vulgar Tamil which gave birth to the Malayalam language about the eleventh or twelfth century A. D.

The phonetic system of Tamil is very defective ; and though defective, it has three sounds ஃ, ற and ழ which are peculiarly its own and which are not to be found in any other language. It had an alphabetic writing called the Vatteluttu, which the people borrowed direct from the Phænician or Himayaritic merchants six or seven hundred years before Christ; and it was supplanted by the Grantha-Tamil characters during the ninth or tenth century A. D, when Brahman influence was at its zenith in the Tamil country. The first extant grammar of the Tamil language was written by a Brahman about B. C. 350.

We have no data to settle what the religion of the Nagas and Dravidians was before the arrival of the Brahmans in Southern India. As early as the tenth century there were in each village a Pidari or a Sasta (Tam. சாத்தன்) temple besides one or more for some of the puranic gods, then known as Sri Koil. All the Siva and Vishnu shrines whose glories were sung by the Nayanars and Alvars, belong to the latter class. The ancient Naga-Dravidians appear to have been