Page:Tamil studies.djvu/71

46 chief of this place as the forty-ninth in descent from the original founder of that dynasty.

உவரா வீகைத் துவரை யாண்டு நாற்பத் தொன்பது வழிமுறை வந்த வேளிருள் வேளே—Pur.

(O! The Velir of Velirs that governed Tuvarai -- Dwarasamudram—for forty-nine generations.)

Allowing the usual twenty-five years for each generation, the above kingdom must have been established about B,C, 1075 ; and this may be assumed as the probable date of the migration of the Tamils to Southern India.

Within the last fifteen years a new school of Tamil scholars has come into being, consisting mainly of admirers and castemen of the late lamented professor and antiquary, Mr. Sundaram Pillai of Trivandram. Their object has been to disown and to disprove any trace of indebtedness to the Aryans, to exalt the civilisation of the ancient Tamils, to distort in the name of historic research the current traditions and literature, and to pooh-pooh the views of former scholars, which support the Brahmanization of the Tamil race. They would not even admit that the early Tamils had ever lived in Upper-India by the side of the Aryans. One of them writes thus : ‘It is my view that Tamilians were not derived directly from the settlers in the north during the Indian Vedic days, and that the Tamilians did not immigrate from the north of India to the south by choice or by force ; that they are not to be identified with the people whom