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Most Tamils in India live in the state of Tamil Nadu. Tamils are the majority in the union territory of Puducherry, a former French colony. Puducherry is a subnational enclave situated within Tamil Nadu. Tamils account for at least one-sixth of the population in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. [citation needed]
6 days ago · Tamil, people originally of southern India who speak Tamil, one of the principal languages of the Dravidian family. Numbering about 64 million in the early 21st century (including about 3 million speakers in northern and eastern Sri Lanka), Tamil speakers make up the majority of the population of Tamil Nadu state and also inhabit parts of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh states, all ...
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Pre-historic period
The origins of the Tamil people, like those of the other Dravidian peoples, remain unknown, although genetic and archaeological evidence suggests a possible migration into India around 6000 B.C.E. The megalithic urn burials, dating from around 1000 B.C.E. and onwards, which have been discovered at various locations in Tamil Nadu, notably in Adichanallur, provide the earliest clear evidence of the presence of the Tamil people in modern Tamil Nadu. These burials conform to the descriptions of f...
Classical period
From around the third century B.C.E. onwards, three royal dynasties—the Cholas, the Cheras and the Pandyas—rose to dominate the ancient Tamil country. Each of those dynasties had its own realm within the Tamil-speaking region. Classical literature and inscriptions also describe a number of Velirs, or minor chieftains, who collectively ruled over large parts of central Tamil Nadu. Wars between the kings and the chieftains were frequent, as were conflicts with ancient Sri Lanka. Those wars appe...
Imperial and post-imperial periods
Although the Pallava records trace to the second century C.E., they arose to prominence as an imperial dynasty in the sixth century. Evidence suggests that the dynasty had been non-Tamil in origin, although they rapidly adopted the local culture and the Tamil language. The Pallavas sought to model themselves after great northern dynasties such as the Mauryas and Guptas. They therefore transformed the institution of the kingship into an imperial one, and sought to bring vast amounts of territo...
Indian Tamils
Most Indian Tamils live in the state of Tamil Nadu. They form the majority in the union territory of Pondicherry, a former French colony. Pondicherry comprises a subnational enclave situated within Tamil Nadu. Tamil communities exist in other parts of India, most emerging fairly recently, dating to the colonial and post-colonial periods, but some—particularly the Hebbar and Mandyam Tamils of southern Karnataka, the Tamils of Palakkad in Kerala, and the Tamils of Pune, Maharashtra—date back to...
Sri Lankan Tamils
Two groups of Tamils live in Sri Lanka today. The first, known as the Sri Lankan Tamils, either descended from the Tamils of the old Jaffna kingdom or migrated to the East coast. The second, known as the Indian Tamils or Hill Country Tamils, descended from bonded labourers sent from Tamil Nadu in the nineteenth century to work in tea plantations. Ceylon Tamils mostly live in the Northern and Eastern provinces and in the capital of Colombo, whereas hill-country Tamils largely live in the centr...
Tamil emigrant communities
Significant Tamil emigration began in the eighteenth century, when the British colonial government sent many poor Tamils as indentured labourers to far-off parts of the Empire, especially Malaya, South Africa, Fiji, Mauritius and the Caribbean. At about the same time, many Tamil businessmen also immigrated to other parts of the British Empire, particularly to Burma and East Africa. Many Tamils still live in those countries, and the Tamil communities in Singapore, Reunion Island, Malaysiaand S...
Language and literature
Tamils have strong feelings towards the Tamil language, often venerated in literature as "Tamil̲an̲n̲ai," "the Tamil mother". Historically, and contemporarily, Tamil language has been central to the Tamil identity. Like the other languages of South India, Tamil is a Dravidian language, unrelated to the Indo-European languages of northern India. The language has been far less influenced by Sanskrit than the other Dravidian languages, and preserves many features of Proto-Dravidian, though moder...
Visual art and architecture
Most traditional Tamil art take a religious form usually centering on Hinduism, although the religious element often only serves as a means of representing universal—and, occasionally, humanist—themes. Tanjore painting, originating in Thanjavur in the ninth century, represents the most important form of Tamil painting. The artist paints the image, using dyes, on cloth coated with zinc oxide, then decorates the painting with semi-precious stones as well as silver or gold thread. Painting emplo...
Performing arts
The traditional Tamil performing arts have ancient roots. The royal courts and temples have been centers for the performing arts since the classical period, and possibly earlier. Descriptions of performances in classical Tamil literature and the Natya Shastra, a Sanskrit treatise on the performing arts, indicate a close relationship between the ancient and modern artforms. A performance in the Tamil tradition aims to bring out the rasa,the flavor, mood, or feeling, inherent in the text, its q...
The global spread of the Tamil diaspora has hindered the formation of formal pan-Tamil institutions. The most important national institutions for Tamils have been the governments of the states where they live, particularly the government of Tamil Nadu and the government of Sri Lanka, which have collaborated in developing technical and scientific te...
Tamil languageTamil cuisineTamil JainsBerkson, Carmel. "The Life of Form." in The Life of Form in Indian Sculpture. Abhinav Publications, 2000. ISBN 8170173760.Bowers, F. Theatre in the East - A Survey of Asian Dance and Drama.New York: Grove Press, 1956.Casson, L. The Periplus Maris Erythraei: Text with Introduction, Translation and Commentary. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1989. ISBN 0691040605.Chaitanya, Krishna. A history of Malayalam literature. New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1971. ISBN 8125004882.Sri Lankan Tamils ( Tamil : இலங்கை தமிழர், ilankai tamiḻar or ஈழத் தமிழர், īḻat tamiḻar ), [21] also known as Ceylon Tamils or Eelam Tamils, [22] [23] are Tamils native to the South Asian island state of Sri Lanka. Today, they constitute a majority in the Northern Province, form the plurality ...
The Tamil people, also known as Tamilar, Tamilians, or simply Tamils, are a Dravidian ethnolinguistic group who natively speak the Tamil language and trace their ancestry mainly to India's southern state of Tamil Nadu, to the union territory of Puducherry, and to Sri Lanka. The Tamil language is one of the world's longest-surviving classical languages, with over 2000 years of Tamil literature ...
Tamil culture. Tamil culture is the culture of the Tamil people. The Tamil people speak the Tamil language, one of the ancient languages in the world. Archaeological evidence points to the Tamilakam region being inhabited for more than 400 millennia and has more than 5,500 years of continuous cultural history.
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The 2001 census records 62,405,679 persons in Tamil Nadu, of which some 60.8 million belonged to the Tamil people. In addition, there are about one million Tamils in Pondicherry and another 5 million elsewhere in India. Allowing for population growth, there are currently an estimated 71 million Tamils in India.
