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Tamil: Ancient Tamil
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The Tamils have legends that their ancient history extends up to about ten thousand years, sea swallowing up their lands twice and kings establishing new capitals and fostering Tamil in three successive academies. The legend is first mentioned in the commentary of kaLavijal, which is assigned to about 8th century AD. This legend is one of the reasons- one of the excuses- for connecting up the Tamil civilization with some prehistoric ancient civilizations, whose identity and continuity poses special problems.
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The traditional Tamil performing arts have ancient roots.[73] The royal courts and temples have been centres 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. The aim of a performance in Tamil tradition, is to bring out the rasa, the flavor, mood, or feeling, inherent in the text, and its quality is measured by the extent to which it induces the mood in the audience.[73]
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In addition to its various dialects, Tamil exhibits different forms: a classical literary style modelled on the ancient language a modern literary and formal style and a modern colloquial form (). These styles shade into each other, forming a stylistic continuum. For example, it is possible to write with a vocabulary drawn from , or to use forms associated with one of the other variants while speaking .
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The Tamil script is derived from Grantha script, a descendant of the ancient Brahmi script of India. It was designed to write literary Tamil that has changed little in the past 1000 years, but it is not particularly well-suited for writing modern colloquial Tamil that has many loanwords from other languages. Attempts were made in the 19th century to create a writing system for the colloquial spoken language, but these efforts met with mixed success. The colloquial written language today can be found mostly in textbooks and in dialogs in in literature.
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Tamil shares a classical musical tradition, called carnatic music, with the rest of South India. It is primarily oriented towards vocal music, with instruments functioning either as accompaniments, or as imitations of the singer's role. Ancient Tamil music, stemming from the long traditions of classical literature and Cilappatikaram, played a major part in the evolution of Carnatic music.[74] Carnatic music is organized around the twin notions of melody types (rāgam), and cyclical rhythm types (thāḷam). Unlike the northern Hindustani music tradition, carnatic music is almost exclusively religious. In sharp contrast with the restrained and intellectual nature of carnatic music, Tamil folk music tends to be much more exuberant. Popular forms of Tamil folk music include the Villuppattu, a form of music performed with a bow, and the Naattupurapaattu, ballads that convey folklore and folk history.
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Ancient Tamil