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Tamil: Sri Lanka
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Tamil is a classical language and one of the major languages belonging to the Dravidian language family. It is predominantly spoken in South India and Sri Lanka, with smaller communities of speakers in many other countries.
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From around the third century BCE onwards, three royal dynasties—the Cholas, the Cheras and the Pandyas—rose to dominate the ancient Tamil country.[10] Each of these dynasties had its own realm within the Tamil-speaking region. Classical literature and inscriptions ... describe a number of Velirs, or minor chieftains, who collectively ruled over large parts of central Tamil Nadu.[15] Wars between the kings and the chieftains were frequent, as were conflicts with ancient Sri Lanka.[16][17] These wars appear to have been fought to assert hegemony and demand tribute, rather than to subjugate and annex those territories. The kings and chieftains were patrons of the arts, and a significant volume of literature exists from this period.[15] The literature shows that many of the cultural practices that are considered peculiarly Tamil date back to the classical period.[15]
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In the island of Sri Lanka, the separate national identity of the Tamil people grew through a process of opposition to and differentiation from the Buddhist Sinhala people. The Sinhala people trace their origins in the island to the arrival of Prince Vijaya from India, around 500 B.C. and the Mahavamsa, the Sinhala chronicle of a later period (6th Century A.D.) records that Prince Vijaya arrived on the island on the same day that the Buddha attained Enlightenment in India. However, the words of the Sinhala historian and Cambridge scholar, Paul Peiris represent an influential and common sense point of view:
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There is little consensus on the history of the Tamil-speaking parts of Sri Lanka prior to the Chola period. Some Sinhala historians argue that there was no organized Tamil presence in Sri Lanka until the invasions from southern India in the 10th century, whereas many Tamil historians contend that Tamils are the original inhabitants of the island. A theory by historian K. Indrapala concludes that the Sinhalese and Tamil languages were spread due to cultural diffusion from peninsular India into an already existing Mesolithic population with minimal population transfer by the activities of traders and others in centuries BCE.[34][35]
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[N]ot surprisingly, it was a renaissance which was ... linked with a revived interest in Saivaism and a growing recognition that Saivaism was the original religion of the Tamil people. Arumuga Navalar established schools in Jaffna, in Sri Lanka and in Chidambaram, in South India and his work led to the formation of the Saiva Paripalana Sabai in Jaffna in 1888, the publication of the Jaffna Hindu Organ in 1889 and the founding of the Jaffna Hindu College in 1890.
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