richest and most ancient literature, paralleled in India only by that of Sanskrit, and has a phonological (and to some extent also grammatical) system which corresponds rather closely to the state of affairs in the parent Proto-Dravidian.

SCHEME II. Historical and genetical relations among the South Dravidian sub-family.

Besides the state of Madras (Tamilnad) where it is spoken by about 34,000,000 speakers, it is widely used in Ceylon (2,500,000), in Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam (about 1,000,000 speakers), in East and South Africa (almost 250,000 speakers), in British Guiana, and on the islands of Fiji, Mauritius, Reunion, Madagascar, Trinidad and Martinique. It is perhaps not an exaggeration when we say that Tamil as a "world-language" is being spoken by about 40,000,000 people. The oldest literary monuments of the language belong probably to the 3rd Century B.C., and the earliest inscriptions in Hybrid