VI. Language in Ceylon It seems highly improbable that Ceylon remained isolated from Southern India during the Cankam era. However, literary references to Tamil-speaking groups in Ceylon during this period are not too many. S. NATESAN has stated some of the linguistic evidence in favour of the early occupation of Ceylon by Tamil speakers in the section contributed to the University of Ceylon, History of Ceylon, Vol. I, Part I. The reading is from pages 42 and 43. TAMIL HAS HAD a long history in Ceylon. The Mahāvaṁsa relates that Vijaya married a Pāṇḍya princess from Madhurā, and that she was accompanied by a hundred maidens and a thousand families of guilds who settled down in Ceylon. Coming to historical times, we find that two Tamils, Sena and Guttaka, ruled at Anurādhapura in the latter half of the third century B.C. for a period of about twenty years. The famous Tamil king, Eḷāra, reigned in Ceylon during the next century for a long period covering over forty years. By this time Tamil must have been well-established in Ceylon. Large numbers of Tamil soldiers had already found their way to Ceylon, and Tamil merchants also had begun to engage in trade of different kinds. An inscription of the second century B.C, found in Anurādhapura, mentions a corporation of Tamil merchants, of which the captain of a ship (navika) was the head.1 A Tamil poet from Ceylon is said to have adorned the Tamil śangam at Madhurā;2 he may perhaps have lived in the first century B.C. as he appears to be one of the earlier poets of the śangam Age. It is well known that Jaffna has been a centre of Tamil learning for several centuries. The Āryacakravartis of Jaffna, who rose to power in the fourteenth century, were great patrons of Tamil literature. During the nineteenth century, Jaffna produced some distinguished scholars who took a leading part in the revival of Tamil learning in South India. The antiquity of Tamil in Ceylon is borne out by the fact that some words of the śangam period are still in common use among the peasantry of Jaffna, though they have fallen into disuse in South India, the original home of the Tamil language; such words as aitu and atar are cases in point. Moreover, some usages found in old Tamil which have completely disappeared from popular speech in ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1Inscription No. 12 from Periya-Puḷiyankulam; JCBRAS., No. 93, pp. 54-55. 2Ilattu Pūtan Tevanār. Seven of his poems are included in the śangam anthologies, Akanānūru, Kuruntokai and Narrinai. |