Not only Mahƒrƒshtri and Gujarƒti, but also the trans-Vindhyan or North Indian languages like Hindi and Bengali exhibit traces of their Dravidian substratum.

     During the Pre-Aryan times or before the close of the Second Academy, Tamil was divided into two Forms, viz. Standard Tamil (šendami‰) and Deviated Tamil (Kodundami‰). The latter disintegrated into many dialects, the number of which is given as twelve in Tolkƒppiyam.

     The Pƒ-diya territory and the southern parts of the Chola and Chera territories constituted the land of Standard Tamil, and the northern parts of the last two territories, that of Deviated Tamil.

     The original Pƒ–diya Nadu which was identical with the submerged southern continent was vast and extensive, and consequently, the Standard Tamil of that area was extra-ordinarily copious with myriads of subtly-distinguished synonyms, many of which have become extinct.

     The various dialects of Deviated Tamil, which evolved into distinct forms and ultimately separated from Tamil as Dravidian languages, have chosen different synonyms according to their taste from the Tamil vocabulary, which is the common repository of Dravidian forms and roots, and this I call Dialectic Selection.

     Though Old Tamil was the parent of the Dravidian family of languages, the primitive or earlier forms of a small number of words are preserved only in the derivative languages, owing to the submergence of a greater part of the original Tamil country, and the consequent extinction of many primitive roots and forms in Tamil, and also to the fact that many words in Tamil have