country was generally known in ancient days. The Chinese pilgrim, Hwen Thsang has the form Tchi-mo-lo, which may also be read Dimala or Dimara. There is no difficulty in identifying this word with the name Tamil. The name given to Tamil by the first Danish Missionaries was Lingua Damulica, which may mean the Tamil language or ‘the language of the Tamil country’. In the Pƒli of the Mahawanso the form used is Damilo, the derivative of which is Dƒmilo. Tamil was written ‘Tamul’ and the Dravidian family of languages styled ‘Tamulian’ at one time by European writers.

     The oldest form of Dravida appears to have been Dramila or Drami˜a. The Dravidas are called Dramilas in Tƒranƒtha's Tibetan “History of the Propagation of Buddhism in India” (A.D.1573) and this is the form in which the word occurs again and again in the old Malayalam versions of the Sanskrit Purƒ-as. The next old form that appears to have been most widely in use is Dramida, which by a single consonantal change becomes Dravida. It is apparent that the form Dramila is closest to the word Tamil.

     Sanskrit has a tendency either to separate the consonant and vowel of the initial syllabic-consonant of a word and insert an ‘r’ between them, or to de-vowelise the syllabic-consonant and insert a ‘ Ši’ after it, when naturalising Tamil words.

     It is exactly in keeping with this tendency that the word Tamil first became Dramila in Sanskrit. If we take all the Sanskrit alterations of the word Tamil in their historical order, there will be no difficulty at all in identifying the word Dravida with Tamil. Dr.Caldwell has rightly discovered their identity, but has gravely erred in deriving the original from its corruption, i.e., ‘Tamil’ from ‘Dravida’. It is owing to this wrong conclusion that he has reversed the order of the Sanskrit forms of the word Tamil. Evidently he had no knowledge of the Sangam literature, and consequently no idea of the Lemurian origin of Tamil. The Vedic Aryans set foot