ayir-ayiram (‘am’, a particle of specialisatioŒ-ƒyiram. ayiram might have been a significant word in the submerged Tamil land.

One of the things that symbolize a great number on account of their innumerability is sand. God promised Abraham that his progeny would muliply as much as the sands of the sea and the stars of the heaven.

Cf. the Tamil numeral n‡Šu, hundred, lit. powder, flour, fr.nuŠu, to be bruised.

The Malayalam word for thousand is exactly the same as in Tamil.

The consonants ‘y’ and ‘š’ very often change places in Tamil, and the mutation of ‘y’ into ‘š’ is more common than that of ‘s’ into ‘y’, in corrupt Tamil and almost all the Dravidian languages.

Words beginning with a vowel often take ‘š’ as a prosthetic addition even in Tamil.

So, it is but natural that the Tamil ƒyiram should become sƒsira and sƒvira in succession in Kanarese. There also seems to be some subtle phonetic affinity between the consonants ‘š’ and ‘y’.

Cf. „vu-„šu, to incite, to direct
paravu-parašu, to praise
viravu-virašu, to mix