It is a prochronistic blunder of the grossest nature to say,
that ‰, ˜, Š and ‹ were placed at the end, because they are not found in Sanskrit.

     According to the 1594th n‡Špƒ (sutra) of Tolkƒppiyam, the first Tamil grammar was written by an ascetic saint of brilliant knowledge, and consequently, the grammatical terms relating to orthography and accidence are pregnant with philosophical import.

     For instance, uyir (vowel), mey (consonant), uyirmey (syllabic consonant), peyar, (nouŒ, and vinai (verb).

     All things resolve into three categories, viz., lives, lifeless objects and living things. The vowels, consonants, and syllabic consonants resemble the three catagories of things, and hence their names uyir (lives), mey (lifeless objects, and uyirmey (living things) respectively. Accordingly, the syllabic consonants were represented by appropriate separate characters for the first time in Tamil, and then after a long time, other Indian languages, including Sanskrit, formed their alphabetic characters on the Tamil model.

     The Tamil Grammar of ancient times comprised three parts, viz., Orthography, Accidence and Syntax, and Treatment of Subject-matter. The third part treated of subject matter as main and prosody and rhetoric as subsidiary. Tolkƒppiam, the earliest Tamil grammar extant, devotes five chapters to the treatment of subject-matter or literary themes, and four chapters to prosody, rhetoric and other things. From this it will be known, that the ancient Tamils considered the treatment of literary themes as the most essential part of Tamil grammar, and attached great importance to it.

     (1) The Pre-Aryan Tamil literature which has been completely destroyed, was vast and varied and comprised works on Arithmetic, Ethics, Grammar, Logic, Literary Criticism, Philosophy, Metaphysics, Gymnosophy or Yoga, Musicology,