Tamil Brahmi Script Found in Egypt
QUSEIR-AL-QADIM, EGYPT, February 20, 2008: A broken storage jar with inscriptions in an ancient form of Tamil script, dated to the first century BCE., has been excavated in Egypt.
Dr. Roberta Tomber, a pottery specialist at the British Museum, London, identified the fragmentary vessel as a storage jar made in India. Iravatham Mahadevan, a specialist in Tamil epigraphy, has confirmed that the inscription on the jar is in Tamil written in the Tamil Brahmi script of about the first century.
The Tamil Brahmi script, unlike standard Asokan Brahmi, distinguished between pure consonants and consonants with an inherent vowel marker.
Earlier excavations at this site about 30 years ago yielded two pottery inscriptions in Tamil Brahmi from the same era. Additionally, a pottery inscription was found in 1995 at Berenike, a Roman settlement of the Red Sea coast of Egypt. These discoveries support literary accounts by classical Western authors and the Tamil Sangam poets about trade between India and Rome, via the Red Sea ports, in the early centuries CE.
Tamil Brahmi Script Found in Egypt
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Tamil Language Inscriptions in China
Tamil Language Inscriptions in China
Tamil Language Inscriptions were found about 500 miles north of Canton, in a place called Chuan Chou. This is a port city.
It was an important port 
city in the ancient times also. Normally, the Tamils used to sail to Ta Kua Pa in the west coast of Thailand. They would then take an overland journey across the Isthmus of Kra to other ports like Nakon SiTammarat or Songkla. These ports were on the east coast of Thailand. From there they would sail on to one of the ports of present day Vietnam. Then they would sail northwards to Canton.
A straight sail would be a longer distance which would take them across the Bay of Bengal, Straits of Malacca, Gulf of Siam, and South China Sea. They would have to sail around the Malay Peninsula. This would have increased their journey by more than a thousand miles and would have taken up several more months.
Apart from Canton, the Tamils had gone to other places also and established their own colonies. The merchant guilds like 'Thisai Aayiraththu AinnuuRRuvar' was very active around this part of the world.
In Chuan Chou, there was a Sivan Temple. In that temple, an image of Siva was consecrated under the 'Firman' - royal orders of 'Sekasai Khan'. This was done for the health of Sekasai Khan. Sekasai Khan in this inscription is the name of Kublai Khan himself. His full name was Kublai Sekcen Khan. Sekcen Khan became Sekasai Khan in Tamil. The Sivan Temple was known as ThiruKathaleesvaram and the Lord of the temple was known as ThiruKathaleesvaram udaiya Nayanar. The person who executed the order was Thava ChakkaravarththikaL Sampandha PerumaL. It was done on the Chithra Paurnami day of Saka Era 1203 - 1281 AD.
This was during the rule of Kublai Khan who came to power in 1260 and ruled until 1294 AD. Kublai Khan was the grandson of Chengiz Khan. He was the third son of the fourth son of Chengiz Khan. After Chengiz Khan, the Mongolian Empire was divided into four parts of which China was one.
Kublai became the Grand Khan of all Mongols. He took China as his part of inheritance and ruled from there. He built Beijing and moved the capital there. He also had a summer capital. His country was big, wealthy, and prosperous. He was mighty and powerful. His armies were immense, powerful, and invincible.
He started an Imperial Dynasty called the Yuan Dynasty. He ruled during the time when the Imperial Pandyas were ruling Tamilnadu and Kerala. The Pandyas were on very close friendly terms with the Great Kublai Khan. At that time, Kublai Khan was very ill. Marco Polo, the Venetian traveller spent seventeen years at the court of Kublai Khan. When he found that the Great Khan was getting old and sickly, he got permission and left China.
It should be noted that he temple was consecrated according to the Firman of the Emperor. The word, 'Firman' is used in the inscription. The last line of the inscription is in Chinese characters. Chola types of statues were also found in the temple site. This is a rare inscription in Tamil which is found outside TamilNadu.
city in the ancient times also. Normally, the Tamils used to sail to Ta Kua Pa in the west coast of Thailand. They would then take an overland journey across the Isthmus of Kra to other ports like Nakon SiTammarat or Songkla. These ports were on the east coast of Thailand. From there they would sail on to one of the ports of present day Vietnam. Then they would sail northwards to Canton.A straight sail would be a longer distance which would take them across the Bay of Bengal, Straits of Malacca, Gulf of Siam, and South China Sea. They would have to sail around the Malay Peninsula. This would have increased their journey by more than a thousand miles and would have taken up several more months.
Apart from Canton, the Tamils had gone to other places also and established their own colonies. The merchant guilds like 'Thisai Aayiraththu AinnuuRRuvar' was very active around this part of the world.
In Chuan Chou, there was a Sivan Temple. In that temple, an image of Siva was consecrated under the 'Firman' - royal orders of 'Sekasai Khan'. This was done for the health of Sekasai Khan. Sekasai Khan in this inscription is the name of Kublai Khan himself. His full name was Kublai Sekcen Khan. Sekcen Khan became Sekasai Khan in Tamil. The Sivan Temple was known as ThiruKathaleesvaram and the Lord of the temple was known as ThiruKathaleesvaram udaiya Nayanar. The person who executed the order was Thava ChakkaravarththikaL Sampandha PerumaL. It was done on the Chithra Paurnami day of Saka Era 1203 - 1281 AD.
This was during the rule of Kublai Khan who came to power in 1260 and ruled until 1294 AD. Kublai Khan was the grandson of Chengiz Khan. He was the third son of the fourth son of Chengiz Khan. After Chengiz Khan, the Mongolian Empire was divided into four parts of which China was one.
Kublai became the Grand Khan of all Mongols. He took China as his part of inheritance and ruled from there. He built Beijing and moved the capital there. He also had a summer capital. His country was big, wealthy, and prosperous. He was mighty and powerful. His armies were immense, powerful, and invincible.
He started an Imperial Dynasty called the Yuan Dynasty. He ruled during the time when the Imperial Pandyas were ruling Tamilnadu and Kerala. The Pandyas were on very close friendly terms with the Great Kublai Khan. At that time, Kublai Khan was very ill. Marco Polo, the Venetian traveller spent seventeen years at the court of Kublai Khan. When he found that the Great Khan was getting old and sickly, he got permission and left China.
It should be noted that he temple was consecrated according to the Firman of the Emperor. The word, 'Firman' is used in the inscription. The last line of the inscription is in Chinese characters. Chola types of statues were also found in the temple site. This is a rare inscription in Tamil which is found outside TamilNadu.
The great linguistic scholars Emaneau and Burrough have listed thousandsof Tamil words in Sanskrit. There are a lot of differences between the Vedic (Northern) languages and Sanskrit. Even though a few classicallanguages such as Greek and Chinese survived, people can not todayunderstand those languages in their ancient forms. Latin, Sanskrit, andPali are dead languages: people do not speak these languages in everydaylife. Only the Tamil language has retained its original, classicalcharacter.
Tamil literature and words from ancient times can beunderstood by modern-day speakers. Many of those words are still usedtoday in speech and writing. I have seen several old scriptures in Temples. I could understand none.All I could read is few letters.
Tamil gave birth to the Kannada language in the 6th century AD. Thefirst literature in Kannada came into being only in the 9th century AD.Telugu literature was developed by Nannaya only in the 11th centuryduring the period of Chola kings. Malayalam was born out of Tamil asrecently as the 15th century and give rise to folk literature. My understanding about contemporary tamil is that ...There was a language called "tamil" from which contemporary tamilevolved just like kannada/telugu/malayalam etc. We retain the originalname tamil. Others started calling with some other name.
THE DISTINCTION OF TAMIL
1. Only Tamil has been in existence in the Indian subcontinent for 5000years (as a spoken language for the first 2500 years, and as a spoken aswell as a written language for the past 2500 years).
2. Tamil has the capability to be independent and to stand on its own.It does not need to borrow anything from any other languages.Nope. Modern tamil could not invent (or possiblly could not popularize theinventions by few, like ganeenee for computer) enough words. It has borrowed so many words from English, Hindi etc. It has gone to the very roots oftamil mass -- the illiterate --. Go to any cycle shop in any village mithivandiis cycle only. Even they say "over-oil pannanum" which is actually distortedversion of "over-hauling is needed".
3. Twenty-two (22) languages are derived from Tamil. These includeKannada, Telugu, Malayalam, Tulu, Central Dravidian languages, andNorthern Dravidian languages (such as Brahui).Make it 23, first being Tamil.
4. Tamil and Sanskrit are entirely different languages. According toProfessor Kathiresan Chettiar, a scholar of both languages:"The differences between Tamil and Sanskrit are very many. The verbsused in Tamil are dependent on the gender while the verbs in Sanskritare the same for male, female, or neuter genders. For example, the verb"bhavathi" in Sanskrit is used for both human and neuter genders alike;whereas in Tamil, different conjugations of the verb are used dependingon the noun's gender.
The words about males clearly reflect the malegender, while words referring to females denote the female gender. Thisis not the case in Sanskrit. In Sanskrit, referring to wife, the word"paariyai" is in feminine gender, "dhaaram" is in masculine gender, and"kalasthram" is in neutral gender. Nouns in Sanskrit have singularity,duality and plurality. In Tamil, all nouns that are not singular areplural."
5. Tamil is the only language in the world that has literature belongingto all major religions: Saiva Hinduism, Vaishnava Hinduism, Buddhism,Jainism, Islam, and Christianity.
6. The format of Tamil is integrated with Nature. Every word has meaning behind it.
7. Unlike in some other languages, every sound (hard, middle, and soft) in Tamil can be realized without forcing us to extract the word from the throat.
8. A special characteristic of Tamil is that the words are pronouncedexactly as they are written. May be for ancient tamil. (I could not think of a counter example in pure tamil, that is why the "may be".)But ...U write padi and bus. Do you read as it is?U write Subash Chandra Bose and read.If you want to maintain this characteristic then U'll end upchanging the actuals, eg: saveriyaar for Xavier.
9. Tamil has the capability to formulate most of the words within five (5) letters.
10. Tamil has 12 vowels that can stand alone or be combined with 18consonants. Words can be formed by suitably combining the vowels andconsonants.
11. Tamil has the special letters "zha" [siRappuzhakaram] and the hard"Ra"
12. Many languages in the world have characters to produce only twonasal sounds (m and n). Tamil has characters to produce six nasal (soft) sounds: na (initial), na, Na, nga, gna, maAt the same time tamil is incapable of producing sounds likeFi as in "Physics".Bhe as in BaseBha as in ballThe list is quite big if you see the letters in Hindi.
13. The letters stand by themselves, rather than getting entangled withone another.
14. A special letter [aayutha ezhuththu] with three dots arranged inthe shape of an equilateral triangle, is available to denote certainrare sounds where it is necessary. [aayutham = weapon, ezhuththu =letter]
15. Tamil has a special characteristic known as the "shortened u." [kuRRiyalukaram]
16. The grammar of Tamil language has several names that are derived from, and integrated with, Nature
Tamil Language & Culture
Heritage of the Tamil Language
The Indus valley civilization dates back to 3,000 BC. Researchers likeFather Heras, Asko Parpola of Finland, Iravatham Mahadevan andMadhivaanan have determined that the inscriptions found in the Indusvalley definitely belong to the Tamil people. Referring to this,Sanskrit professor Bandarkar states: "It is indeed strange how the Aryans failed to supplant the Dravidianspeech in the Southern part of India, though it most successfully did inNorth India, where I have no doubt the Dravidian language prevailedbefore the advent of Aryans. This will be seen from the fact thatBrahui, the language of the mountaineers in the khanship of kelat inBaluchistam (in present day Pakistan), contains not only some Dravidianwords, but a considerable infusion of distinctively Dravidian forms andideas? It is also a well-known fact accepted by all scholars that thereare many Sanskrit words which are all Dravidian and this will confirmthe conclusion that the Dravidian tongue was prevalent in North Indianbefore the Aryans came and occupied it. The same conclusion is forcedupon us by an examination of all vernaculars of North India." Lecturesin the Ancient History of India on the period from 650 to 320BC,delivered in 1918 by M.D. Bandarkar, M.A. Professor Ancient IndianHistory, Calcutta University.
As noted above, people in India were speaking only Tamil before theinvasion of Aryans. Afterwards, Tamil was gradually shrunk, and it ispresently confined mainly to Tamil Nadu in the Indian subcontinent.When the Aryans came to India, their language did not have any script.Therefore, Tamils called the Aryan's language "scriptless language". Itwas during the Gupta period (5th century AD) that a script wasformulated for Sanskrit, and later on the development of literature tookplace in that language. There is an abundance of evidence that theSangam literature of Tamil was written during the period 5th century BCthrough the 2nd century AD.
The Aryan Invasion Theory is heavily being questioned now. Takeany search engine and search for Aryan Invasion Theory for furtherreference.
Sanskrit was not spoken by the masses in the North. People spoke onlyPrakrit, which was a mixture of Tamil and Sanskrit. That was why LordBuddha required that his teachings must be conveyed to the people inPrakrit (which was spoken and understood by the masses) and not inSanskrit. Any one who translated Buddha's teachings in Sanskrit wasremoved from Buddha Sangh.
There are theories saying Tamil is a derivative of Sanskrit. (Even thoughI don't buy those theories, I just make a mentioning.) I saw an UGCProgram on 'linguistics in India' in which tamil had 3rd place in the ladder,Saying some language was derived from sanscrit from which tamil evolved.Similarly the above could also be a "theory".
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