(The cool country of the Tamils bounded by Vishnu's hill and the bangled lady's sea—Kumari).
(3) வேங்கடங் குமரி தீம்புனற் பௌவமென்
நின்னான் கெல்லை தமிழது வழக்கே.-Sik.
(Tamil prevails within the four limits of Venkatam, Kumari and the seas.)
The Tamil-akam or the land of the Tamils thus seems to have extended east and west from sea to sea, and north and south from the Tirupati bills to Cape Comorin, and to have also included the inodern states of Travancore and Cochin and the British district of Malabar.
The Tamils in the west coast who were cut off from the main body and who were much under the control of the Brahman hierarchy, developed a dialect of their own, a patois of Kodun-Tamil and Prakritic Sanskrit, which has been known as Malayalam since the beginning of the thirteenth century. And this isolation accounts also for some of the ancient customs and manners of the Tamils being better preserved to this day in the west coast than in the eastern districts.
The loss of this western strip from the Tamilakam was, however, soon made up; for, new districts were added to it by the colonisation by the Tamils of the northern portion of Ceylon, beginning from the time of Parantaka Chola (A. D. 907-946) or even from an earlier date. They may be found also in Burma, Sumatra, Java and wherever they could find food and labour.
