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30
TAMIL STUDIES

'Naga' the name of a tribe, as he seems to think and the Nagari or the Deva Nagari was the alphabet formerly used by the Aryan city folk.

Again, Mr. Kanakasabhai says the Tamil in migrants were a Mongolian tribe quite independent of the 'aboriginal Nagas and Dravidians ’; and in support of his theory he cites the existence of the peculiar letter 4 (zh) in Tamil and in some of the Tibetan languages, but which 'does not occur in the other Dravidian or Sanskrit languages.' Eliminating the Nagas and the Mongolian tribe of Tamils from the population of the Tamil districts, one would be anxious to know who these Dravidians were. Were they his Villavar and Minavar aborigines or some other tribe which had its existence only in his imagination? Then, adverting to the peculiar letter ழ we must say that it did exist in the ancient Kanarese and Telugu languages though it had disappeared owing to the continuous Sanskrit influence for centuries. In modern Kanarese and Telugu it has been dropped or its place taken by ள (l) and - ட (d). As Dr. Caldwell has rightly said this letter has sometimes the sound of or ள (l) or ய (y) or is even omitted as in modern colloquial Tamil. And it might further be remarked that ழ which has the sound approaching the English zh (as in pleasure) or the French J (as in J'ai) may be found in some of the languages of the Uralo-Altaic group. The mere fact therefore that it is found to prevail equally in Tamil and throughout the aboriginal Indo-Chinese