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Concept
Tamil culture
Summary
Tamil culture is the culture of the Tamil people. Tamil culture is rooted in the arts and ways of life of Tamils in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, and across the globe. It has a long history of diversified heritage and cultural distinctions.
Tamil languageTamil literatureSri Lankan Tamil dialects and Sri Lankan Tamil literature
Tamils have a strong attachment to the Tamil language, which is often venerated in literature as "Tamil̲an̲n̲ai", "the Tamil mother". It has historically been, and to large extent still is, central to the Tamil identity. Like the other languages of South India, it is unrelated to the Indo-European languages of northern India. The Tamil language preserves many features of Proto-Dravidian, though modern-day spoken Tamil in Tamil Nadu freely uses loanwords from Sanskrit and English and vice versa. Also, the language does not have many commonly used alphabets in English language and Hindi (a product of Sanskrit and written in Devanagri script). Tamil literature is of considerable antiquity, and is recognised as a classical language by the government of India. Classical Tamil literature, which ranges from lyric poetry to works on poetics and ethical philosophy, is remarkably different from contemporary and later literature in other Indian languages, and represents the oldest body of secular literature in South-east Asia.
The ancient Tamil grammatical work of the Tolkappiyam and the Sangam works of the Ten Idylls (Pattuppāṭṭu) and the Eight Anthologies (Eṭṭuttokai) shed light on early religion of ancient Dravidian people. Thirumal is indicated to be the deity associated with the mullai tiṇai (pastoral landscape) in the Tolkappiyam. He is regarded to be the only deity who enjoyed the status of Paramporul (achieving oneness with Paramatma) during the Sangam age. He is also known as Māyavan, Māmiyon, Netiyōn, and Māl in Sangam literature. A reference to "Mukkol Pakavars" in Sangam literature indicates that only Vaishnava saints were holding Tridanda and were prominent during the period.
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