The earliest records in Old Tamil are short inscriptions from around the 2nd cen
tury BC in caves and on pottery. These inscriptions are written in a variant of
the Brahmi script called Tamil Brahmi.[54] The earliest long text in Old Tamil i
s the Tolkappiyam, an early work on Tamil grammar and poetics, whose oldest laye
rs could be as old as the 1st century BC.[48] A large number of literary works i
n Old Tamil have also survived. These include a corpus of 2,381 poems collective
ly known as Sangam literature. These poems are usually dated to between the 1st
and 5th centuries AD,[55] which makes them the oldest extant body of secular lit
erature in India.[56] Other literary works in Old Tamil include Thirukural, Sila
ppatikaram and Ma?imekalai, and a number of ethical and didactic texts, written
between the 5th and 8th centuries.[57]
Old Tamil preserved many features of Proto-Dravidian, including the inventory of
consonants,[58] the syllable structure,[59] and various grammatical features.[6
0] Amongst these was the absence of a distinct present tense like Proto-Dravidia
n, Old Tamil only had two tenses, the past and the "non-past". Old Tamil verbs a
lso had a distinct negative conjugation (e.g. ka?e? (??????) "I do not see", ka?
om (??????) "we do not see")[61] Nouns could take pronominal suffixes like verbs
to express ideas: e.g. pe??irem (??????????) "we are women" formed from pe??ir
(????????) "women" and the first person plural marker -em (???).[62]
Despite the significant amount of grammatical and syntactical change between Old
, Middle and Modern Tamil, Tamil demonstrates grammatical continuity across thes
e stages: many characteristics of the later stages of the language have their ro
ots in features of Old Tamil.[48]
Mahadevan has brought to light in this work the influence of Old Kannada on Tami
l-Br-ahm-i inscriptions from a period (Second Century B.C. to Fourth Century A.D
.) anterior to the earliest Kannada inscriptions and literature. This is a very
interesting observation he has made on the basis of lexical and grammatical usag
es showing the influence of Old Kannada.[63]
Middle Tamil[edit]The evolution of Old Tamil into Middle Tamil, which is general
ly taken to have been completed by the 8th century,[48] was characterised by a n
umber of phonological and grammatical changes. In phonological terms, the most i
mportant shifts were the virtual disappearance of the aytam (?), an old phoneme,
[64] the coalescence of the alveolar and dental nasals,[65] and the transformati
on of the alveolar plosive into a rhotic.[66] In grammar, the most important cha
nge was the emergence of the present tense. The present tense evolved out of the
verb kil (????), meaning "to be possible" or "to befall". In Old Tamil, this ve
rb was used as an aspect marker to indicate that an action was micro-durative, n
on-sustained or non-lasting, usually in combination with a time marker such as ?
(??). In Middle Tamil, this usage evolved into a present tense marker ki??a (??
???) which combined the old aspect and time markers.[67]
Middle Tamil also saw a significant increase in the Sanskritisation of Tamil. Fr
om the period of the Pallava dynasty onwards, a number of Sanskrit loan-words en
tered Tamil, particularly in relation to political, religious and philosophical
concepts.[68] Sanskrit also influenced Tamil grammar, in the increased use of ca
ses and in declined nouns becoming adjuncts of verbs,[69] and [Link] form
s of writing in Tamil have developed through years.[70] The Tamil script also ch
anged in the period of Middle Tamil. Tamil Brahmi and Va??e?uttu, into which it
evolved, were the main scripts used in Old Tamil inscriptions. From the 8th cent
ury onwards, however, the Pallavas began using a new script, derived from the Pa
llava Grantha script which was used to write Sanskrit, which eventually replaced
Va??e?uttu.[71]
Middle Tamil is attested in a large number of inscriptions, and in a significant
body of secular and religious literature.[72] These include the religious poems
and songs of the Bhakthi poets, such as the Tevaram verses on Shaivism and Nala
yira Tivya Pirapantam on Vaishnavism,[73] and adaptations of religious legends s
uch as the 12th century Tamil Ramayana composed by Kamban and the story of 63 sh
aivite devotees known as Periyapura?am.[74] Iraiya?ar Akapporu?, an early treati
se on love poetics, and Na??ul, a 12th-century grammar that became the standard
grammar of literary Tamil, are also from the Middle Tamil period.[75]
