1.
Tamil Nadu
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Tamil Nadu is one of the 29 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai, Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by the union territory of Puducherry and the South Indian states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh. The state shares a border with the nation of Sri Lanka. Tamil Nadu is the eleventh-largest state in India by area and the sixth-most populous, the state was ranked sixth among states in India according to the Human Development Index in 2011, with the second-largest state economy after Maharashtra. Tamil Nadu is the second largest state economy in India with ₹13,842 billion in gross domestic product after Maharashtra. Tamil Nadu was ranked as one of the top seven developed states in India based on a Multidimensional Development Index in a 2013 report published by the Reserve Bank of India and its official language is Tamil, which is one of the longest-surviving classical languages in the world. Tamil Nadu is home to natural resources. In addition, its people have developed and continue classical arts, classical music, historic buildings and religious sites include Hindu temples of Tamil architecture, hill stations, beach resorts, multi-religious pilgrimage sites, and eight UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Archaeological evidence points to this area being one of the longest continuous habitations in the Indian peninsula, the ASI archaeologists have proposed that the script used at that site is very rudimentary Tamil Brahmi. Adichanallur has been announced as a site for further excavation. About 60 per cent of the epigraphical inscriptions found by the ASI in India are from Tamil Nadu. A Neolithic stone celt with the Indus script on it was discovered at Sembian-Kandiyur near Mayiladuthurai in Tamil Nadu, according to epigraphist Iravatham Mahadevan, this was the first datable artefact bearing the Indus script to be found in Tamil Nadu. Mahadevan claimed that the find was evidence of the use of the Harappan language, the date of the celt was estimated at between 1500 BCE and 2000 BCE. The early history of the people and rulers of Tamil Nadu is a topic in Tamil literary sources known as Sangam literature, numismatic, archaeological and literary sources corroborate that the Sangam period lasted for about six centuries, from 300 BC to AD300. Three dynasties, namely the Chera, Chola and Pandya, ruled the area of present-day Tamil Nadu, the Chera ruled the whole of present-day Kerala and parts of western Tamil Nadu comprising Coimbatore, Dharmapuri, Karur, Salem and Erode districts from the capital of Vanchi Muthur. The Chola dynasty ruled the northern and central parts of Tamil Nadu from their capital, Uraiyur, All three dynasties had extensive trade relationships with Rome, Greece, Egypt, Ceylon, Phoenicia, Arabia, Mesopotamia and Persia. Trade flourished in commodities such as spices, ivory, pearls, beads, Chera traded extensively from Muziris on the west coast, Chola from Arikamedu and Puhar and Pandya through Korkai port. A Greco-Roman trade and travel document, the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea gives a description of the Tamil country, besides these three dynasties, the Sangam era Tamilakam was also divided into various provinces named nadu, meaning country
2.
Madurai
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Madurai is a major city in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is the headquarters of Madurai District. Madurai is the third largest city by population in Tamil Nadu, located on the banks of River Vaigai, Madurai has been a major settlement for two millennia. Madurai was the longest continuous capital city until British rule in India, Madurai has been selected as one of the hundred Indian cities to be developed as a smart city under Prime Minister Narendra Modis flagship Smart Cities Mission. Madurai is closely associated with the Tamil language, and the third Tamil Sangam, the recorded history of the city goes back to the 3rd century BCE, being mentioned by Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador to India, and Kautilya, a minister of the Mauryan emperor Chandragupta Maurya. Signs of human settlements and Roman trade links dating back to 300BC are evident from excavations by Archeological Survey of India in Manalur, the city has a number of historical monuments, with the Meenakshi Amman Temple and Tirumalai Nayak Palace being the most prominent. Madurai is an important industrial and educational hub in South Tamil Nadu, the city is home to various automobile, rubber, chemical and granite manufacturing industries. It has developed as a city for information technology. Madurai has important government educational institutes like the Madurai Medical College, Homeopathic Medical College, Madurai Law College, Agricultural College, Madurai city is administered by a municipal corporation established in 1971 as per the Municipal Corporation Act. Madurai is the corporation in Tamil Nadu next to Chennai corporation. The city covers an area of 147.97 km2 and had a population of 1,017,865 in 2011, the city is also the seat of a bench of the Madras High Court. The city is referred by various names including Madurai, Koodal, Malligai Maanagar, Naanmadakoodal, the word Madurai may be derived from Madhura arising out of the divine nectar showered on the city by the Hindu god Shiva from his matted hair. Another theory is that Madurai is the derivative of the word Marutham, a town in the neighbouring Dindigul district is called Vada Madurai and another in Sivagangai district is called Manamadurai. The different names by which the city has referred to historically are listed in the 7th-century poem Thiruvilayaadal puraanam written by Paranjothi Munivar. Koodal means an assembly or congregation of people, referring to the three Tamil Sangams held at Madurai. Naanmadakoodal, meaning the junction of four towers, refers to the four major temples for which Madurai was known for, tevaram, the 7th- or 8th-century Tamil compositions on Shiva by the three prominent Nayanars, namely Appar, Sundarar and Thirugnanasambandar, address the city as Thirualavai. As per Iravatham Mahadevan, a 2nd-century BCE Tamil-Brahmi inscription refers to the city as matiray, Madurai has been inhabited since at least the 3rd century BCE. Megasthenes may have visited Madurai during the 3rd century BCE, with the city referred as Methora in his accounts
3.
Tamil-Brahmi
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Tamil-Brahmi, or Tamili, is a variant of the Brahmi script used to write the Tamil language. These are the earliest documents of a Dravidian language, and the script was established in the Chera and Pandyan states, in what is now Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh. Inscriptions have been found on beds, pot sherds, Jar burials, coins, seals. The language is Archaic Tamil, and led to classical Sangam literature, Tamil Brahmi differs in several ways from Ashokan Brahmi. It adds several letters for sounds not found in Prakrit, ṉ ṟ ṛ ḷ and this is unique to Tamil Brahmi and Bhattiprolu among the early Indian scripts. This appears to be an adaptation to Dravidian phonotactics, where words commonly end in consonants, as opposed to Prakrit, where this never occurs. According to Mahadevan, in the earliest stages of the script the inherent vowel was either abandoned, as above, later stages of Tamil Brahmi returned to the inherent vowel that was the norm in India. The origins of the Brahmi in general and Tamil Brahmi specifically are unclear, there are number of inscriptions whose dates have not been settled yet. Nevertheless, a number of theories has been put forward with literary, epigraphic, the received consensus is a 3rd-century post-Ashokan dispersal, but that since the year 2000, there have been two serious candidates for a pre-Ashokan date. The earliest mention of a script for writing the Tamil language is found in the Jaina work Samavayanga Sutta, in the Buddhist work, Lalitavistara, a script called Dravidalipi is mentioned. According to Kamil Zvelebil, Damilli and Dravidalipi are synonymous for Tamil writing, references to writing are also available in early Tamil literature. Tolkappiyam in stanza 16 and 17 mentions dots added to consonants, the author of Tolkappiyam displays awareness of a writing system and the graphic system as he knew it corresponds with later writing systems. Other works such as Tirukkural mentions writing using the word ezhuttu, cilappatikaram mentions kannezhuttu that was used to mark merchandise imported at the port emporium of Kaveripattinam, it also mentions kannezhuttalar or scribes. A reference to palm leaf manuscript writing is found in Nalatiyar, based on the literature analysis, Kamil Zvelebil believes writing was known to Tamil people at least from the 3rd century BCE. The evidence for pre-Ashokan dispersal comes from Sri Lanka and more recently, the earliest well accepted Brahmi inscriptions in South Asia are found in the citadel of Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka and are dated to the 4th century BCE. Brahmi developed before the spread of Ashokan missionary activities and spread across South Asia due to trade networks. However, these instances of Brahmi were not considered to be examples of Tamil-Brahmi. In 2013, Rajan and Yatheeskumar published excavations at Porunthal and Kodumanal in Tamil Nadu and their stratigraphic analysis combined with radiocarbon dates of paddy grains and charcoal samples indicated that inscription contexts date to as far back as the 5th and perhaps 6th centuries BCE
4.
Tamil Jain
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Tamil Jains are Tamils from Tamil Nadu, India, who practice Digambara Jainism. They are a microcommunity of around 85,000, Tamil Jains are predominantly scattered in northern Tamil Nadu, largely in the districts of Madurai, Viluppuram, Kanchipuram, Vellore, Tiruvannamalai, Cuddalore and Thanjavur. Early Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions in Tamil Nadu date to the 3rd century BCE, camaṇar wrote much Tamil literature, including the important Sangam literature, such as the Nālaṭiyār, the Silappatikaram, the Manimekalai and the Cīvaka Cintāmaṇi. Three of the five epics of Tamil literature are attributed to Jains. Some scholars believe that Jain philosophy must have entered South India some time in the sixth century BCE, even Chandragupta accompanied this constellation of sages. On reaching Shravanabelagola, Bhadrabahu felt his end approaching and decided stay back along with Chandragupta and he instructed the Jain saints to tour over the Chola-, according to other scholars, Jainism must have existed in South India well before the visit of Bhadrabhu and Chandragupta. There are plenty of caves as old as the century found with Jain inscriptions and Jain deities around Madurai, Tiruchirāppaḷḷi, Kanyakumari. A number of Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions have been found in Tamil Nadu that date from the second century BCE and they are regarded as associated with Jain monks and lay devotees. The exact origins of Jainism in Tamil Nadu is unclear, however, Jains flourished in Tamil Nadu at least as early as the Sangam period. Tamil Jain tradition places their origins are much earlier, the Ramayana mentions that Rama paid homage to Jaina monks living in South India on his way to Sri Lanka. Some scholars believe that the author of the oldest extant work of literature in Tamil, tirukkural by Thiruvalluvar is considered by many to be the work of a Jain by scholars like V. Kalyanasundarnar, Vaiyapuri Pillai, Swaminatha Iyer, P. S. It emphatically supports vegetarianism and states that giving up animal sacrifice is worth more than thousand burnt offerings (verse, Silappatikaram, the earliest surviving epic in Tamil literature, was written by a Samaṇa, Ilango Adigal. This epic is a work in Tamil literature, describing the historical events of its time and also of then-prevailing religions. The main characters of this work, Kannagi and Kovalan, who have a divine status among Tamils, were Jains, according to George L. D. in Madurai. It seems likely that this assembly was the model upon which tradition fabricated the Sangam legend, Jainism became dominant in Tamil Nadu in the fifth and sixth century CE, during a period known as the Kalabhra interregnum. Jainism began to decline around the 8th century A. D. with many Tamil kings embracing Hindu religions, still, the Chalukya, Pallava and Pandya dynasties embraced Jainism. When India became independent in 1947, Madras Presidency became Madras State, comprising present day Tamil Nadu, coastal Andhra Pradesh, South Canara district Karnataka, the state was subsequently split up along linguistic lines. In 1969, Madras State was renamed Tamil Nadu, meaning Tamil country, the ruins of Anandamangalam vestiges were discovered in Anandamangalam, a small hamlet near Orathi village in Kancheepuram district of Tamil Nadu
5.
Epigraphy
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Specifically excluded from epigraphy are the historical significance of an epigraph as a document and the artistic value of a literary composition. A person using the methods of epigraphy is called an epigrapher or epigraphist, for example, the Behistun inscription is an official document of the Achaemenid Empire engraved on native rock at a location in Iran. Epigraphists are responsible for reconstructing, translating, and dating the trilingual inscription and it is the work of historians, however, to determine and interpret the events recorded by the inscription as document. Often, epigraphy and history are competences practiced by the same person, an epigraph is any sort of text, from a single grapheme to a lengthy document. Epigraphy overlaps other competences such as numismatics or palaeography, when compared to books, most inscriptions are short. Typically the material is durable, but the durability might be an accident of circumstance, epigraphy is a primary tool of archaeology when dealing with literate cultures. The US Library of Congress classifies epigraphy as one of the sciences of history. Epigraphy also helps identify a forgery, epigraphic evidence formed part of the discussion concerning the James Ossuary, the study of ancient handwriting, usually in ink, is a separate field, palaeography. The character of the writing, the subject of epigraphy, is a quite separate from the nature of the text. Texts inscribed in stone are usually for public view and so they are different from the written texts of each culture. Not all inscribed texts are public, however, in Mycenaean Greece the deciphered texts of Linear B were revealed to be used for economic. Informal inscribed texts are graffiti in its original sense, the science of epigraphy has been developing steadily since the 16th century. Principles of epigraphy vary culture by culture, and the infant science in European hands concentrated on Latin inscriptions at first, individual contributions have been made by epigraphers such as Georg Fabricius, August Wilhelm Zumpt, Theodor Mommsen, Emil Hübner, Franz Cumont, Louis Robert. The Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, begun by Mommsen and other scholars, has published in Berlin since 1863. It is the largest and most extensive collection of Latin inscriptions, New fascicles are still produced as the recovery of inscriptions continues. The Corpus is arranged geographically, all inscriptions from Rome are contained in volume 6 and this volume has the greatest number of inscriptions, volume 6, part 8, fascicle 3 was just recently published. Specialists depend on such on-going series of volumes in which newly discovered inscriptions are published, often in Latin, Greek epigraphy has unfolded in the hands of a different team, with different corpora. The first is Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum of which four volumes came out, again at Berlin and this marked a first attempt at a comprehensive publication of Greek inscriptions copied from all over the Greek-speaking world
6.
Brahmi script
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Brahmi is the modern name given to one of the oldest writing systems used in South and Central Asia from the 1st millennium BCE. Brahmi is an abugida that thrived in the Indian subcontinent and uses a system of marks to associate vowels with consonant symbols. It evolved into a host of other scripts that continue in use, Brahmi is related to the ancient Kharosthi script, which was used in what is now eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan. Kharosthi died out in ancient times, the best-known Brahmi inscriptions are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India, dating to 250–232 BCE. The script was deciphered in 1837 by James Prinsep, an archaeologist, philologist, Brahmi was at one time referred to in English as the pin-man script, that is stick figure script. Thence the name was adopted in the work of Georg Bühler. The Gupta script of the 5th century is sometimes called Late Brahmi, the Brahmi script diversified into numerous local variants, classified together as the Brahmic scripts. Dozens of modern scripts used across South Asia have descended from Brahmi, one survey found 198 scripts that ultimately derive from it. The script was associated with its own Brahmi numerals, which provided the graphic forms for the Hindu–Arabic numeral system now used through most of the world. The Brahmi script is mentioned in the ancient Indian texts of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism, for example, the Lipisala samdarshana parivarta lists 64 lipi, with the Brahmi script starting the list. The Lalitavistara Sūtra states that young Siddhartha, the future Buddha, mastered philology, Brahmi and other scripts from Brahmin Lipikara, a shorter list of eighteen ancient scripts is found in the texts of Jainism, such as the Pannavana Sutra and the Samavayanga Sutra. These Jaina script lists include Brahmi at number 1 and Kharoshthi at number 4 but also Javanaliya, while the contemporary Kharosthi script is widely accepted to be a derivation of the Aramaic alphabet, the genesis of the Brahmi script is less straightforward. Salomon reviewed existing theories in 1998, while Falk provided an overview in 1993, an origin in Semitic scripts has been proposed by some scholars since the publications by Albrecht Weber and Georg Bühlers On the origin of the Indian Brahma alphabet. The most disputed point about the origin of the Brahmi script has long been whether it was an indigenous development or was borrowed or derived from scripts that originated outside India. Most scholars believe that Brahmi was likely derived from or influenced by a Semitic script model, however, the issue is not settled due to the lack of direct evidence and unexplained differences between Aramaic, Kharosthi and Brahmi. Virtually all authors accept that regardless of the origins, the degree of Indian development of the Brahmi script in both the form and the structure has been extensive. It is also accepted that theories of Vedic grammar probably had a strong influence on this development. In contrast, some reject the idea of foreign influence
