Tamil is the oldest langauge in the world and also it is one of the six classical

language. It is living langauge. A Recent archaeological evidence suggests that

Tamil Spoken in the indian sub continent could have been the language used by t
he indus civilisation and even the sumerians
References to rivers that dried up 10,000 years ago are seen in Tamil literature
. In fact, There is a possibility that Tamil was the root of sanskrit, in turn t
he root of all indo European language

Tamil is one of the ancient language in the world here comes the history of Tami
l.
Tamil is one of the ancient languages of the world with a 2200 year history.The
origins of Tamil are not transparent, but it developed and flourished in India a
s an independent language with a rich literature.More than 55% of the epigraphic
al inscriptions, about 55,000, found by the Archaeological Survey of India in In
dia are in Tamil language Unlike the neighbouring Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh w
here early inscriptions were written in Sanskrit, the early inscriptions in Tami
l Nadu used Tamil exclusively. Tamil has the oldest extant literature amongst th
e Dravidian languages, but dating the language and the literature precisely is d
ifficult. Literary works in India were preserved either in palm leaf manuscripts
(implying repeated copying and recopying) or through oral transmission, making
direct dating impossible. External chronological records and internal linguistic
evidence, however, indicate that the oldest extant works were probably compiled
sometime between the 2nd century BC and the 10th century AD.
Epigraphic attestation of Tamil begins with rock inscriptions from the 2nd centu
ry BC, written in Tamil-Brahmi, an adapted form of the Brahmi script.The earlies
t extant literary text is the Tolkppiyam, a work on poetics and grammar which des
cribes the language of the classical period, dated variously between the 1st BC
and tenth AD.
Tamil scholars categorise the Tamil literature and language into the following p
eriods:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Sangam (100 BC to 300 AD)

Post-Sangam period (300 to 600 CE)
Bhakthi period (600 to 1200 CE)
Mediaeval Period (1200 to 1800 CE)
Modern (1800 to the present)

The Sangam literature contains about 50,000 lines of poetry contained in 2381 po
ems attributed to 473 poets including many women poets.[32][33] Many of the poem
s of Sangam period were also set to music.[34] During the post-Sangam period, im
portant works like Thirukkural, and epic poems like Silappatikaram, Manimekalai,
Svakacintmani were composed. The Bhakthi period is known for the great outpouring
of devotional songs set to pann music. Of those 9,295 Tevaram songs on Saivism
and 4,000 songs on Vaishnavism are well known.The early mediaeval Period gave ri
se to one of the best known adaptations of the Ramayana in Tamil, known as Kamba
Ramayanam and a story of 63 Nayanmars known as Periyapuranam.
Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_language