This book is written for the benefit of young readers in Tamil Nadu. This state has a long history and a rich heritage. Its history is full of remarkable achievements in various fields. It has impressive archaeological remains dating back to the early centuries of the Common Era (CE). What is more interesting is that there are thousands of stone inscriptions, some of which go back to the second century Before the Common Era (BCE). In addition, a large number of magnificent temples have survived bearing testimony to the achievements of the ancients in art and architecture. The past is fascinating and an enduring source of inspiration.Today breathtaking developments are taking place in science and technology. These can be used to discover more of the past and understand it better. Much remains to be discovered. It is important for the youth to know the past. This helps to understand the present. This book is intended to give a peep into that past.

The Tamils have an unbroken history of more than two thousand years. Tamil, the language they speak, is one of the oldest living languages in the world. The only people comparable to the Tamils in terms of their hoary past and vibrant present would be the Jews with one marked difference. The Tamils have always had their homeland 'Tamilaham' (alternately pronounced and spelt 'Tamizhaham') known today as Tamil Nadu which to them represents their mother and is revered by them as 'Tamizh Tai' literally ‘Tamil Mother’. This is in striking contrast to the Jews who have been through a long and arduous struggle to gain their homeland, a deeply contested site to this day with Hebrewisation of Israel being a key marker of Jewish identity in the region. Tamils, by contrast have a clear numerical majority in the region that now comprises Tamil Nadu and the language unites rather than divides adherents of different faiths. The second edition of Historical Dictionary of the Tamils contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 600 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Tamils.

At a time the Tamils have forgotten their glorious past, the hights of their achievements in political, social, cultural and civilization fields, when they have lost even their sense of self respect, this book apart from being a treasure of culture, I consider, is one that awakens them, reminds them and rekindles their interest to know about their past and implores them to create a greater feature. I fervently hope that the vision of the author is realized and all our wishes filfilled. I am sure that the sincere and enlightened work serve the purpose and the society. It has website effect scanning every minutes detail of the Tamil culture. We are sure when you come out you would be a scholar to be sought after. Hardbound

How did the Tamil merchant become India's first link to the outside world? The tale of the Tamil merchant is a fascinating story of the adventure of commerce in the ancient and early medieval periods in India. The early medieval period saw an economic structure dominated by the rise of powerful Tamil empires under the Pallava and Chola dynasties. This book marks the many significant ways in which the Tamil merchants impacted the political and economic development of south India.

Spoken by eighty million people in South Asia and a diaspora that stretches across the globe, Tamil is one of the great world languages, and one of the few ancient languages that survives as a mother tongue for so many speakers. David Shulman presents a comprehensive cultural history of Tamil—language, literature, and civilization—emphasizing how Tamil speakers and poets have understood the unique features of their language over its long history. Impetuous, musical, whimsical, in constant flux, Tamil is a living entity, and this is its biography. Two stories animate Shulman’s narrative. The first concerns the evolution of Tamil’s distinctive modes of speaking, thinking, and singing. The second describes Tamil’s major expressive themes, the stunning poems of love and war known as Sangam poetry, and Tamil’s influence as a shaping force within Hinduism. Shulman tracks Tamil from its earliest traces at the end of the first millennium BCE through the classical period, 850 to 1200 CE, when Tamil-speaking rulers held sway over southern India, and into late-medieval and modern times, including the deeply contentious politics that overshadow Tamil today. Tamil is more than a language, Shulman says. It is a body of knowledge, much of it intrinsic to an ancient culture and sensibility. “Tamil” can mean both “knowing how to love”—in the manner of classical love poetry—and “being a civilized person.” It is thus a kind of grammar, not merely of the language in its spoken and written forms but of the creative potential of its speakers.

A bible theological didactic is not principally reduced to learning and teaching Bible alone but rather extended to understanding and interpreting Bible in one's own religious and pedagogical context. Bible didactic, moreover, does not circumscribe itself only to biblical knowledge in virtue of deducing some abstract and moral principles, but it rather prospects to strengthen and reconstruct one's identity within the choices offered by culture and context. This book aims to engage in an intercultural interpretation of the parables and the miracles of Jesus by dialoging with the culture of Tamils. This comparative study subsequently proposes an alternative synchronic hermeneutic in biblical didactics replacing a deep-seated diachronic model in Tamil land. It also develops a model of sync-culturation superseding fossilised model of inculturation. This book capitalises Tamils' texts and narratives of masses reflected in the archives of Tamil literatures and legends in the process of theologisation. Bearing on the aesthetics of parables and miracles and contextual reading of them, this study brings forward ‘the world in front of the text' leaving behind the conventional exegesis of `the world behind the text’.