“Tamils: People originally of South India who speak the Tamil language. The Tamils have a long history of achievement; sea travel, city life, and commerce seem to have developed early among them. They traded with the ancient Greeks and Romans. They have the oldest cultivated Dravidian language and a rich literary tradition. They are mostly Hindus (the Tamil area of India is a center of traditional Hinduism). In Sri Lanka there are two separate Tamil populations, the Ceylon Tamils and the Indian Tamils. Tensions between the Ceylon Tamils and the Sinhalese Buddhist majority prompted a Tamil guerilla insurgency in the 1980s and 90s. The Tamils number about 57 million, with 3.2 million living in Sri Lanka.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
Mark's Text Terminal 