It further claimed that the urban centre in question, on the banks of the Vaigai river, is at least 2,600 years old, making it contemporary to the Gangetic plain civilisation. The Tamil Nadu government’s archaeology department released the findings of the fourth phase, undertaken in 2018, calling them a “turning point in the cultural historiography of the Sangam era”. Since the first phase of excavation in 2014 here, archaeologists have found it to be a relatively more prominent site. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) had conducted three excavations in Tamil Nadu – in 1947, 19 – before turning to Keezhadi. Potsherds unearthed at Keezhadi, many in trenches 4m underground. It also strengthens the purported connection between the Indus Valley settlers and the ancient residents of Keezhadi. The Sivaganga discovery is the first major one of its kind in the state that claims to attest to the presence of an ancient urban civilisation in the subcontinent’s south, a civilisation that has often been pooh-poohed as political rhetoric. The period is noted for its Tamil literature and its literary output is closely associated with a significant politico-literary movement in early 20th century Tamil Nadu, which held that the Dravidian people could be descended from the people of the Indus Valley civilisation. It is named for scholarly congregations in and around the city of Madurai, located about 400 km southwest of Chennai. The ‘Sangam’ describes a period from the sixth century BC to the third century AD encompassing today’s Tamil Nadu, Kerala, the southern parts of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, and northern Sri Lanka. However, newly discovered artefacts at an excavation site in Keezhadi, a village near Madurai in Tamil Nadu’s Sivaganga district, seem to corroborate the ‘cosmopolitan’ claim as well as suggest the Sangam era could be 300 years older than thought. It may have been easy, especially two millennia ago when the poem was written, to dismiss it as the figment of a fertile imagination. Per a rough translation, it describes a city that was by nature cosmopolitan, with ‘enlightened’ people from various nations speaking various languages and living in harmony. This is a poem from Paṭṭiṉap Pālai in Sangam literature (English: ‘The City and the Desert’), written between 100 BC and 100 AD. Besides Kerala Paanini, grammaticians like Herman Gundart, George Mathan, Kovunni Nedungadi, and many others have authored grammar books.புலம் பெயர் மாக்கள் கலந்து இனிது உறையும், Raja RajaVarma the famous grammatician, who is known as Kerala Panini for his contributions to Malayalam language, posits that there are 53 different meaningful sounds in Malayalam. In his famous Malayalam grammar book ‘Kerala Paanineeyam’, A. Today Malayalam is spoken by almost 38 million people.ĭifferent opinions exist on the script of Malayalam language. Malayalam, one among the Dravidian languages, most likely originated as a split from Tamil in even more ancient times and became an independent language by AD 9th century. While ‘Vattezhuthu Script’ was the script used for Malayalam from 9th century onwards, the modern script of Malayalam Language evolved from the ‘Grandha Script’ which came into existence by the 16th century. It’s the major language of Kerala and Lakshadweep. Malayalam started to develop as a separate language from the 13th century onwards.