INTRODUCTION "jPJk; ed;Wk; gpwH ju thuh" -Kaniyan Poongunranaar. "The evil and good that you meet in your life is not given to you by somebody else, but it is something that you have taken upon yourself" says the philosopher and his words are true in the case of the Tamil people. The growth of a civilization depends on several things and one such important thing in philosophy. The Tamil Culture is grown, but where is its philosophy? Our search started at this point. We were helpless because this Tamil culture, which had, is adulterated. Who was the cause? It is the Tamil people themselves. The Tamil people have spoiled their philosophy. The Brahmins who are the so-called top most class penetrated into Tamil culture into every nook and corner. How did they penetrate? They just used the irrational religious behavior of Tamil people says Devaneya Pavanar in jopod; vg;gb nfl;lhd;. Not only that, they also used extra vagency, jealousy, lazy men, and blindly obedient nature of the Tamils and stole away the science, philosophy, education of Tamils. They introduced the philosophy that would make the Tamils always to be under slavery, they misused the science and the blind obedience of the Tamils to make them slaves forever says Guna in kz;Zhpik. Tamil people started to lose everything including land and the political power. "What is now there with Tamil people?" regrets the great U.V.Saminathan Iyer, who tried his level best to bring back Tamil literature. Now this slave mentality has becomes an in born nature of the Tamil people. The Tamil person has now a wounded psyche. The Tamil person has become a beggar. All that he had in the names of science and medicine he receives them back in the forms of Horoscopes, Fate, Vasthu, Ayurveda and Numerlogy. According to Karl Marx, the history is not supposed to be about the kings and their wars, their achievements, their family problems etc. It is supposed to be people centered. The Indian history will never become complete if the people centered history is included. And one major part of history is the south Indian history, if this is not included then the history is always incomplete, says K.K.Pillai in his book njd;dpe;jpa tuyhW. With regard to it we need to deny a few false teachings. The first of them is the priority given to Vedas, Upanishads in Indian Philosophy. The authenticity of Vedas and Upanishads are to be questioned because it oral tradition, but the philosophy of the Tamils which also has the same antiquity is recorded in the Tamil literature. The second lie is saying, "It is difficult to differentiate philosophy from religion in India." It is a lie because Samkhya, Lokayutha, Ajvikas, Carvakas were materialistic (atheistic). The Vaisesika and Nynya do not mention anything about religion but concentrates
only on philosophy. The third mistake is that we generalise all the Tamil thinkers into the category of writers of Literature. Some of them are not merely writers of literature but also philosophers. They have a philosophy of their own in search of truth, and most of their lives are examples for their own literature. At the outset we would like to acknowledge the sincere help that was rendered to us by Fr. Amalraj Susai and Fr. Pathiaraj for his guidance and support that made us to bring out this philosophy of our ancestors as well as the contemporary philosophers who are denied in the so called Indian philosophy. We would also like to thank The Retreat community for their encouragement. Some of the limitations for which we ask the readers' pardon are the inability in using the inclusive language and the correct use of symbols for Tamil terms. Another problem that we faced is giving the philosophy in English. Our aim was to find out the philosophy and present it, and since presenting it in Tamil is tedious and time taking we have presented it in English.
THE HISTORY OF TAMIL IN A NUT-SHELL Tamil originated in the Lemurian continent at least 50,000 years ago as a full-fledged language, after having passed through the four stages of development, viz., Monosyllabic or Isolating, compounding, Inflexional and Poly inflexional, which ought to have covered not less than a hundred thousand years, even according to the most modest calculation. As the primitive Tamilians passed through the three regional stages of civilization, viz., the hilly stage, the pastoral stage, and the agricultural stage, Tamil became more and more developed and attained perfection. As population increased, people gradually moved in different directions to distant lands, during the various stages of development of the Tamil language. The first Pāndiyan king of the Lemurian Tamils built his capital „Madurai‟ which was also the seat of the First Tamil Academy, on the banks of the river Pahruli at the southern extremity of the submerged continent. After the submergence of the southern part of the continent, the Pāndiyan capital was moved to „Alaivāy‟, the Kapātapura of the Sanskrit literature, which also became of the seat of the second Tamil Academy, at the estuary of the submerged river Kumari. After this river also went under the sea along with the residuary portion of the ancient Pāndiya Nādu, modern Madurai came into existence on the banks of the river Vaigai. The Tamils who spread towards the north became Dravidians by reason of their language having changed into Drāvida. A section of the Dravidians in their turn, slowly moved towards the northwest up to Scandinavia, became Aryans, and then was a nomadic horde from the northeast part of Europe, which entered
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