Tamil Religions
TAMIL RELIGIONS. The term Tamil religions denotes the religious traditions and practices of Tamil-speaking people. Most Tamils originated and continue to live in India's southernmost area, now known as the state of Tamil Nadu; however, millions of Tamils have migrated to other parts of India, especially to its large cities, as well as abroad, particularly to Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Madagascar, Australia, Great Britain and, more recently, to the United States and Canada. Many emigrant Tamils retain elements of a cultural, linguistic, and religious tradition that predates the Christian era and has experienced a complex interaction of influences from Dravidian, Sanskritic, and heterodox sources. At its apex between the eighth and fifteenth centuries, the Tamil region was the major center of Hindu civilization and, indeed, one of the major centers of civilization in the world. Today, while most Tamils remain essentially Hindu, some Tamils have embraced elements of Islam and Christianity.
Early Tamil Religion
A Neolithic cattle-herding culture existed in South India several millennia prior to the Christian era. By the first century, a relatively well-developed civilization had emerged, still largely pre-Hindu and only marginally sanskritized. It is described in some detail in Tamil texts such as the Tolkāppiyam (a grammar written around the start of the Christian era) and by the "Caṅkam" poets—an "academy" of poets who wrote in the first two centuries CE.
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