posted March 30, 2001 03:10 PM            
The temple at Madurai is contemporary with those of ancient Greece and Egypt, yet while the gods of Thebes and the Parthenon have been dead and forgotten for millennia, the gods and temples of Hindu India are now more revered than ever.
Tamil civilisation is the only great classical culture to survive intact from the ancient world, and at temples such as Madurai one can still catch glimpses of festivals and practices that were seen by Greek visitors to India long before the rise of ancient Rome.Indeed,it is only when you grasp the astonishing antiquity, and continuity, of Hinduism that you realise quite how miraculous its survival has been.
Madurai is one of the most ancient holy towns in India, a Benares of the south, and long before its existence was first noted in the West in the fourth century BC, it was already an important centre.For from the very earliest period, Madurai was a major terminus of the Spice Route, linking the pepper groves of India with the groaning tables of the Mediterranean. Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador who visited India in 302 BC, recorded the town's legendary riches, and it is given pride of place in the earliest document detailing the spice trade , the 'Periplus Mars Erythraci', written by an anonymous Alexandrian Greek in the first century AD.
The 'Periplus' gives a wonderful picture of the courtly lifestyle of the time when it records that the area around Madurai imported Mediterranean eye-shadow, perfume, silverware, fine Italian wine and beautiful slave-girl musicians for concubinage; in turn the town exported silk, ivory, pearls and , crucially, pepper.Both Strabo and Ptolemy mention Madurai, the former in the same breath as complaining about the drain of silver from the Roman treasury that the trade with India was causing. This picture is graphically confirmed by the recent find of several huge Roman coin hoards around Madurai, as well as the discovery of Roman coastal trading post near Pondicherry, where the goods destined for the town were unloaded. At the peak of the trade, during the reign of Nero, an embassy from Madurai was received in Rome, and there is even reference to a Temple of Augustus being erected on the Indian coast, presumably for the use of Roman traders permanently settled in the Carnatic. Even today the English 'pepper' and 'ginger' are loan words from Tamil - from 'peppali' and 'singabera' respectively - having entered our language in the Middle Ages via Byzantine Greek.
This picture of Madurai's cosmopolitan connections is confirmed by Tamil sources which record that the kings of the Pandyan dynasty used to keep 'Yavana' (Greek or Roman) mercenaries, alongside a regiment of Tamil Amazons, as their personal bodyguards.We know this because around the temple at Madurai there grew up a flourishing literary culture based, according to tradition, at the Sangam or academy of Tamil poets.

-THE AGE OF KALI
Indian Travels & Encounters (page: 183&184)
By William Dalrymple

posted June 09, 2001 03:31 PM            
Hi Everyone (Both Thamils and Sinhales) please read this and learn about the Thamil civilisation(History).

Thanks.

posted June 11, 2001 12:57 AM         
Why you are posting Tamil history here??

The problem is the recent history, during the last 20 yrs. I think the biggest contribution to the Tamil culture came during that time:

1) Child Mercenaries
2) Suicide Mercenaries
3) Female Mercenaries
4) Asia's Hitler
5) Drug Trafficking
6) Refugee Trafficking

Too many to list here.

(The History beyond 20 years has been appreciated by many. There is a saying that you have to earn your respect. I think LTTE is working hard to get Tamil history dishonored)

posted June 19, 2001 10:05 AM         
Vijay, you go ahead and post what ever you want and don't listen to the crap that anyone else have to say.

Ndakota, what about the sinhala history... we all know that sinhala boys are for sale in colombo as sex slaves to white men. It is so sick to see so many sinhala boys in the arms of child molesters. Why can't you people do something about it instead of wasting your time here. You Sinhalese go on talking about how you pity the Child Soldiers who are forced to fight.Why dont you people try saving the young children who are forced in to prostitution. The sad part is most of these children enter this filty trade with the blessing of their parents.

posted June 21, 2001 12:19 AM         
All that the above proves is that Tamil civilization flourished in India, not Sri Lanka. Quite the opposite to the civilization of the Sinhalese which flourished purely in Sri Lanka.

The claim that a traditional Tamil homeland exists in Sri Lanka is a myth because Tamils are relative new-comers to Lanka.