Spoken by eighty million people in South Asia and a diaspora that stretches across the globe, Tamil is one of the great world languages and one of the few ancient languages that survives as a mother tongue for so many speakers. David Shulman presents a comprehensive cultural history of Tamil language, literature and civilization emphasizing how Tamil speakers and poets have understood the unique features of their language over its long history. Impetuous, musical, whimsical, in constant flux, Ta