Arwi or Arabu-Tamil Orthography

The Arab Muslim traders and the native Tamil converts to Islam in Tamil Nadu state of India and Sri Lanka came into closer contact as a result of their commercial activities. They were bound by a common religion but separated by two different languages. They felt the necessity for a link language. They started to write Tamil in an adapted Arabic script called Arwi. From eighth century to nineteenth century this language enjoyed its popularity among Tamil speaking Muslims of Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. The valuable and useful ideas of Tamil Muslim minds were conveyed in Arabicized Tamil called Arwi. It rendered a most useful service for the advancement and progress of Arab and Tamil cultures. However the beginning of the twentieth century saw the decline of this language..Today the printing system needs such encoding solutions in order to make the task of printing and publishing the Arwi books as easier ones. There are only few hundreds of Arwi books were published so far in different parts of Asia and more than 4000 books were unpublished and these books were available in handwritten or in manuscript form. To publish these literary works we are in need of printing solutions.