         | |||||||||||||||
| Thiruvalluvar • Srinivasa Ramanujan • Muttiah Muralitharan Viswanathan Anand • Rajaraja Chola Abdul Kalam • A. R. Rahman C. N. Annadurai • M. S. Subbulakshmi | |||||||||||||||
| Total population | |||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 77,000,000 [1] | |||||||||||||||
| Regions with significant populations | |||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||
| Languages | |||||||||||||||
| Tamil | |||||||||||||||
| Religion | |||||||||||||||
| 88% Hindu, 6% Christian, 5.5% Muslim (for Tamil Nadu alone)[6] | |||||||||||||||
| Related ethnic groups | |||||||||||||||
| Dravidians · Telugus · Kannadigas · Tuluvas · Malayalis · Giraavarus[7] · Sinhalese[8] |
Tamil people (Tamil: தமிழர், tamiḻar ?), also called Tamils or Tamilians, are a linguistic and ethnic group native to Tamil Nadu, a state in southern India and the north-eastern region of Sri Lanka. They speak Tamil (தமிழ்), with a recorded history going back two millennia.[9] Emigrant communities are found across the world, notably Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, Canada, and the UK. The Tamils are mostly Hindus with sizable Christian and Muslim populations.
Tamil was the first Indian language to be given classical status. It has the oldest extant literature amongst other Dravidian languages.[10] The art and architecture of the Tamil people encompass some of the notable contributions of India and South-East Asia to the art world. The famous Nataraja sculpture of the Chola period became a universal symbol of Hinduism. The music, the temple architecture and the stylised sculptures favoured by the Tamil people in their ancient nation are still being learnt and practiced. Thus, Tamils have been referred to as the last surviving classical civilisation on Earth.[11] The Pallava script, a variant of Southern Brahmi used by the Tamil Pallava dynasty, was the basis of several of the writing systems of Southeast Asia, including the Burmese, Khmer, Thai, Lao and Javanese scripts.[12]
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