which is Oldest Indian language Sanskrit or Tamil?

Question

Which of these two classical Indian languages is the oldest

Answer 1

Tamil And Sanskrit

Answer 2

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RE:
which is Oldest Indian language Sanskrit or Tamil?
Which of these two classical Indian languages is the oldest

Answer 3

To deny Tamil being the oldest language is like doubting the purity of a Mother.
Tamil is the oldest because sanskrit is foreign and not purely Indian language unlike Tamil
God bless India , if an oldest Indian language like Tamil is being challenged by a a half indian language like sanskrit, i really don"t know where to laugh.
Naturally the root of Indian language is Tamil, also sanskrit has loaned alot of words from Tamil and not to deny the fact that there are sanskrits" "influence" to Tamil too which happen "after" thousands of years later

Answer 4

Tamil, tholkappiyam itself 2700 years old and prior to that the grammar book used for Tamil language is ainthiram, which is 10000 years old, even it existed at the time of writing Ramayana. 60% archeological evidence is Tamil. Sanskrit has archeological proof only 1700 years old, nothing found prior to that. Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, tulu, kodagu, baduga all from Tamil language. Sanskrit has more than 500 loan words exclusively from Tamil. Rig veda is from Birahu. The script used to write Tamil is called Brahu script and later it is called by the Sanskrit people as Brami script. Sanskrit has no written script until they found the script used to write Tamil called Birahu.
TAMIL IS THE OLDEST CLASSIC LANGUAGE.

Answer 5

tamil is the oldest languages spoken on earth.....tamil is not only a language, they are religion,, but at that time they didnot know the real meaning of religion.... when sanskrit came they created religion and divided so many tamil people......tamil language is so vast but it is being menaced by the threats of sanskrit....the prayers in our kovil are being done in sanskrit...and they say that sanskrit is the language of god....unfortunately its wrong and false....god existed before any other languages....he created the world and the universe....now dont give such stupid answers that sanskrit was spoken by god...everyone pray in their way but how come in south india, they are doing prayers in sanskrit....i think its high time to take into action and make tamil prayers,,,,we have our own identity so why should practice their language....

Answer 6

Tamil is a classical language older than latin, greek, egyptian or even sanskrit.
It is potentially the oldest language still in significant use.

Tamil cannot be compared to Sanskrit as sanskrit is clearly a language of nomads which came to birth after 1500bc where Ancient Tamil was already reaching it"s medevial period then.
Sanskrit is already dead in the modern world, whereby Ancient Tamil is still living rich in the modern world.

Answer 7

Sanskrit is not foreign language as some idiots here claim. Look at common words in both. Malayalam is one language that has most common words. Written records show Sanskrit literature older. Till we get new evidence of otherwise.

Answer 8

Tamil is oldest

It has to be Tamil bcz India is indeed the land of the Dravidian and Tamil is the mother of all Dravidian languages when Tamil was around Sanskrit was never present , sanskrit was only formed after the arrival of the Aryans.

The age difference btw Sanskrit and Tamil is more than 1700 yrs

Answer 9

Tamil is NOT the "mother of Dravidian". It is one of the Dravidian languages, all of which are descended from a common ancestor, Proto-Dravidian. Likewise, Sanskrit is NOT the "mother of Indo-European". As Tamil is descended from Proto-Dravidian, so is Sanskrit descended from Proto-Indo-European. The written records of both Old Tamil (which is not identical to Modern Tamil) and of Sanskrit are roughly the same age. The Sanskrit records are of a remembered language, that is, a language that is older than the date of the records, possibly by as much as 1000 years. The Old Tamil records are of a language living at the time of the writing. Therefore, Sanskrit is probably the older language.

Edit: For the answer below, Tamil and Sanskrit are completely unrelated languages. Tamil is NOT based off of Sanskrit and Sanskrit is NOT based off of Tamil.

EDIT: The Tamil script is NOT the basis for written Sanskrit. The script that is the basis for all writing systems on the Indian subcontinent is the Brahmi script which was first used for writing SANSKRIT and was later adapted for use with Tamil. Brahmi is a development of an Eastern Aramaic script whose ultimate origins are in the Canaanite script of 1500 BCE.

POINT OF VIEW: I find these continual arguments between Tamil nationalists and Hindi nationalists to be stupid. The facts are linguistically non-debatable and prove nothing about the political claims of either party.

Answer 10

The only Indian writings that incontestably predate the influence of classical
Sanskrit are those in the Tamil language. Anthologies of secular lyrics on the
themes of love and war, together with the grammatical-stylistic work Tolkappiyam
(Old Composition), were once thought to be very ancient; they are now believed to
date no earlier than from about the 1st to the 5th century AD. Later, between the
6th and 9th centuries, Tamil sectarian devotional poems were composed, often claimed
as the first examples of the Indian bhakti tradition (see below). At some
indeterminate date between the 2nd and 5th centuries, two long Tamil verse romances
(sometimes called epics) were written: Cilappatikaram (The Jeweled Anklet) by Ilanko
Atikal, which has been translated into English (1939 and 1965); and its sequel
Manimekalai (The Girdle of Gems), a Buddhist work by Cattanar.