Uur - A Video Essay on Tamil

Language/Culture/History/Archaeology. 27 min.

This is part one of a video about one of the few languages in the world besides Greek that is both classical and modern. Spoken by nearly 80 million people, mainly in native Tamilnadu, South India, Tamil has a literary continuity of over 2000 years. Here we get a glimpse of the first 800 years of its known history - through geography and landscape, archaeology and literary history, and classical and folk performances. The video is produced by M.V. Bhaskar and co-directed with K.T. Gandhirajan, with advice from Dr. E. Annamalai, former Director of the Central Institute of Indian Languages and currently Visiting Professor Emeritus, Yale. The video can be purchased online at www.archaeologychannel.org, where the video is also streamed for Windows Media / Real Player.