Dear Sridhar & Lavanya! I agree with Sridhar's arguement. Because we can see that religions and languages had the impact from the rulers time to time over the history. As English became the international language because of the colonial rule of Briton, Tamil also would have gained a regional language status in those days due to the mighty Chola Empherers. Even in Sri Lanka, the agreement between the British and the Kandy lords was written in Tamil once the final Sinhala Kingdom (Kandy) was over-run by the British in 1815. anpudan, Vijayaalayan