tongues of the Himalayas and Tibet is by itself insufficient to establish an ethnic relationship between the two races, especially when there are so many and so strong arguments to the contrary. Further, there is not the slightest affinity between Tamil and the Tibetan tongues, nor the least resemblance in the physical characters of the Tamil people and the Mongolian tribes.
We have already stated that 'Tamra-litti’ had no connection with 'Tamil’. Kosar seems to have been a hill tribe more or less akin to the Koyas and the Eyinas (Paraiya) of the Tamil districts, which name is still preserved in the word Koyan-puttur (Coimbatore) meaning the new village of the Koya or Kosar sribe. It is not connected with that powerful and civilized race, the Cushites of antiquity, as Mr. Kanakasabhai seems to think, but rather allied to the Telugu speaking hill tribe of that name. Maran is he who barters ; it is a title assumed by the Pandya kings on account of their earliest commercial relationship with the Egyptians, Chaldeans, ancient Arabs and other Western nations. The traditional origin of this word from Maru (to beat with a tamarind switch) given in the Madura Tiruvilayadal-Purana, in order to connect it with one of the Siva's 'sacred sports'
மாறான் மாறனென்றாங்கரும் பெயர் பெற்றோன்,
betrays the imaginative flights of the Brahman Purana writers. And we may say that this word Mâran has greater connection with the Hebrew Mara to sell or barter, than with the Burmese Mrân-mar.
