Eelavar is a caste of toddy tappers found in the southern parts of Kerala. Eela-kaasu and Eela-karung-kaasu are refers to coinages found in the Chola inscriptions of Parantaka I. Since the 1980s the words Eelam and Eelavar have been taken up by the Tamil separatist movements. Eelavar now refers to the citizens of the proposed Tamil Eelam, which would have taken up the northern and eastern parts of Sri Lanka. Late 19th century linguists took the view that the name Eelam was derived from the Pali (An Indo-Aryan language) form Sihala for Sri Lanka. Robert Caldwell, following Hermann Gundert, cites the word as an example of the omission of initial sibilants in the adoption of Indo-Aryan words into Dravidian languages. Sri Lankan historian Karthigesu Indrapala in his thesis released in 1965 suggested that the people from whose named Eelam is derived were Sinhalese. He derived Eelam from Sinhala as follows The earliest occurrence of the name Eelam is in the Brahmi inscriptions of South India in which it occurs as Ila (Eela), the Prakrit form of the Eelam.

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