This was what a french scholar thought of tamil influence 40 years ago...has the situation changed now??
quote
"These few examples may be enough to give us evidence of the need for a larger and international investigation to try to cover the immense field of human activity in which Tamil speakers have co- operated with nations during so many centuries."
First International Tamil Conference - Seminar Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 18 - 23 April 1966 Presidential Address Research in South East Asia and in the Far East
Jean Filliozat
The cultural and commercial intercourse between India and South-east Asia across the ocean, as well as the propagation of the Buddhist religion and of Indian sciences along the ways of central Asia towards the Far East, have been prominent for nearly twenty centuries. Many archaeological remains, records of travellers, and texts and inscriptions in Indian languages existing in all Eastern Asia are direct testimonies of this fact. Borrowings of Indian words in the languages of this part of the world, and Indian features in the original arts of many countries are also indirect evidence of the same fact.
In the first part of the last century the view was generally accepted among scholars that the main current of Indian culture towards the East had been Buddhistic. It seemed sure Hindu religion, as deriving from the Vedic or Brahmanical one, was not a missionary religion and was not exported from India. It was easy in order to support this opinion to quote from Manu or from the other later sources in the literature of the Dharmasastras prohibiting sea voyage for brahmans. But in fact, this opinion was wrong. Since the second part of the last century a lot of brahmanical remains and Sanskrit Hindu inscriptions were recorded in South-east Asia and Indonesia. Even literal Vedic quotations appear in Indo-Chinese and Indonesian documents. The only problem which remained till recently was how to reconcile the prohibition of exportation of Vedic lore beyond the seas with the fact of this very exportation, and by whom the Vedic, Brahmanical and Hindu religions were brought and established in South-east Asia.
This last problem is now going to be solved, thanks to Tamil research and to Sanskrit research in Tamil Nadu, as well as in the S.E. Asia itself. At first Tamil research had not been considered as very important in this matter because, in South-east Asia, Sanskrit inscriptions referring only to Sanskrit literature are much more numerous than the Tamil ones which also are ordinarily of later dates. So, it seemed the main influence from India towards the East was from Northern India. Tamilians themselves called Sanskrit vadamoli (`Northern Language'). But that does not mean they have not used it. On the contrary, if we draw a complete enquiry into the culture of Tamil Nad as it was all along the centuries, we observe Tamil pulavars not only have produced Tamil masterpieces of poetry and learning, but also have contributed much in Sanskrit to Literature and Philosophy. We have just to refer to the names of such great philosophers of world fame as Sankaracarya or Ramanuja, or to authors like Dandin who were ubhayakavi.
Moreover we must observe when Tamilians wrote in Sanskrit they were not always nearly following a Northern tradition. Very often they simply used Sanskrit as a language of general communication in order to more widely propagate ideas from their own tradition. Rãmãnuja, for example, gave a scholastical Sanskrit garment to the theology of Nammalvar who inspired him and who before him had sung in his love for God:
Let us now consider the most ancient of the Sanskrit inscriptions of Indo-China which was found at Vocanh near the eastern coast of the Indo-Chinese peninsula in Vietnam. According to palaeographical evidence it belongs to the second or third century A.D. The shape of the characters does not clearly indicate if the writing was introduced from South India or from any other part of India. But the contents of the inscription are significant. In spite of the fact the lines are not all well preserved we have the name of the king who ordered to carve out the text. This name is Sri Mara. At the beginning of the study of this inscription, it was thought the king was a Buddhist because he was praising 'compassion', karuna. The name 'Mara' also seemed to evolve Buddhism. But it would have been very strange if the king had designated himself as Mara, that is, as an enemy of Buddhism. We know karuna, corresponding to the Tamil arul, is Brahmanical or Hindu as well as Buddhistic, and the name Mara in Sanskrit must now be recognised as merely being a transliteration of the famous Tamil title of Pandyan kings MaRaN. Because the letter R. of Tamil MaRaN is lacking in Sanskrit it was replaced by the other one and so the Tamil word became similar to the name of the Buddha's antagonist who was surely there out of consideration.
The use of the Sanskrit language by Tamilians and the introduction of a famous Tamil royal title under a Sanskrit garment was quite natural at the time, that is, in the first centuries of the Saka era. In this period not only the Dravidian languages were by their very origin different from the Indo-Aryan ones but also they most probably were already highly differentiated from each other. Above all, the Indoaryan Prakrits of the North, also in use in the South with the Jain Ardhamagadhi and with the Buddhistic Pali, were much different from each other. Only Sanskrit was known at least by educated peoples everywhere and regularly taught in special schools as the same throughout India. It was the only means of general communication as Latin has been during centuries in Europe and as English is today in the greatest part of the world; Sanskrit was used for secular and practical purposes, owing to this character of common language medium. In most of the official inscriptions it replaced the Prakrits and, at the same time, the compromise between the old Buddhist Prakrit text and the widespread usage of the classical Sanskrit gave birth to the so called Buddhist hybrid Sanskrit which was g