EDIT Tamil is the script used to write the Dravidian language spoken since prehistoric times by the Tamil people in southern India and northern Sri Lanka. It is spoken by about 70 million people.

Sometimes, it is called vattezhuthu (round script) because of the round shape of the characters. It was necessary to use rounded characters for the customary writing on dried palm leaves that would break if stright lines were used along their veines.

Like Devanāgarī, Tamil is a syllabic alphabet of the abugida type, which means the consonants have an inherent vowel (a) unless otherwise indicated. It has 18 consonants and 12 vowels that can make a total of 216 compound characters, plus one special character. It is shorter than Devanāgarī because the Tamil language lacks certain sounds the Indian language has.
The vowels are grouped into short and long (five each) and two diphthongs. There are three categories of consonants with 6 in each category: vallinam (hard), mellinam (soft or nasal), and idayinam (medium). The syllables are created in many different ways, some are specific for a vowel, some have prefixes, some suffixes, some use both.
Pure consonants are created with the Tamil Sign Virama (U+0BCD), an overdot.

Like Gujarati, Tamil has borrowed letters that were added to be able to write Sanscrit.

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