Short answers, pulled from the story.
Tamil is attested since around 300 BCE, making it one of the longest-surviving classical languages in the world. Artifacts from Adichanallur dated from at least 696 BCE contained Tamil Brahmi script, and one sample from Keezhadi was dated to around 580 BCE.
The Tamil Lexicon of the University of Madras defines 'Tamil' as 'sweetness'. S. V. Subramanian reads it as 'sweet sound', from tam meaning 'sweet' and il meaning 'sound'. David Shulman argues that at some point in history, Tamil meant something like 'knowing how to love' in a poetic sense.
Tamil became the first legally recognised Classical language of India on the 6th of June 2004, when President Abdul Kalam announced the status in a joint sitting of both houses of the Indian Parliament.
Several common English words trace to Tamil, including rice (from arici), curry (from kaṟi), mango (from māṅgāy), catamaran (from kaṭṭu maram meaning 'bundled logs'), mulligatawny (from miḷaku taṇṇīr meaning 'pepper water'), and cheroot (from curuṭṭu meaning 'rolled up').
The Pure Tamil Movement was a 20th-century campaign led by Parithimaar Kalaignar and Maraimalai Adigal that sought to remove Sanskrit loanwords from Tamil. Under some estimates, the share of Sanskrit loanwords in formal Tamil fell from between 40 and 50 percent to around 20 percent.
The Tolkāppiyam is both the oldest extant Tamil text and the oldest known Tamil grammar, with its earliest layers dated as early as the late 2nd century BCE. It covers Tamil grammar and poetics and remains the foundation for much of modern Tamil grammatical scholarship.