after the tamil writers were introduced to the concept of lemuria in the 1890s, they came up with the tamilized versions of the continent's name (e.g. "ilemuria"). by the early 1900s, they started using tamil names for the continent, to support their depiction of lemuria as an ancient tamil civilization. in 1903, v.g. suryanarayana sastri first used the term "kumarinatu" (or "kumari nadu", meaning "kumari territory") in his work tamil mozhiyin varalaru (history of the tamil language). the term kumari kandam ("kumari continent") was first used to describe lemuria in the 1930s.