thomas burrow, in contrast, argued that the word was likely to have been dravidian in origin, on the basis that tamil and malayalam "hardly ever substitute (retroflex approximant) l peculiarly dravidian sound, for sanskrit -'l'-." he suggests that the name "eelam" came from the dravidian word "eelam" (or cilam) meaning "toddy", referring to the palm trees in sri lanka, and later absorbed into indo-aryan languages. this, he says, is also likely to have been the source for the pali '"sihala". the dravidian etymological dictionary, which was jointly edited by thomas burrow and murray emeneau, marks the indo-aryan etymology with a question mark.