Saurashtra (Saurashtra script: , Tamil script: சௌராட்டிர மொழி, Devanagari script: सौराष्ट्र भाषा) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken primarily by the Saurashtrians of Southern India who migrated from the Lata region of present-day Gujarat to south of Vindhyas in the Middle Ages. Saurashtra, an offshoot of Sauraseni Prakrit, once spoken in the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, is now chiefly spoken in various places of Tamil Nadu and are mostly concentrated in Madurai, Thanjavur and Salem Districts. The language has its own script of the same name, but is also written in the Tamil, Telugu, and Devanagari scripts. The Saurashtra script is of Brahmic origin, although its exact derivation is not known. Unlike most of the surrounding Dravidian languages, Saurashtra is Indo-European. There is some debate amongst speakers of the Saurashtra language as to which script is best suited to the language. Census of India places the language under Gujarati. Official figures show the number of speakers as 247,702 (2011 census). Classification Saurashtra belongs to the western branch of the Indo-Aryan languages, a dominant language family of the Indian subcontinent. It is part of the greater Indo-European language family. It is also classified as being part of a Gujaratic languages that, alongside Saurashtra includes the languages like Gujarati (see SIL Ethnologue). Etymology Saura is a Sanskrit term meaning flame or dawn of Surya and the people worshiping Surya or Saura are called as Saurashtrians, the speakers of Saurashtra were once sun worshipers and have built sun temples dedicated to the Hindu deity Surya. As per one school of thought, "Saurashtra" means 100 nations (Sau + Rashtra), but as per another school of thought, this is a fractured speech of "Su-Rashtra" and its Prakrit name Sorath, which literally means "good country". Many Sanskrit words are coined from the Prakrit language of Sauraseni or Shauraseni language now called as Saurashtra. History The oldest available inscriptions in Saurashtra are found in Mandasaur, which is a city in the Malwa region (present day Madhya Pradesh). The language is the modern living and active form of ancient Sauraseni Prakrit. However, it also shows some similarities with Maharashtri Prakrit, the ancestor of Marathi and Konkani. Saurashtra was once commonly spoken in the coastal areas of Mahi and Tapti rivers, which extends throughout the Malwa region of Madhya Pradesh and Saurashtra region of southern Gujarat. It was also spoken by the people living along Konkan region, which extends throughout