Reinhold Rost

“ Dr Pope, however, believed Tamil to be a corruption of tenmoli, southern speech, in contradistinction to vaḍugu, the northern, i.e., Telugu language. As in the case of the Kafir, Turkish, Tagala and other typical languages, the term Tamulic or Tamulian has occasionally been employed as the designation of the whole class of Dravidian peoples and languages, of which it is only the most prominent member. The present article deals with Tamil in its restricted sense only. The Tamils proper are smaller and of weaker build than Europeans, though graceful in shape. ”

“ The art of printing, however, which was introduced in southern India at an early date, while it has tended to the preservation of many valuable productions of the ancient literature, has also been the means of perpetuating and circulating a deal of literary rubbish and lasciviousness which would much better have remained in the obscurity of manuscript. ”

“ The old poetry abounds in verbal forms now obsolete. Adjectives, adverbs, and abstract nouns are derived from verbs by certain affixes. All post-positions were originally either nouns or verbal forms. Oratio indirecta is unknown in Tamil, as it is in all the other Indian languages, the gerund enru being used, like iti in Sanskrit, to indicate quotation. The structure of sentences is an exact counterpart of the structure of words, inasmuch as that which qualifies always precedes that which is qualified. ”

“ Even those who from age or infirmities could no longer take an active part in the operations continued to aid the cause as watchers, spies, or dressers of food. It was owing to their thorough organization, the secrecy and security with which they went to work, but chiefly to the religious garb in which they shrouded their murders, that they could, unmolested by Hindu or Mahommedan rulers, recognized as a regular profession and paying taxes as such, continue for centuries to practise their craft. ”

“ According to the census of 1901, the total number of Tamil-speaking people in all India was 16,525,500. To these should be added about 160,000 in the French possessions. But as of all the Dravidian languages the Tamil shows the greatest tendency to spread, its area becomes ever larger, encroaching on that of the contiguous languages. Tamil is a sister of Malayâḷam, Telugu, Kanarese, Tulu; and, as it is the oldest, richest, and most highly organized of the Dravidian languages, it may be looked upon as typical of the family to which it belongs. ”

“ In the 8th century the Vaṭṭel̤uttu existed side by side and together with the Grantha, an ancient alphabet still used throughout the Tamil country in writing Sanskrit. During the four or five centuries after the conquest of Madura by the Cholas in the 11th it was gradually superseded in the Tamil country by the modern Tamil, while in Malabar it continued in general use down to the end of the 17th century. But the earliest works of Tamil literature, such as the Tolkâppiyam and the Kuṛaḷ, were still written in it. ”

“ Of all the South-Indian tribes they are the least sedentary and the most enterprising. Wherever money is to be earned, there will Tamils be found, either as merchants or in the lower capacity of domestic servants and labourers. ”

“ From their using the noose as an instrument of murder they were also frequently called Phansigars, or "noose-operators." Though they themselves trace their origin to seven Mahommedan tribes, Hindus appear to have been associated with them at an early period; at any rate, their religious creed and practices as stanch worshippers of Kali (Devi, Durga) , the Hindu goddess of destruction, had certainly no flavour of Islam in them. Assassination for gain was with them a religious duty, and was considered a holy and honourable profession. ”

“ English influence has here, as in Bengal and elsewhere in India, greatly tended to create a healthier tone in literature both as to style and sentiment. As one of the best Tamil translations of English books in respect of diction and idiom may be mentioned the Bâlavyâpârikal, or “Little Merchants,” published by the Vernacular Text Society, Madras. ”

“ The will of the goddess by whose command and in whose honour they followed their calling was revealed to them through a very complicated system of omens. In obedience to these they often travelled hundreds of miles in company with, or in the wake of, their intended victims before a safe opportunity presented itself for executing their design ”

“ The earliest authenticated mention of the Thugs is found in the following passage of Ziau-d din Barni's History of Firoz Shah (written about 1356) : "In the reign of that sultan," that is, about 1200, " some Thugs were taken in Delhi, and a man belonging to that fraternity was the means of about a thousand being captured. ”

“ But practically the earliest extant records of the Tamil language do not ascend higher than the middle of the 8th century of the Christian era, the grant in possession of the Israelites at Cochin being assigned by the late Dr Burnell to about 750 A.D., a period when Malayâḷam did not exist yet as a separate language. There is every probability that about the same time a number of Tamil works sprung up, which are mentioned by a writer in the 11th century as representing the old literature (Burnell, loc. cit., p. 127, note) . ”

“ Other tenses and moods are expressed with the aid of special affixes or auxiliary verbs. Causal verbs are formed by various infixes {-ppi-, -vi-, and the passive by the auxiliary padu,
to fall, or by un, to eat, with a noun. The following four pecul- iarities are characteristic of Tamil : — first, the tenseless negative form of the verb, expressed by the infix a, which is elided before dissimilar vowels ”

“ There is, besides, a general oblique affix in, which is not only frequently used for the genitive, but may be inserted before any of the above affixes, to some of which the emphatic particle ê may also be superadded. In the old poetry there is a still greater variety of affixes, while there is an option of dispensing with all. Adjectives, when attributive, precede the noun and are unchangeable; when predicative they follow it and receive verbal affixes. The pronouns of the 1st person are sing. ”

“ Literature.—The early existence, in southern India, of peoples, localities, animals and products the names of which, as mentioned in the Old Testament and in Greek and Roman Writers, have been identified with corresponding Dravidian terms, goes far to prove the high antiquity, if not of the Tamil language, at least of some form of Dravidian speech (Caldwell, loc. cit., Introd., pp. 81-106; Madras District Manual, i., Introd., pp. 134 seq.) . ”

“ The one nearest akin to it is Malayâḷam, which originally appears to have been simply a dialect of Tamil, but differs from it now both in pronunciation and in idiom, in the retention of old Tamil forms obsolete in the modern language, and in having discarded all personal terminations in the verb, the person being always indicated by the pronoun (F. W. Ellis, Dissertation on the Malayâḷam Language, p. 2; Gundert, Malayâḷma Dictionary, Introd.; Caldwell, Comparative Gr., Introd., p. 23; Burnell, Specimens of South Indian Dialects, No. 2, p. 13) . ”

“ Dr Burnell has a note in his Elements of South Indian Paleography (2nd cd., p. 44) , from which it appears that in 1578 Tamil types were cut by Father João de Faria, and that a hundred years later a Tamil and Portuguese dictionary was published at Ambalakkâḍu. At present the number of Tamil books (inclusive of newspapers) printed annually far exceeds that of all the other Dravidian vernaculars put together. The earliest Tamil version of the New Testament was commenced by the Dutch in Ceylon in 1688; Fabricius's translation appeared at Tranquebar in 1715. ”