Reinhold Rost

“ 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. ”

“ The present article deals with Tamil in its restricted sense only.
The Tamils, taken as the type and representatives of the Dravidian race, do not now, owing to early intermixture with the Aryan immigrants, materially differ in physical character from the other curly-haired indigenous population of India. They were at one time, on the ground of the general structure of their language, classed with the Mongoloid (Turanian, Scythian) and even the Australian races, but that classification is rejected by all the leading ethnologists. ”

“ 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 comparatively safe obscurity of manuscript. ”

“ In the 8th century the Vaṭṭeluttu 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 During the four or five centuries after the conquest of Madura by the Cholas in the 11th it was gradually superseded in the Tamil country by the modern Tamil, while in Malabar it continued in general use down to the end of the 17th century.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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 Or Burnell to about 750 a.d., a period when MalayMma 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) . ”

“ In addition to the four semivowels, the Tamil possesses a cerebral ṛ and ḷ, and has, in common with the Malayâḷma, retained a liquid l, once peculiar to all the Dravidian languages, the sound of which is so difficult to fix graphically, and varies so much in different districts, that it has been rendered in a dozen different ways (Manual of the Administration of the Madras Presidency, vol. ii. p. 20 sq.) ”

“ The fraternity possessed also a jargon of their own (Ramasi) , as well as certain signs by which its members recognized each other in the remotest parts of India. 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. ”

“ According to the census of 1881, the number of Tamil-speaking people throughout the province was 12,413,517, inclusive of 21,992 Yerkalas, 3843 Kurumbas, and 287 Irulas, three tribes speaking rude dialects of the language. 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Dr Burnell has a note in Elements of South Indian Paleography (2d ed., 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 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. ”

“ From their using the noose as an instrument of murder they were also frequently called Phdnsigdrs, or "noose-operators." Though they themselves trace their origin to seven Mohammedan tribes, Hindus appear to have been associated with them at an early period; at any rate, their religious creed and practices as staunch worshippers of Devi (Kali, 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. ”