Tamil

has for 2000 years been a copious language highly accentuated; and we can speak from personal experience, having written, spoken, and read it freely for several years. Dr Winslow, the Tamil lexicographer, says (Pref. to Dict., p. vii), “ In its poetic form Tamil is more polished and exact than the Greek, and in both dialects, with its borrowed treasures, it is more copious than Latin.” In one of the most celebrated and earliest Tamil poems (see Tiru-valluvar) we find a lowly peasant giving good, manly, advice to princes and commoners as to the responsibilities of power and wealth. Nothing could be better than this author's chapters on “ Virtue and Physical Pleasures”; and some scholars date this as early as our 8rd century. The Telagu is not considered as ancient, but it is a highly developed liquid tongue called “the Italian of the East.” 589