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it clear that the ancient Tamils were familiar with the Chemistry of spoken sounds. According to the principles of the Science the spoken sounds of all the languages are classifiable into basic and complex ones. The basic sounds are thirty in number and the complex letters are formed by a combination of simple basic sounds with oge or more of the three cementing factors called and Qures in manifold ways. Since the ancient Tamilians have devised symbols for the thirty elementary spoken sounds and the three cementing particles it is easy for one who is conversant with their Phonetics to express in writing with the aid of the Tamil letters every kind of spoken sound in any language of the world. The thirty elementary letters represent exhaustively the thirty efforts of the speaking organs. As the letter in Tamil represents the effort more than the sound it is rendered possible to have a limited number of symbols to express an indefinite group of spoken sounds all of which originate within the limits of the efforts of speech limited by the constitution of the vocal frame in the human body. The wonderful merit of the Tamil Alphabet is that the thirty simple basic sounds are represented by the thirty main letters of the language. This Phonetic science of the Tamils woald if sufficiently well known to the civilised world revolutionise the system of scripss now prevalent in the East and the West and be of incalculable service in reducing to a minimum the gigantic efforts of the Western Phoneticians who perhaps beginning at the wrong end strive to devise a separate symbol for each of the numerous spoken sounds in the world. An accurate knowledge of the forms of the three .cementing sounds (a , bu da , s plus sys ) has been practically absent in the Tamil land for at least a thousand years in the past and to-day the keen researches of My Manickam Naicker, have brought them into clear light. ( S ub) merely signifies the sound of as much breath as is necessary to form complex sounds out of the simple basic ones. It is confused narrowly with the complex sound that arises by its combina tion with the letfers. Durand does not indicate the shortened form of . but is a different adjunct sound which by combination with 4. represents the middle letter
