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மயிலை சீனி. வேங்கடசாமி ஆய்வுக்களஞ்சியம் - 17
ture, that the Nunnool or Tamil Grammar of Pavananti, is the most philosophically and logically arranged Grammar of any language in the universe, and that it is a "venerable and esteemed work."
Indian Christians have said none the less. One of them writes of the Sacred Kural and its author that "it is refreshing to think that a nation which has produced so great a man and so unique a work can- not be a hopeless, desciple race." Another often observed that "one of the main objects of studying Tamil literature is to know and catch the genius of the ancient Tamil people” And another wrote: "Indeed, the various kinds of elliptical constructions in which Tamil greatly delights, the philosophic sequence of things that it always maintains inviolate, the logical and musical choice of terms that it often makes from a veritable host of synonyms, the implied significations that it often pre- sents to the careful reader, the numerous and extraordinary poetic licenses that it enjoys, and, above all, the extreme elasticity by which it possesses a large amount of linguistic economy and is capable of being interpreted according to the intellectual capacity of the reader, these - these alone, which none can deny it, are likely to make any one, who is rightly and faithfully devoted to its literature, a person of no mean mental power..... There is no easier and better method of gaug- ing the genius and mental acumen of the ancient Tamil race than to study their science of grammar which they have carried to a very high degree of prefection. Theie subtle lingusitic observation, their happy invention of the wonderful Sutra-device, their logical arrangment of the rules, and their elaborate methods of construing them cannot but be the wonder of all ages."
After many such eulogies, European and Indian Christians have exhorted the Tamils not to neglect their language. They have also pointed out that neglect of vernacular means only national suicide. Dr. Pope wrote, "Let the Tamils cease to be ashamed of their Tamil." Dr. Murdoch wrote to them, "Let them be assured that so long as they despise their mother tongue they have merely a thin whitewash of civilisation," and quoted the words of Von F. Schlagel. "That acquaintance with foreign
