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close resemblance to the principles of the Tamilian religion and philisophy called the Saiva Siddhanta and published them in the year 1904 in the second volume of my magazine Jnanasagaram. To suit them to the taste of the Tamil people, I had to make certain changes in the Tamil version of the two essays. First of all I re- moved almost all proper names that are foreign to Tamil and put in their stead pure Tamil names. And secondly, by way of introducing the subject, I added at the beginning of each essay a few appropri- ate incidents taken from the early part of my life. These additions and changes, I suppose, must have made the matter of the essays look more attractive in their Tamil garb, fro the readers who were not aware of their English original, believed that they were pure Tamil productions and admired their beauty. So much the two es- says pleased my readers that it encouraged me to undertake the translation of some more of Addision's essays. And accordingly, I translated four others into Tamil sticking to my method of transla- tion, that is, the method of displacing foreign proper names by Tamil ones, and adding to or inserting in them a few descriptive passages of my own wherever that was deemed elegant or picturesque and published them in the fourth volume of Jnanasagaram. Altogether the six essays were, a little after, made up into a book and pub- lished in the year 1908, so that they may be easily accessible to all Tamil readers.
It had taken seventeen years for the copies (1500) of the first edition to be sold off. Had it not been prescribed last year as a Tamil text for the students in Ceylon preparing for the Intermedi- ate-in-arts-examination of the Cambridge University, it would have taken some five or six years more to get a sale for the five hundred copies supplied to students. Though this book and other writings of minde had been before the University of Madras all through the past sixteen years, she cared not to take notice of them. This is due to its being mainly a brahminridden bady. Where brahmins domi- nate, there no non-brahmin Tamil, however learned he may be, can hope to find himself recognized merely by dint of his merits and attainments.
But not so are the foreign universities. Only in Ceylon do the descendants of the original Tamil possess power and influence.
