* சிந்தனைக் கட்டுரைகள்
23
Now, there cannot be a greater and more evasive or igno- rant or untrue statement than to say that Tamil is poor, that its words are inadequate to express the various minute shades of meanings, thoughts, and ideas with which many English words are pregnant. Such a false statement can come either from those who are utterly ignorant of old Tamil literature or from those who are deliberately intent upon concealing the truth and saying what is false for the purpose of killing Tamil wantonly. A cursory glance into the Sacred kural which deals with all kinds of high topics in a masterly manner, or into any other Tamil work of the early centu- ries of the Christian era, will suffice to show clearly the richness of the Tamil language. Although numerous Tamil words have fallen into disuse in the so-called higher circles, whose number is very small, yet among the masses almost all of them are in cosntant use and the language is quite pure still. A man who has received his education mainly in English and who can talk only in a strange colloquial Tamil mixed with English and Sanscrit, can hardly make himself understood by the people who speak only in pure Tamil. The kind of education that is now imparted to students simply serve to widen the gulf that already lies between the masses and the learned. I have seen many a man educated in English struggling for Tamil words to express his ideas to the people whom he was called on to address. This is not due to any defect in Tamil but it is due to his own imperfect acquintance with it. Only such persons do readily join the brahmin in condemning Tamil, just as the fox in the fable did the grapes. But as regards the richness of Tamil and of its fitness to express all manner of new thoughts and ideas, even so scathing a critic as the late Mr. M. Srinivas Aiyangar, who in a clean sweep styled the ancient Tamils liars and immoral people, did not however hesitate to speak out the truth, although in this respect he went out of his way. He says: "It (Tamil) can exist without the least help from foreign languages, as it had and even now has, sufficient elementary words of native origin, out of which com- pounds can, with a little attention to phonetic principles, be formed to express modern thoughts and ideas." Much more emphatically was this truth affirmed by Dr. Caldwell than whom there never was a greater, a more profound scholar who devoted himself to a deep, careful and patient study of the Dravidian languages and their
