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affinities. "It is true," he says, "It would now be difficult for the Telugu to dispense with its Sanscrit: more so for the Canarese; and most of all for the Malayalam: - those languages having borrowed from the Sanscrit so largely, and being so habituated to look up to it for help, that it would be scarcely possilbe for them now to assert their independence. The Tamil, however the most highly cultivated ab intra of all Dravidian idioms can dispense with its Sanscrit alto- gether, if need be, and not only stand alone but flourish without its aid” “The Tamil can readily dispense with the greated part or the whole of its Sanscrit, and by dispensing with it rises to a purer and more refined style; whereas the English cannot abandon its Latin without abandoning perspicuity. Such is the poverty of the Anglo- Saxon that it has no synonyms of its own for many of the words which it has borrowed from the Latin; so that if it were obliged to dispense with them, it would, in most cases, be under the necessity of using a very awkward periphrasis instead of a single word. The Tamil, on the other hand, is peculiarly rich in synonyms; and from choice and the fashion of the age, that it makes use of Sanscrit" (Italics are mine). This impartial and candid, comprehen- sive yet discriminating, view of the Tamilian languages and their relative merit put forth long ago by a great European savant, ought to open - if it had not already opened the eyes of the misled Tamils to see the youthful glory, richness, and virility of their mother tongue and advance its culture on quite independent lines in accordance with its innate laws and phonetic principles. Although a like depen- dent culture may seem impossible in the case of other Tamilian languages as Telugu, Canarese and Malayalam, it is not really so hopeless as it seems at first sight. With a resolute will the scholars in those languages should set themselves to the task of eliminating from them all Sanscrit elements and putting in their stead pure Tamil ones which are in fact their pith and marrow.
The Tamil, the Telugu, the Canarese, and the Malayalam people and other Dravidians living in the remotest parts of India, being the descendants of a single highly civilized ancestral race related to each other by the closest ties of blood and speech, should one more knit themselves together by eschewing the company of
