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மறைமலையம் 18
the present times. The great and momentous fact must be borne in mind that, of the few cultivated languages of the ancient world, Tamil alone, as I just pointed out, is still living in all its richness and youthful vigour, all others of the modern world being only five or six hundred years old and even among these, except some European languages, few own original literatures as pure Tamil.
To many it might look a surprising circumstances that Tamil should outlive all other ancient languages, that it should still display so much virility as argues for its perennial existence. But the secret is not far to seek, although it has eluded the notice of even erudite scholars. The words, phrases and sentences of Tamil require but little effort on the part of the speaker to utter them properly. The sounds of each letter and word issue forth from the throat and mouth normally and naturally, giving no trouble whatever to the speaker. That all its twelve vowels and eighteen consonants constitute the only natural and normal sounds that could come out from the human voice with the least effort, can be shown clearly by inquiring into the phonetic and physiological laws that lie at their basis; but in a short preface like this it is not possible to enter into that profitable study. We have already shown that laziness in pronunciation forms one of the main factors that lead to the constant change, decay and death of languages. But in the case of Tamil, however lazy a man might be, he cannot pronounce its words so badly as to efface their identity altogether. On the other hand, the words themselves, without requiring much effort, flow out from him like the rhythm of a sweet tune issuing forth from the strings of a harp touched by summer breeze. For the Tamil lanugage does not possess such hard consonants, hissing sounds and aspirates as are possessed by Sanscrit, Hebrew and other cognate languages. It is this distinct melliflous character of its sounds that has preserved and still preserves Tamil from any disastrous change and decay. To this day even the illiterate Tamil peasants understand the classical poetic language of the Thirukkural that was composed at the beginning of the Christian era. When I had been at Jaffna during my lecturing tour, I was struck with wonder when I heard from the lips of its people many pure Tamil words used in ancient Tamil classics, but which have fallen into disuse in Madras and suburban cities. Even big cities like Madras where all
