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மறைமலையம் 22
genius which keeps itself strictly close to nature, are either things imported into Tamil from Sanscrit narratives. In this state of our Pandits:' knowledge, it is no wonder that my way of treating the history of our St. manickavachakar should appear novel, nay, even strange to their mind.
But it is most gratifying to note that, within the last three decades, from the time I began the publication of my Tamil magazine Jnanasagaram in which for the first time appeared not only my essays on comparative religion, science of language and literary criticism, but also historical studies of ancient authors and Tamil translations of some notable works in Sanscrit and English, a new inquiring spirithas been kindled perceptibly in the minds of educated young men but imperceptibly in the aged Tamil scholars, in a way that it has forcibly opened the eyes of the latter to recognise the merit of this kind of study to and appreciable extent. At the present time there are many here and there who can understand and admire works of this kind, although those who can produce the like of which are still few and far between.
The fact, however, cannot be denied that,. during the past ten or fifteen years, a few books in English and a very few in Tamil purporting to deal with the history of the Tamil language and literature did come out; but it is deplorable that many of them bear no marks of originality nor do they indicate that their authors possessed much first - hand knowledge of the sources from which they pretend to have drawn the materials for their works.
As the only exception to this charge might be cited an earlier ENglish work, called ‘The Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago' but it treats of the Tamils that lived before the third century A.D. and leaves out of account the important period - important from a religious point of view, which intervened between the third and the twelfth century A.D., and which th language, the religion, the literature and the social conditions of the Tamils had under gone a marked change
