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- மறைமலையம் LOMMLMWW – 9
like the warning rays of the morning Sun; and to hearts stained with the blackest crime and the basest vice it comes as the washing water of a crystal rill. Ah:! How lovely are the changes wrought by poetry in the mind of man; and how profound and permanent are the moral effects it brings into his inward nature:!
To me the study of poetry has been a welling fountain of delight and ever will it continue to be so to the very end of my life on this Earthly plane. For years together I have been devoting my time to a close, careful and diligent study of the ancient classical poems of the Tamil language and have been drinking deep the ineffable sweetness that was there strode in. The pure simplicity of thought, the close and minute observation of nature, the vivid and sublime portraits presented of the social, moral religious and intellectual conditions of the hoary Tamilian life, the energy and artistic beauty beaming through with a sterling freshness and last, but not least the great historic value which it possesses combine to invest Tamil Poetry with a peculiar charm and splendour that can hardly be surpassed by the poetry of any great language in the world. These characteristics of Tamil Poetry accord to Tamil quite a unique place in the history of cultivated languages in the civilized world.
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But sad to relate that the Tamil poems prescribed as text books for the B.A and F.A examination in the university of Madras/ have attracted little or no attention of the students and that a study of them has even been looked upon as useless and tiresome by some who had been led to revel in stories of religious and mythological character and who had thereby lost all seriousness and all appreciation of natures charms. This has been due partly to the teaching of the Pandits and their bulky volumes of notes which mainly consist in giving word for word meanings and turgid and trivial grammatical notes and partly to some prescribed Tamil
