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their hands. Primers and text-books have their place after general treatises dealing with outlines in a narrative and popular manner. Graduates with a sufficiently high education can, of course, write their treatises better than the Pandits can be expected to do, with their narrow and one-sided culture.
Instead of taking up Pandits for improvement, the educational department should encourage young graduates with linguistic inclinations to aim at high standard of knowledge in the Classical and Vernacular languages of the country. After all, the literature of a country should represent the contemporary activities and aspirations of the people, and should be the product of minds conversant and in sympathy with these activities and aspirations. Mythological stories and Puranams of holy places have no doubt a certain merit in that they show the capacity of the language in some respect. But it is ideas, healthy, stimulating ideas, that are wanted more than feats of literary legerdemain. English literature does not contain, for instance, fifty words to convey the idea of a lion; the poet, the novelish, the historian, and every species of writer in English employ the Bama word to imply the king of the beasts. But Tamii has a whole page of synonyms for lion, and similar concrete objects, and is an entire Băranger to what may be called literary economy, by which only one word is employed to indicate ÇDB idea. More wealta of ideas sad legs of redundant vocabulary are wanted to impart the necessary elasticity and expansivenegg to Tamil literature ; and this transformation can only be a slow process and brought about by the axertion of minds trained in modern knowledge. -
Indeed, there are already indications to show that the younger generetion of our graduates are rising to a sense of the importance of leading a departure from the old tradition of the Tamil Literature and bringing into existence a fresh school calculated to meet the wants of the general public rather than the ambition and ideals of a small class of erudite Pandits. They begin to see among that considerable class of middle-class people who without being themsalves educated in English are yet in touch to some extent with the rew ideas and aspirations stimulated by Western civilisation in the country, there is a growing healthy curiosity to know what transpire in other countries of the world as well as in India and a laudable desire to possess means of satisfying this curiosity. During the late South African War, I was greatly impressed by the curiosity evinced by all but the poorest classes to know the minutest details of the progress and the fortunes of the war from day to day, and the circulation of the Wernäcuiar aewspapers rose in axact proportion to #he promptitude and fulness of the information supplied by them. Nor is this fresh desire for information regarding affairs concerning the world at large, special oး spasmodie. There is reason to believe that this desire is more or less a permanent outcome of thefresh conditions of life, of new thought and activity of the people throughout India. This desire our younger graduates, have the good gense to try to
