Page:An introduction to Dravidian philology.djvu/60

Rh to the masses of South India, but this practical outlook was soon transformed into a scientific, dispassionate attitude towards their studies, and the result was that, whatever the immensity of the Christian influence they succeeded in infusing into them, their linguistic enterprise had borne everlasting fruit and laid future generations under a debt of deep gratitude to them. Their attempts at understanding the Indian peoples through their languages was also encouraged by the then rulers of India, the East India Company, for administrative reasons. It is not possible to refer to all the work turned out by these early philologists with respect to these several South Indian languages. It is only sufficient here to call to mind some of the names of those early pioneers

In the field of Tamil studies, Father Beschi, the missionary Sanyasi and pandit, stands prominently at the