Page:An introduction to Dravidian philology.djvu/74

Rh Malayalam, Telugu and Canarese, But these are all cultivated languages, possessing a vast amount of written records and spoken by people with whom scholars could come into intimate contact with the least inconvenience to themselves They could induce the natives to teach them or get access to them without any difficulty. The languages that they studied had already received great attention at the hands of the native grammarians, whose labours they fully utilized They could all work in the plains in healthy surroundings, seated in arm-chairs in well-furnished bangalows. But of a far different kind was the work of others who risked their health, their personal comforts and all the amenities which they could command in the plains, and sometimes their very lives, and went forth into the hills and the forests, infested with dangerous wild beasts and malarial and other fevers. Theirs