Page:Tamil studies.djvu/392

Rh given above there are only about half a dozen Sanskrit words, while the rest are pure Tamil. The negative partic!e %, the case post-positions gov, 960, 67 or 2, CM (2016) and verbal endings DICOT, 1960, you (or in 68 600 Com) are all Tamil, in மேவுன்னாணாளே the particle ன்ன is only a contraction of 30 m, 600 or go out which is a sign of the present tense; similarly bor ay is an abbreviation of ct Ms. Thus if the Sanskrit passages are not taken into account, his vocabulary and the structure of his composition are mainly Tamil.

It may be assumed that grammar and dictionary tend to contribute to the fixity and permanence of a language. The early Tamil inhabitants of Kerala were mostly merchants, cultivators and soldiers, and they did not care for literary excellence or even to improve their mother tongue. Nor did the later Malayalis care to write one, because the Dravidians were most of them uneducated and the Brahmans cared little for a Dravidian tongue. That work was reserved for a foreigner--Dr. Gundert, who was at once their Agastva and Divakara. Owing to the curious mixture of the agglutinative Tamil with the inflectional Sanskrit, the work of bringing out a satisfactory Malayalaın grammar has become a super-human task. The language has not yet reached its classic stage; and it is still in a state of formation. Neither its granıar nor its vocabulary is settled; and the very fact that it still retains the peculiar Tamil letters y and

proves its very late separation from Tamil.