Thirukural, a Tamil didactic masterpiece consisting of 1330 couplets on human values, is the only book that has been translated on par with The Bible in many languages in the world. With the work advocating ethics to mankind in general, has transcended generations. But, the world would not have witnessed this greatest work in Tamil, had a man in Coimbatore not given its palm leaf manuscript for printing on a day in the early 19th century!
Thirukural, a Tamil didactic masterpiece consisting of 1330 couplets on human values, is the only book that has been translated on par with The Bible in many languages in the world. With the work advocating ethics to mankind in general, has transcended generations. But, the world would not have witnessed this greatest work in Tamil, had a man in Coimbatore not given its palm leaf manuscript for printing on a day in the early 19th century!
At the same time, Pulavar Senthalai. Na. Gowthaman, a noted historian of Coimbatore, says that the glories of the classical Tamil language were deliberately suppressed by the pro-Sanskrit scholars in the British era.
“Though Tamil has its roots in the Dravidian family of languages, the pro-Sanskrit scholars made European orientalists including Sir William Jones, the founder of Asiatic Society of Bengal, believe that Sanskrit was the mother of all Indian languages.”
“The pro-Sanskrit scholars also made them believe that India had a single culture and tradition despite the subcontinent is populated by different ethnic groups with their respective, unique cultural roots. Jones too, who was already in the research to discover the genetic relationship of the Indo-European languages, believed this” adds Gowthaman, who is an author of several books including Sulur Varalaru (History of Sulur), Naam Vaazhum Kovai (The Coimbatore we live in).
Nevertheless, the famed linguist and missionary Robert Caldwell, later proved academically that Tamil belonged to the Dravidian Family of Languages.
“But, it is Francis Whyte Ellis, who pioneered the ideas of Tamil having its roots in the Dravidian family of languages around forty years before Caldwell published his monumental work A Comparative Grammar of Dravidian Languages in 1856”
Supporting Gowthaman’s views, the book Languages and Nation: The Dravidian Proof of Colonial Madras written by Thomas. R. Trautmann, says:
"It was Ellis and his association in Madras that first proposed the ideas of a Dravidian language family on a very sound basis, forty years before Caldwell"
Gowthaman points out that the false notion of Sanskrit being the mother of all Indian languages created possibilities of many Sanskrit works getting translated into English and Germanic.
“However, Francis Whyte Ellis, a civil servant in the Madras presidency, established the fact that the origins of the Tamil language have no connections with Sanskrit “says Gowthaman.
He informs that Ellis, a man with a passion for linguistics and ancient Tamil literature, appointed Colin Mackenzie as an exclusive officer for collecting the palm leaf manuscripts. Mackenzie, by his priceless labour, gathered a vast number of such manuscripts.
At a time when the ignorant people of the Tamil land used old palm leaf manuscripts as firewood, Gowthaman points out that a butler of George Harrington, the British collector of Madurai, gave his master one day some palm leaf manuscripts.
“Then, Harrington, who had known Ellis as an ardent collector of palm leaf manuscripts, sent them to him. As a result, Ellis decoded the scripts and published them into a book in 1812. The scripts published were none other than the Thirukural, Thiruvalluvamalai, the hagiography of Thiruvalluvar, and Naladiyar, another didactic piece of Tamil literature” says Gowthaman.
The historian informs that the butler, who gave Harrington the palm leaf manuscript, was Kandhappan, a native of Arasampalayam near Kinathukadavu in Coimbatore. And Kandhappan was none other than the grandfather of Iyothee Thass, the prominent Tamil activist and precursor of the Dravidian movement.
“Ellis had announced that he would establish the glories of Tamil being the mother of the Dravidian languages when he would complete 40 years of his age.” says Gowthaman.
But, at the age of 41, he died of accidental poisoning.