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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
A JOURNAL OF ORIENTAL RESEARCH
VOLUME LVI-1927
THE PROMOTION OF DRAVIDIAN LINGUISTIC STUDIES IN THE
COMPANY'S DAYS.1 By C. 8. SRINIVASACHARI, M.A.
A. Early Missionary Effort. The pioneers of the modern study of the South Indian vernaculars and particularly of Tamil. were the European missionaries. It is said that immediately after the oelebrated St. Francis Xavier commenced his labours among the Paravas on the Tinnevelly coast towards the end of 1542, he arranged to have the Creed, the Ave Maria, the Lord's Prayer and the Decalogue rendered into Tamil and himself committed the translations to memory. Robert de Nobili and Constantius Beschi (1680-1747) inspired by their admirable labours the enthusiasm of all lovers of Tamil. Nobili was & nephew of Cardinal Bellarmine and came out in 1606 to serve the famous Madura Mission and died near Mylapore about half & century later, combining in his own person the sanctity of the sannydsi and the erudition of the pand it. Beschi spent the years 1710-1747 in the Tamil districts, where he acquired a marvellous knowledge of Tamil, especially over its classical dialect," as no other European seems to have ever aoquired over that or any other Indian language".
The labours of these two great pioneers of European scholarship in Indian languages are fully portrayed in the Annual Letters of the priests of the Madura Mission preserved in the Archives of the Society of Jesus and in some cases in the public libraries of Europe. These Letters were written annually, sometimes every three years, from every Province or Mission of the Socioty to its General in Rome, giving an account of every important event that occur. red in the Mission. It was from this inexhaustible quarry that Father Bertrand drew materials for his voluminous work-La Mission du Maduré (4 vols.) and also Father Besse for his instructive biography of Boschi. The Letters of the Madura Mission preserved in the Archives of the Society are secured in photographs in the private library of the St. Joseph's College, Trichinopoly. “The various compilations published under the name of Lettres edifiantes el curieuses wero made up from such annual letters".
As a great Tamil scholar and poet, Beschi has always attracted the attention of all Tamils and of Protestant missionaries, engaged in Tamil studies, like Rottler, Caldwell and Pope. Of Beschi's works on the grammar of the Tamil language and of his dictionaries, one writer admiringly points out that they "have proved invaluable aids to his successors and to Protestant missionaries and indeed to all students of Tamil after him". A list of Beschi's numerous works in prose and verse, both in Tamil and in Latin, was published in The Madras Journal of Literature and Science for 1840. There was indeed a previous manuscript Life of Beschi in Tamil written about 1790 which probably served as the basis for the saint's life, which was published in Tamil in 1822 by A. Muttuswami Pillai, Manager of the CoHege of Fort St. George, who, some years previously, undertook a tour in the southern district of the Presidency for the purpose of securing a collection of Beschi's works, at the instance of F. W. Ellis, & oelebrated linguistio scholar. The Memoir was enriched with a catalogue of Beschi's works
1 A paper submitted to the Lahore Begeion of the Indian Historical Records Commission, 1925 3 Bishop Caldwell's History of Tinnovely, (Madras, 1881), p. 233. 3 Caldwell— Introduction to the Comparative Study of the Dravidian Languages, (1876).
Pather Beachi of the Society of Jorwe; His Times and Writings, (Trichinopoly, 1918). 6 Ibid., pp. 84.
