THE POLITICS OF A LITERARY STYLE 17 Arutpas8 ofRamalinka Swamikal, which begins with the lines ^Petra Tai tanai maka marantalum". As he finished reciting, he suddealy realis sed that the word ^tekam" (Sanskrit deha: body) occurring in the second line had really brought down the literary merit of the poem; he told the daughter that the original Tamil word for body ^yakkai" would have been excellent in that place. Continuing his comment on the need for a textual substitution he is said to have told the daughter that because of the influx of loan words Tamil language has lost its pristine purity and that many ^genuine' Tamil words have thus been lost to the language and its speakers for ever. The daughter, a good student of the father and a great admirer of his literary views, exclaimed, ^Ifso, we should avoid all loan words. Let's make an effort." The father agreed. Thus was born the pure Tamil movement. The Ideology of the Movement The drama of the birth of the movement, however fascinating it might be, should not blind us to certain more deep seated factors connected with it. By the year 1916, Maraimalai Atikal was already a reputed Tamil scholar, having written a number of books. This dramatic beginning should not minimise the importance of the ideology behind the movement. ^ Maraimalai Atikal, in his English preface to the Pure Tamil version of an adaptation.ofsome Addison's Essays, published in Tamil under the title ^Cintanaikkafuraikat" lists some of the reasons why he chose this style of writing. The translation was from the first, made very faithful to the original but in this edition it was made still more so in a few places where (I had) handled it somewhat freely in the previous edition. This was done with a double purpose, at first, to show the futility of the complaint put in by Brahmins and many misled students that Tamil has no sufficient quantity of words to express the meanings of English words used in dealing with a variety of high class subjects and secondly to bring home to their mind the fact that Tamil is an independent language with a rich store of words capable of expressing in a skilful hand all kinds of thoughts that appear in the different branches of learning. Instead of arguing about this fact with prejudiced persons, is it not better to show the fact Itself in practice? Accordingly the Tamil style of this edition of essays has been rendered extremely pure by eliminating all Sanskrit words that mingled in the original edition at the rate of four or five percent.4 While seeking to expand on each of the arguments put forward for the need of a pure Tamil style, he made the following observation: Here may step in some brahmins, who, ever watching for an oppor-unity to cry down Tamil, put forth the worn out argument that Tamil, is not as sufficiently rich as to express without the help of