24 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
'pure-Tamil' movement, which in many ways highlights the more virulent features of Tamil, revivalism. Although the ^ure-Tamir movement will, inevitably, be discussed in its socio-political context, the present paper intends to approach the subject from the vantage point of a writer's experience; more specifically the implications of the movement to creative literature and its ramifications will be analysed to evaluate its importance. For, while a certain amount of sociological data on the emergence of the purist movement has been examined by writers on the subject,3 the literary sources bearing on it have hitherto been largely neglected. Furthermore a study of instances of language prescription, which is the main characteristic of the movement, can be revealing for both the linguist and cultural historian.
The Influence of Caldwell's Writings
The intellectual background to Tamil nationalism has already been dealt with in recent studies making it unnecessary to elaborate on it here. Suffice it to say that certain statements by European missionary scholars like Percival, Winslow, Caldwell, Pope and others kindled a sense of pride among Tamils about their heritage. The writings of these early Indologists contributed in no small measure to the discovery and interpretation of their past by Tamil scholars and writers. The enthusiasm and thrill with which the European savants presented the salient features of Tamil language^ literature, antiquities and religion also instilled in these Tamil scholars a notion of uniqueness about their past glory that set them apart from other races and peoples of India, especially the Brahmin community, (broadly identified as Aryans) who were portrayed as traditionally hostile to Tamil and constantly conspiring to elevate Sanskrit at the expense of Tamil—through a process of 'Aryanizaion' or 'Sanskritization'6. Robert Caldwelt (1814-1891) was probably the first to adumbrate the idea.
It was supposed by the Sanskrit Pandits (by whom everything with which they were acquainted was referred to a Brahmani-cal origin), and too hastily taken for granted by the earlier European scholars, that the Dravidian languages, though differing in many particulars from the North Indian idioms,. were equally with them derived from the Sanskrit .. . This representation . . . and the supposition of the derivation of the Dravidian languages from Sanskrit, though entertained in the past generation, is now known to be entirely destitute of foundation .. . The Orientalists referred to were also unaware that true Dravidian words, which form the great majority of