TAMIL PURIST MOVEMENT 25 the words in the southern vocabularies, are placed by native grammarians in a different class from the . . . derivatives from Sanskrit and honoured'with the epithets 'national words5 and "pure words' . . . Tamil however the most highly cultivated ab infra of all Dravidian idioms can dispense witji its Sanskrit altogether, if need be, and not only stand alone but flourish without its aid, and by dispensing with it rises to a purer and more refined style ... So completely has this jealousy of Sanskrit pervaded the minds of the educated classes amongst the Tamilians, that a Tamil poetical composition is regarded as in accordance with good taste and worthy of being called classical, not in proportion to the amount of Sanskrit it contains, as would be the case in some other dialects, but in proportion to its freedom from Sanskrit ... Even in prose compositions on religious subjects in which a larger amount of Sanskrit is employed than in any other department of literature, the proportion of Sanskrit which has found its way , into Tamil is not greater than the amount of Latin contained in corresponding compositions in English . . . Through the predominant influence of the religion of the Brahmins the majority of the words expressive of religious ideas in actual use in modern Tamil are of Sanskrit origin and though there are equivalent Dravidian words which are equally appropriate and in some instances more so, such words have gradually become obsolete, and are now confined to the poetical dialect ... In Tamil ... few Brahmins have written anything worthy of preservation. The language has been cultivated and developed with immense zeal and success by native Tamilians and the highest rank in Tamil literature which has been reached by a Brahmin is that of a commentator. The commentary of Parimelaragar on the Kural of Tiruvalluvar ... is the most classical production written in Tamil by a Brahmin*6 These remarks made by Galdwell in his lengthy introduction under the sub-heading 'The Dravidian Languages independent of Sanskrit' have had such an abiding influence over subsequent generations of Tamil scholars that they merit closer scrutiny. Phrases such as "pure words", "religion of the Brahmins", "native Tamilians" and ^freedom from Sanskrit", set in motion a train of ideas and movements whose repercussions and consequences went beyond the field of philology. Many socio-political and cultural movements among the Tamils during the la^t hundred years have without doubt been influenced in one way or another by the statements of Galdwell: the non-Brahmin movement, the self-respect movement