A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages c2.6

c2.6

desideratum at present seems to be a Comparative Vocabulary of the Dravidian Languages, distinguishing the roots found, say, in the four most distinctive languages—Tamil, Telugu, Canarese, and Malayâḷam—from those found only in three, only in two, or only in one. An excellent illustration of what may be done in this direction has been furnished by Dr Gundert, whose truly scientific "Dictionary of Malayâḷam" has given a fresh stimulus to Dravidian philology. Another thing which has long appeared to me to be a desideratum is a more thorough examination of all the South Indian alphabets, ancient and modern, with a careful comparison of them, letter by letter, not only with the alphabets of Northern India, ancient and modern, but also, and especially, with the characters found in ancient inscriptions in Ceylon, Java, and other places in the further East. It has been announced that a work on this subject, by Dr Burnell, M.C.S., entitled "South-Indian Palæography," is about to be published in Madras, but I regret that a copy of it has not yet arrived.