deciding eras and dates, one has to pay attention even to trivials like birds etc., has been shown by such analysis.

Murdoch has pointed out that there are very few books on arts and almost not books at all on painting, sculpture and architecture.¹⁹ Right upto the present day, we have had only a negligible amount of works on these topics. Murdoch’s revelation can be treated as an indirect advice to natives, inducing them to enrich literature on these topics.

Discussing “Mathematics”, Murdoch says, “this branch of science to have been little studied among the Tamils. The low condition of arithmetic may be understood from the fact, that the Tamil system has no chipher.”²⁰ Harking back to Beschi’s works, we find that in his Koṭuntamiḻ he has given the Tamil multiplication tables, measures of various kinds and also fractions.²¹ Some of the old inscriptions also show that measures of various kinds existed even during the early periods. The inference naturally follows that mathematics was not a little-studied science but, that only books on it were little written. The absence of the cipher in Tamil mathematics has to be established by later research.

Murdoch has not failed to mention even slight works. For example he includes a 3 pie pamphlet on the mosquito²², a poem on the railway engine²³ (Pukaivaṇṭi paṭam) and a poem on Mālkam Lewin Turai.²⁴ The second work was written after the introduction of the railways in India by the British. The next work nearly eight pages long is about a popular officer (of the Madras Civil Service) dismissed on some charges. The poem claims Lewin as a “righteous man.” It is anonymous. This shows us

19. Ibid. Pp. 178-180

20. Ibid. P. 177

21. Beschi, “Kodun Tamil”; Pp. 123-126 & 129

22. M.C.C.P.B. P. 189

23. Ibid. P. 193

24. Ibid. P. 190