were intermingled. The work was of immense size but unfortunately learners were unable to differentiate betwixt the common and uncommon words. However, a remarkable feature of this book was that it enumerated the different variants of words used in colloquial speech. For example, the word koppul, the dictionary has koppul, kuppuḷ, kuppul. It was impossible for the student to detect the right from the wrong. Beschi made use of this work but did not follow it blindly; on the other hand his selection of words from it was discriminatory and made only after deep and careful analysis.

Ziegenbalg, in 1712, compiled a dictionary but it was not printed. “One of his greatest deeds was the attempt to write a Tamil dictionary which happened to become the basis and source of other dictionaries to follow and especially of the so-called Tranquebar Dictionary” He in his dictionary had 20,000 words and phrases and after another four years he had collected 40,000 words. His “Lexicon Poeticum” contained 17,000 words which are hardly understood by the common man but by scholars only.”¹⁷

He was another great missionary full of zeal and a great Tamil scholar. In 1706, he came to Tranquebar and commenced work on a Tamil prose dictionary. About two years later this dictionary contained about 20,000 words classified under three different headings. The first column had the Tamil word, its pronunciation in Latin types was the second column and the third had its meaning in German. He perused through numerous books and his extracts were drawn from almost 200 books. Theological, historical, philological, medical and economic books were all read. This book was not arranged in the Tamil alphabetical order but the author had prepared a German index which made the dictionary useful. He considered and prayed that his work would be beneficial. In 1712, however, the words were listed in the alphabetical order and all derivatives and idioms were grouped under the root word. This resulted in the dictionary

17. Dr. Arno Lehmann, Tamil Culture, Vol. IX, No. 2, June 1961, “German Contributions to Tamil Studies”