masses being unfavourable for creating a public opinion in favour of Tamil, it is eagerly looked forward to formation of a favourable world opinion, which alone can remove the grossest injustice done to Tamil during the past three thousand years.

     Professor T.Burrow, the most outstanding western orientalist of today, has done an invaluable service to the cause of Tamil by redeeming hundreds of Tamil words from Sanskrit, and thereby placed the Tamilians under a deep debt of gratitude. But, having based the Dravidian Dictionary, which he has brought out in collaboration with Professor Emeneau, mainly on the Madras University Tamil Lexicon, whose multifarious defects have been exposed in the foregoing pages, has not fully understood the nature of Tamil and has committed some errors.

     First of all, the name of the dictionary itself is inappropriate. The work is only a comparative Lexicon and not an Etymological dictionary of the type of Skeat's and Chambers's Dictionaries bearing the epithet - ‘etymological’.

     Rev. Richard Morris defines etymology as follows:

     “Etymology treats of the structure and history of words; its chief divisions are inflexion and derivation (including compositioŒ.”¹

     The Tamil numeral - ƒyiram, thousand, is not derived from the Sanskrit sahasra. The truth is the other way about.

     The history and structure of the word ƒyiram are as follows:

1.H.O.E.A.p.121