recitative”- there are several. The rhythm has an inexhaustible variety. Pope here points out that the Tamil metre is totally different from the Sanskrit and Telugu metres.⁷³

Pope in his Introduction, analyses the grammar of the Kuṟaḷ. This is the first book in which an author’s style of language has been considered piecemeal. It is more or less a descriptive study. Pope is a pioneer in this line, and modern research students have followed in his footsteps, to take up for linguistic analysis and study individual books. Earlier peculiar grammatical points were pointed out occasionally by natives but a whole study like Pope’s - piecemeal-was not undertaken.

For each chapter of the Kuṟaḷ, Pope gives a summary of it in the beginning. He cleverly translates keeping intact original in its brevity and crispness. For example Kuṟaḷ 57.

“What avail is watch and ward?
Honour’s woman’s safest guard.”

In certain instances when Pope believes that the meaning of the Kuṟaḷ is not quite apparent in the translation, he adds an explanation of his own without disturbing the original. For example: Kuṟaḷ 621. His translation runs thus:

“Smile, with patient, hopeful heart, in troublous hour;
Meet and so vanquish grief; nothing hath equal power.”

The phrase “with patient hopeful heat” is not found in the original but Pope has ingeniously introduced it to bring out the hidden meaning to his English readers.

For Kuṟaḷ 667 he lengthens the translation upto four lines.

“Despise not mean of modest bearing;
Look not at form, but what men are:
For some there live, high functions sharing,
Like lynch-pin of the mighty car.”

The first three lines are an explanatory translation for the original single line which reads

73. P.T.S.K.P. (xxviii)