Percival’s collection of proverbs was probably pioneer work and he was emulated by native writers who collected and edited them.

Anthology

The traditional method consisted in gathering under a topic various authors’ works on it. Dr. Pope introduced a change in this procedure. Instead of restricting the choice to one topic, he collected various topics by several authors in one single work. These were gathered and presented as “Tamil Poetical Anthology, With Grammatical Notes And A Vocabulary.”

This work had no single particular arrangement. The selections in Pope’s view were from good authors. He was “strongly opposed to the ordinary method of studying Tamil poetry with the aid of verbal commentaries and this completion” was “an attempt to introduce a better system.”¹⁰³

The purpose of this book was to cater to the needs of school children.

The 612 selections were discriminatively chosen from about fifteen different Tamil works. 307 verses of this 612 were from the Kuṟaḷ. The Caṅkam works have failed to find a place in this selection. Pope has indulged mainly in those verses which extol moral truths. A couple of verses from the Kambarāmāyaṇam and Civaka Cintāmaṇi have been chosen. These are chiefly descriptions of Nature. An occasional verse here and there propounds a moral truth.

These verses are divided into many lessons, each lesson has a title and an English translation of it. For each Tamil stanza there is a brief paraphrase in Tamil prose and as equally short English translation of it. Meanings of difficult words and grammatical notes are added to below each verse.

Another new introduction was that Pope did not use the traditional method of editing the Veṇpā and the Kuṟaḷ couplets.¹⁰⁴

103. Pope, G. U. “The Tamil Poetical Anthology,” 1854, P. IV.

104. Ibid. Vs. 22 and 105