in modern times made popular in Europe seems to have been known and admitted in India in the earliest ages.”³⁹

Ellis has made a thorough study of Beschi’s Tamil works⁴⁰ and he has not hesitated when occasion demanded to quote freely from them. Robert-de-Nobili has also been cited.⁴¹

These tend to show the many ways in which the Kur̠aḷ was interpreted by these authors and the way in which it influenced their thinking.⁴²

Ellis’s work abounds in allusions and from Telugu and Sanskrit works and Caṅkam classics right up to his contemporaries.⁴³ Cicero, Aristotle and Shakespeare have also been quoted.⁴⁴ whenever he gave a Tamil reference, he gave an English translation of it. Thereby he has done a great job by introducing the foreign scholar indirectly to almost all these works.

Ellis has given a reference from the Pur̠anān̠ūr̠u. (A Caṅkam work) and there is a difference between this and the version in the printed work of the Pur̠anān̠ūr̠u. This shows us that there was another version of it.⁴⁵

He has rendered into Tamil “Moor’s Scared Melodies” which have no doubt enriched Tamil.⁴⁶

Ellis has- as pointed out earlier-chiefly adhered to Parimēlaḻakar’s commentary, but we do notice that in the interpretation of the term Pir̠avāḻi he differs from him and translates it as “see of vice”. Modern researches have proved that there was

39. Ibid. P.3.

40. Ibid. P.22; B.A.T.V.; Beschi, Caturakarāti.

41. Ibid. P.23 (Mantiramālai).

42. Ibid. P.78 (Ātmanirṇayam) P.21, 59, 352.

43. Tirumurukāṟṟuppaṭai; Puṟanāṉūṛu.

44. E.T.C. Cicero P.; Aristotle P. 380; Shakespeare P. 312,

45. Sethu Pillai, R.P.; “Alaiyum Kalaiyum”, P. 124,

46. E.T.C. P. 95, 96.