of grammar, and Tolkƒppiyam, the oldest Tamil grammar extant, has no parallel any where under the Sun. The composition that is universally admitted to be the finest on ethics in the language, viz., the KuŠa˜, is perfectly independent of Sanskrit and is original in design as well as in execution. There are also some major and many minor works of different species peculiar to Tamil, “and though it is true that Tamil writers have imitated - I cannot say translated - the Rƒmƒya–ƒ, the Mahƒ–bahƒratƒ, and similar works, they boast that the Tamil Rƒmƒya–a of their own Kambar is greatly superior to the Sanskrit original of Vƒlm…ki”

     It is as clear as noonday that Sanskrit was never a spoken language anywhere. A language can be said to be living only when it is spoken by the common people without learning it from books or in educational institutions. Sanskrit is spoken only by a few scholars in that language. In this way any dead or artificial language can be studied and spoken by the intelligentia. Nevertheless Prof. Monier Williams, in his Introduction to his Sanskrit-English Dictionary, makes an ungraceful attempt, to establish that Sanskrit was and is a living language and will be so for even and ever.

     His vindication is as follows:

     “I stated in the preface to the first edition of this work written in 1872 that I had sometimes been asked by men learned in all the classical lore of Europe, whether Sanskrit had any literature. Happily, since then, a great advance in the prosecution of Indian Studies and in the diffusion of the knowledge of India has been effected. The efforts and researches of able Orientalists in almost every country have contritubted to this result, and I venture to claim for the Oxford Indian Institute and its staff of Professors and Tutors a large share in bringing this about.

     “Nevertheless much ignorance still prevails, even among educated English-speakers, in respect of the exact position occupied by Sanskrit literature in India - its relationship to that of the spoken vernaculars of the country and immensity of its range in comparison with that of the literature of Europe. I may be