that this large and expensive book has been written and published at the
risk of a small missionary society. We can only hope that the Basel
Mission will not lose heavily, for no pains have been spared to bring out
this book as should be done.
Malayalam is a South Indian or Dravidian language, and is most
closely allied to Tamil, of which, about a thousand years ago, it was, at
best, a dialect. Now its position is very different, for it has (except in the
South Canara and Laccadive dialects) entirely lost all the distinctions of
person and sex which mark the personal terminations of the Dravidian
verbs, and the meanings of words originally the same have become often
entirely distinct in Tamil and Malayalam. Again the literatures possessed
by the two languages are entirely distinct. The Tamil grammar was much
studied about the 10th century by native writers; the first Malayalam
Grammar was written by Europeans. South Western India has always
been, as far back as the time of the Greek traders who came by way of
Egypt, a part of India much visited by foreigners. For more than a
"thousand years there have been flourishing settlements there of Meso—
potamian Persians, Jews and Arabs. Tamil has always been a more or less
conservative language, and till the last three centuries the Tamil country
was but little visited by strangers. Its literature has also preserved it
comparatively free from variation. In Malabar the exclusiveness of the
Brahman, which always was, and still is, greater than in any other part
of India, allowed no Hindu literature till the 17th century, when a low
caste man made the translation of the Sanskrit epics which are so highly
esteemed by the inferior castes. The Mappilas (Mahammadans) and
Syrians formed distinct communities with songs of their own. The
Malayalam language thus forms an instance of great value to philologists,
as showing the influence of the circumstances of the past history of the
race on the development of their language; for instances of this kind are
exceedingly rare out of Europe. Dr. Gundert has seen the importance of
this point, and has carefully collected and marked words which occur in
the dialects of the different classes and in different localities.
Again, this work is also a Comparative Dictionary of all the
Dravidain langauages, and by far the most complete in this respect of all
the Indian Vernacular Dictionaries that we know. Dravidian Compara—
tive Philology originated with the late F.W. Elli a Madras Civilian, and
was continued by Dr. Stevenson (at Bombay); about twenty years ago Dr.
