Paramāṟatakuruviṉa katai = The adventures of the Gooroo Paramartan : a tale in the Tamul language : accompanied by a translation and vocabulary, together with an analysis of the first story / by Benjamin Babington.

  • Constanzo Beschi
Date:
1822
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Paramāṟatakuruviṉa katai = The adventures of the Gooroo Paramartan : a tale in the Tamul language : accompanied by a translation and vocabulary, together with an analysis of the first story / by Benjamin Babington. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    but all the short vowels are omitted, and it is only in elaborate works that the diacritical points are inserted to supply their place. Europeans, however, have felt the necessity for marking the difference between the dead and the animated consonant; and it has therefore been a practice among them to place a dot over quiescent consonants, where ambiguity was likely to arise, and to mark with a dash above, a consonant with the inherent vowel. This method is never more than partially pursued, and the double distinction is evidently unnecessary. Conceiving that, to a beginner, all cases must be equally ambiguous, I have, in the following Tale, marked the quiescent consonants through- out, in the manner just mentioned. One exception alone occurs, in the letter (na) rg, which is never marked as quiescent, and the reason is, that the fount of letter which I purchased did not con- tain the requisite character. It would have been easy to have had a new matrix cut, but of this circumstance I was not aware until a considerable portion of the work was printed ; and then, for the sake of consistency, it appeared better to make no alteration. The Student will not find this deviation perplexing, tor the letter nj is quiescent, only when in company with another CB (A. G. Sect. 22), or with its homogeneous vallinam (to) Efr. The larger type used for the heading of Chapters, does not contain any dotted letters.. The English orthography which I have employed in repre- senting Tamul words, is the same as that used by Mr. Anderson, excepting only that the double o is made to correspond with his Italian u. My motive for preserving this difference was, that I might retain the u, both short and long, for the purpose of re- presenting the sound which the vowels @ and have, when followed by certain consonants of the cerebral class. What is here offered to the public, is intended as a proof,
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