Thamil Thadam: Francis Whyte Ellis
Dhamu Source: Dhamu
Francis Whyte Ellis (1777-1819), an English Civil Servant in the British East India Company, is hailed as the inspiration behind the 19th century Tamil renaissance. Having mastered both Tamil and Sanskrit, he was perhaps the first Oriental scholar to argue that the South Indian languages are not genetically related to Sanskrit through his thesis on the Dravidian Proof, a step by step attempt to establish non-Sanskrit origins of the South Indian languages. Dr Dhamu Pongiyannan, the University of Adelaide, presents this weeks Thamil Thadam.
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