TAMETOMO. brother without liurting liim. Being taken pris- oner and a sinew of his arm having been ex- tracted by liis foes he came nevertheless to shoot a stront;er bow and sank a boat by shooting an arrow through its bows. The accounts of his end are contradictory. After sinking the boat he fired his liouse and committed suicide, or he tied to Riu Kiu (Loo Choo) and became its king, the first of the historic line. TAMILS. A Dravidian people of southern Hindustan and northern Ceylon, who number more than 16,000,000. They are, perhaps, the most important of the civilized Dravidian peo- ples of India. The Klings of the seaports of Farther India and certain parts of Malaysia are Tamils, who have emigrated temporarily or per- manently from their native land. To the Tamil group belong also, in all probability, some of the wilder tribes of the hills and the region of Tinnevelli and South Travancore. The Tamil language is the most important of the Dravidian languages. (See Dra vidians.) It is spoken in the northern half of Ceylon, and the territory between Cape Comorin and Pulicat, north of Madras, extending inland about half- way across India. Tamil is divided into Old or " i§on Tamil, and Modern or Kodun Tamil. The dilTerences between the two epochs of the language are very marked. Of all the Dravidian tongues Tamil is the most archaic. It has nine cases, two numbers, and in gender distinguishes between 'high caste' (men, gods, spirits, etc.) and 'low caste' (animals, inanimate things, and abstract ideas). The verb is formed by suffixing the personal pronouns to a predicative verb stem. The same base, therefore, when case-suf- fixes are added, serves as a noun, and when the pronouns are affixed as a verb. The original tenses are the present, the preterite, and the future, but periphrastic formations denote the continuative or durative, the perfect and plu- perfect, and the future perfect. Moods are alto- gether lacking. In its vocabulary Tamil is ex- ceedingly rich, especially in compounds and syno- nyms. The alphabet, which is closely akin to that of the Telugu (q.v.), is based on one of the old forms of the Sanskrit Devanagari script. (See Devanagari.) Tamil literature is abun- dant and important. An outline is given under the title Deavidians. Consult: Jlateer, Native Life in Travancore (London, 1883) ; Caldw-ell, Tinnevally mid the Tinnevally Mission (Madras, 1869) ; id.. Com- parative Grammar of the Dravidian. or South Indian Family of Languages (■2d ed., London, 1875) ; Rhenius, Grammar of the Tamil Lan- guage (4th ed., Madras, 1888) ; Pope, First Les- sons in Tamil (."ith ed., Oxford, 1891) ; Hultzsch, South Indian Inscriptions, Tamil and Sanskrit (Madras, 1890-9.5) : Burnell. Elements of South Indian Pala-ography (2d ed.. London, 1878) ; Graul. liibliothcca Tamultca (Leipzig, 1854-65)._ TAMING OF THE SHREW, The. A comcdv by Sliakespcare. written before 1596, produced in 1603. It is adapted from an earlier play entitled The Taming of a Shrew, of ques- tionable authorship, produced in 1594. The story of Bianca is taken from Ariosto's / Suppositi through Gascoigne, Supposes, a play of 1566. The taming of Katherine by her husband is a form of an old and widespread story found in the Araliian Xights and in Straparola. 16 TAMMANY HAIL. TAMISE, ta'mcz'. A town in the Province of East I'Tanders, Belgium, 11 miles southwest of Antwerp, on the Scheldt, and on the railway from Mechlin to Saint Nicholas (Map: Belgium, C 3). Its chief manufactures are cotton and woolen fabrics, laces, soap, and wooden shoes; boat-building and jute and flax spinning are carried on. Population, in 1900, 12,403. TAMMANY HALL. The name applied ( 1 ) to a powerful political organization in New York City ; ( 2 ) to the building which serves as the organization's headquarters ; and (3) sometimes incorrectly to the society from which the organ- ization leases the building. The name is adapted from that of an Indian chief, Tamancnd, of the Lenni Lenape or Delaware tribe, who was fa- mous for his virtues and his wisdom, but about whom little is definitely known. His name ap- pears on deeds for tracts of land, dated June 23, 1G83, and July 5, 1697; and according to tra- dition he died about 1740, and was buried in New Britain Township, Bucks County, Pa. Be- fore and during the Revolutionary War, societies with Tamanend as their patron saint were organized in imitation, and to a certain extent in ridicule, of such societies as Saint Andrew's Society, Saint David's Society, Saint George's Society, and the Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick. The organizations were of a patriotic nature, and were affiliated in spirit with the Sons of Lib- erty. In Philadelphia the Sons of King (later Saint) Tammany met almost every year from 1772 to 1791, and later, in 1795, a short-lived branch of the New York society was established there. On May 12, 1789, William Mooney, an uphol- sterer, who previously had been active as one of the Sons of Liberty, founded in New Y'ork, ostensibl.v as a patriotic and social organization, the secret Society of Saint Tammany or Colum- bian Order, which in 1805 was regularly incor- porated as a fraternal aid association. The ritual and organization of an Iroquois lodge were followed more or less closely by the founders, the society being divided into thirteen tribes, each of which had its separate totem, the year being divided into four sea.sons. each month being called by some distinguishing char- acteristic, and the officers being known as the grand sachem, sachems, the sagamore, or master of ceremonies, and the wiskinskie, or door- keeper. In 1811 the society built its first hall, at the corner of Frankfort Street and Park Row, and in 1867 moved Into the present Tammany Hall on Fourteenth Street. The political organi- zation is nominally distinct from the society, but the two may in many respects be regarded as virtually identical, the leadership of both being largely in the same hands. Though the society was ostensibly organized for patriotic, social, and benevolent purposes, it early took an active interest in politics and soon came to stand distinctively for Democracy and decentralization, identifying itself defi- nitely (in 1798) with the Democratie-Republi- cansas opposed to the Federalists. Aaron Burr is supposed to have given the society (indirectly) its first training in the devious ways of practical politics, and in 1800 the society fir-st took an active part in a political campaign, being instru- mental in carrying New York for Jefferson. From that time to the present Tammany has
