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In his Convocation Address the Rt. Hon. M. E. Grant Duff observed that the Madras University existed in the midst of a huge Dravidian people and yet one could hardly make a guess as to what the Dravidians might do. The outside world would seem even now to be little aware of the fact that a Dravidian Culture existed. Anyhow, the imperative duty in this respect lies in the direction of a vigorous development of the study of the leading South Indian Vernaculars. The compilation of Lexicons and the conduct of philological research are good in their own way. But they are accessories; the essential is the recognition of the Vernaculars as subjects of culture and the media of instruction. Vernacular poetry, the study of which is now a very minor concern, forms, according to the people’s innermost sentiment, a rich source of intellectual enlightenment and moral inspiration. The very manner in which a verse in a vernacular is recited by a pandit-educated and by a modern-educated Indian, brings out the difference—in the one case it is a chant, in the other a stammer. The Elementary
