"Tamil can readily dispense with the greater part or the whole of its Sanskrit, and by dispensing with it, rise to a purer and more refined style . . . Of the entire number of words which are contained in this formula there is only one which could not be expressed with faultless propriety . . . in equivalent of pure Dravidian origin: that word is 'graven image' or 'idol'. Both word and thing are foreign to primitive Tamil usages and habits of thought; and were introduced into Tamil country by Brahmins, [along] with the Puranic system of religion and worship of idols."
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quoted in Brook, Timothy, and Andre Schmid. Nation Work: Asian Elites and NationalIdentities. University of Michigan Press, 2000. quoted from Malhotra, R., NÄ«lakantan, A. (Princeton, N.J.). (2011). Breaking India: Western interventions in Dravidian and Dalit faultlines
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Robert Caldwell
Robert Caldwell (7 May 1814 – 28 August 1891) was a missionary for London Missionary Society. He arrived in India at age 24, and studied the local language to spread the word of the Bible in a vernacular language, studies that led him to author a text on comparative grammar of the South Indian languages. In his book, Caldwell proposed that there are Dravidian words in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, the archaic Greek language, and the places named by Ptolemy.
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