Includes bibliographical references (pages 277-298) and index.
Explosion in the grammar factory -- Pāṇini and Tolkāppiyar -- Ellis and his circle -- The College -- The Dravidian proof -- Legacies -- Appendix A. The legend of the cow-pox -- Appendix B. The Dravidian proof.
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British rule of India brought together two very different traditions of scholarship about language, whose conjuncture led to several intellectual breakthroughs of lasting value. Two of these were especially important: the conceptualization of the Indo-European language family by Sir William Jones at Calcutta in 1786-proposing that Sanskrit is related to Persian and languages of Europe-and the conceptualization of the Dravidian language family of South India by F.W. Ellis at Madras in 1816-the ""Dravidian proof,"" showing that the languages of South India are related to one another but are not.