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The Pesky Ablative: Early European Missionaries’ Treatment of Tamil ‘Ablatives’

In their efforts to create accessible pedagogical grammars of Tamil, early missionaries applied the reference model of Latin and Portuguese grammars and other missioners’ works to the nominal and verbal paradigms they constructed of the language. In so doing, they met with difficulties in formulating the terminology to express the phenomena they encountered. For example, the early missionary grammarians regularly classed several distinct Tamil terminations as ‘ablatives’, because the various senses of these are subsumed in Latin within one ablative case (itself historically derived from three Proto-Indo-European cases: separative ablative, comitative/instrumental, and inessive locative). Different configurations were proposed over the centuries, but, despite the emerging knowledge of the native Tamil grammatical tradition, which had long been influenced by Sanskrit declensional standards, always with a Latinate foundation. The missionaries’ grammars created among Europeans a perception of Tamil that its declensional patterning was akin to that of Latin, and that morphologically realised divergent senses are related because their equivalents in Latin are, readings which persist in many modern didactic descriptions.


Introduction
In their preface to the Cartilha (1554), a Portuguese/Tamil primer of Christian prayers and doctrinal principles, the translators, Vicente de Nazareth, Jorge Carvalho and Thome de Cruz, all native-speakers of Tamil, remarked on the structural differences between their language and Portuguese: "algũas vezes começa dõde os portugueses acabã & acaba dõde elles començã: & outras vezes polo cotrairo" ['sometimes it begins where the Portuguese end, and ends where they begin, and sometimes vice versa']. 1 They also wrote of Tamil as "tã pobre de vocabolos q͂ nã pode explicar alũgas cousas por sues proprios nomes" ['so lacking in words that it cannot express certain things by their appropriate names'].
1 This work represents a focused extension and expansion of some ideas I presented at the Third International Conference on Missionary Linguistics, in Macao in March 2005 (James 2007); and at the World Classical Tamil Conference in Coimbatore in June 2010 (James 2011). English translations and glosses are mine throughout, except where otherwise indicated. With respect to the contrasting structure of Tamil, cf. Propagation (1714: 30-31), whose author, in discussing translating the Bible into Tamil, wrote of "the particular Genius and Idiom, whereby this Language is distinguish'd from all the rest. The Construction requireth often, that some [biblical] Verses be transpos'd, and that some Words come in at the End, which, in other Languages, stand in the Front. … If these Proprieties of Speech be neglected, and Things transfus'd at random, no Malabarian will be able to apprehend the Sense or meaning of what he readeth." Tamil is an SOV-type language, and as Shulman (2016: 8) shows, left-branching, that is, in which "modifiers, including entire clauses, generally precede the modified … Since English, like most Indo-European languages … is mostly 'right-branching,' Tamil sentences often follow an order that appears as a precise inversion of the English sentence." See also Zwartjes (2011: 39-40). Mutatis mutandis, this also applies to Tamil with respect to Portuguese and German.

The ablative case as described by missionaries
Although Tamil is morphologically agglutinative, its patternings were perceived by early missionaries as conforming more or less to the mould of Greek or Latin -at least for didactic purposes. The important paradigmatic similarities between Tamil, and Latin and Greek could thus be readily analyzed, and taught to Europeans, using the traditional Latinate terminology with which they were conversant. Undoubtedly, a key motivation in the formulation of Tamil grammar by the early missionaries was pedagogical, to teach an unfamiliar language by funnelling it through learners' existing linguistic knowledge: Tamil was 'harnessed' by and 'reorganized' into the rules of conjugation and declension defined by the Latin grammarians. Every single verbal form was assigned its Latin or Portuguese analogue, whether it fitted perfectly and seamlessly or not. Even today, some of these verbal forms are considered as 'defying' the grammatical classification applied to Indo-European languages. (Županov 1999) 5 The tendency was indeed to go further, to read into Tamil not only the inflectional structure of Latin, but also the scope of the declensions.

Early missionary descriptions of the Tamil ablative case
In Arte da lingua Malabar [Grammar of the Malabar language] (Hein & Rajam 2013), the first pedagogical grammar of Tamil, generally accepted to have been compiled in c.1549 by Henrique Henriques (1520-1600), a native of Vila Viçosa in the archdiocese of Évora, Tamil is said to have five nominal declensions, as has Latin. Henriques, reputed to be the first European to make a scholarly study of an Indian language (Shaw 1987: 5), largely followed the traditional Latin-based terminology used by João de Barros (1496-1570 in Grammatica da lingua portuguesa [Grammar of the Portuguese language] (1540), although, as Zwartjes (2011: 43) shows, he did occasionally make use of novel denominative or explanatory metalanguage for some Tamil syntactic features which did not find parallels in Portuguese or Latin grammar. Whether Henriques explicitly sought five declensions in Tamil is open to speculation, but since within these he did identify several variants, it does appear that he wished to constrain his principal number to five. His Tamil declensions are: 1st names and descriptors of males in -aṉ, and females in -i 2nd (2a) words ending in -e, -i, -ai; (2b) words ending in -l, -ṉ, -r 3rd words in -m with oblique stems in -tt-4th words in -a with euphonic increment -v-before singular endings 5th words in -u: (5a) accusative > -ai; (5b) accusative > -uvai; (5c) words in -ṭu/-ṟu doubling the consonant in oblique stems Henriques also identified a five-case paradigm in Tamil ['The sixth case, which they call the ablative, is used when taking or separating something from a place, as in this example: I take much learning from books. And if one says, I take much learning from books with my effort, this noun effort, is in another, seventh, case, which the Romans call 'effectivus' (productive). This case is governed by the preposition with, and it embodies the instrument with which we perform something, as in the example above.'] Henriques did not include an ablative in his Tamil paradigm, though he mentioned such in his discussion: "the ablative ends in -ile or -il, with the vowel or consonant preceding according to the respective declension" (c.1549 [1982]: f.24r). Its use is explained as having a locative function (1982: f.151v Županov (1999): "Sophisticated, speculative Tamil-language treatises such as Tolkappiyam … and its numerous commentaries were neither accessible to Henriques nor are they useful for teaching or learning the elementary spoken Tamil." Scholars are not agreed on the age of Tolkāppiyam: Zvelebil (1973: 137), for example, dates its "core" to the pre-Christian era, but theorizes that it may comprise several layers, some much earlier than others; Županov (1999), on the other hand, dates it to "ca. first century AD", whereas Chevillard (1996) places it even in the second century ad. Among Indian scholars, Sesha Iyengar (1995 [1925]: 156) dates its composition to "before the commencement of the Christian era"; Vaiyapuri Pillai (1956) has it not earlier than the fifth-sixth centuries ad; and Mahadevan (1970: 6), citing epigraphical evidence, places it in the sixth-seventh centuries ad.
Adopting the Latin-based terminology used by Zvelebil (1982: 9), we may explicate these as: Because Tamil grammatical tradition was influenced from the beginning by Sanskrit grammatical theory, Tamil, even in its earliest grammar (Tolkaapiyam), borrows the idea that Tamil had to have seven cases plus vocative. Because Sanskrit associative and instrumental cases are identical in form, Tamil has both forms under one rubric, even though the earliest grammarians were uncomfortable with this. (Schiffman 1999: 34; see also Schiffman 2005: 295) Schiffman is echoing Caldwell's (1856: 203, 223) construal: The imitation of Sanscrit in this particular was certainly an error; for whilst in Sanscrit there are eight cases only, the number of cases in Tamil, Telugu, &c., is indefinite. Every post-position annexed to a noun constitutes, properly speaking, a new case. … Notwithstanding this, the usage of Drâvidian grammarians has restricted the number of cases to eight. … Drâvidian grammarians have arranged the case system of their nouns in the Sanscrit order, and in doing so have done violence to the genius of their own grammar. It is very doubtful whether the Drâvidian 'ablative of motion' and the 'locative' are not one and the same case, though represented as different by grammarians, in deference to Sanscrit precedents; and the Drâvidian 'social ablative,' as some have called it, or rather, as it should be termed, 'the conjunctive case,' has been omitted in each dialect from the list of cases, or added on to the instrumental, simply because it is a case of which the Sanscrit knows nothing. The only reason why the case-signs of the conjunctive are classed in Tamil with that of the instrumental is that the fact of their being destitute of a proper place of their own is less obvious in that position than it would be in any other.
Thus, what is certainly an artificial paradigm with respect to Tamil predated early missionary descriptions by many centuries. Zvelebil notes (1982: 13) that for the 3rd case, the marker -oṭu was used, in Old Tamil, to denote three semantic-syntactic relationships: agent [,] instrument and association.
And on the 5th case, he observes that Tolkāppiyam sutra 77, which he translates as, 'It denotes the nature of a thing in relation to another', is a "beautiful abstraction", a definition: broad enough … to account for a broad range of semantic possibilities covered by a case which is only very approximatively termed 'ablative'. According to the commentators … the basic relationship this case expresses are the following …: comparison (porūuporuḷ), separation …, limitation … and cause. The poru (comparison) is twofold, of similarity, and of contrast. (Zvelebil 1982: 14) In Arte Tamulica  The (compound) terminations -kuṟiccu, -ukkāka and -ai.k-koṇṭu are unnamed, presumably because in Latin their senses are expressed by prepositional or adverbial phrases, not case inflections alone. Declensions in Latin are traditionally classified according to the different patterns of nominal suffixation; the surface stem alterations within them are sometimes predictable, sometimes variable. In Tamil, the endings are stable, and stem changes for the most part predictable. Costa recognised this, and suggested that Tamil could thus be said to have just one declension, with four major varieties based on the types of stem changes occurring in the oblique cases. His four subtypes are: 1. no stem change (Henriques: 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th a, b) 2. -am, with -tt-in oblique cases (Henriques: 3rd) 3. -ṭu, with -ṭṭ-in oblique cases (Henriques: 5th c) 4. -ṟu, with -ṟṟu-in oblique cases (Henriques: 5th c).
Costa acknowledged a debt to his predecessors' work on Tamil, in particular that of Gaspar de Aguilar (1588-16??), a native of Figueira de Castelo Rodrigo in the diocese of Guarda, who had served in the Jaffna area of Sri Lanka and Kochi (Cochin) in India between 1619 and 1645, and who was renowned for his mastery of Tamil and his expertise in teaching it (Muru 2014: 355). 9 In the extant parts of his Arte Tamul [Tamil grammar], 10 explicitly a grammar of the spoken language, Aguilar distinguishes four declensions for Tamil, according to a morphophonemic classification -but not that of Henriques -and "partly following the Latin model" (Muru 2014: 370). He delineated an eight-case system, based explicitly on the Sanskrit paradigm, but with subdivisions of the ablative to accommodate the realities of Tamil. Muru (2014: 374-375) has it that Aguilar's study "goes far beyond the earlier analysis of the Tamil grammar by Henrique Henriques ... and of da Costa", and indeed represents the first extant declensional analysis by a European of the Tamil 'ablative' to diverge greatly from the Latin standard. This is a clear evidence that the model missionaries used to follow when compiling their grammatical explanations was Latin. However, it also shows that missionaries, even when restrained by their basic model, were able to recognize the differences from their mother tongue or language model. Aguilar shows that he knows indigenous grammatical traditions, 11 but he chooses to provide a hybrid classification which combines Latin criteria with the local grammatical terminology. Furthermore, Aguilar differentiates the ṣaṣthī 12 into local, causative, social and comparative. By doing this, he shows how sensitive he was to the usage of the language. Indeed, he goes beyond the Indian grammatical tradition. In fact, he identifies not only the locative and instrumental case, but he also recognizes: 1) the comitative case which he calls xaxti social, 2) the usage of the locative case in comparative constructions (xaxti comparativo) in Tamil and 3) the ablative used to mark separation which he defines as abl o partitivo ou separativo. (Muru 2014: 373-374) For the first century of missionary activity, then, we witness a progressive maturity of approach to Tamil declensional description. As the missionaries became aware of the indigenous works of grammar, often through the intermediary of a local scholar, they strove to incorporate this knowledge into their own studies. At the same time, since the native grammars 13 were themselves premised on an Indo-European (Sanskrit) model, the Europeans felt that they needed only to expand what they were familiar with in Latin, to embrace the linguistics of Tamil. This was all the more apt, since the missions included clergy from a number of different language backgrounds, but all with a solid grounding in Latin, and the exploitation of this common denominator was an expedient teaching and learning tool for the missioners. Howbeit, as reliance solely on a Latin model gradually came to be felt inadequate to account for the facts of the language, more sophisticated analyses began to creep into the grammars. With respect to the cases, this was particularly apparent in the ablative.

Later missionary descriptions of the Tamil ablative case
When the Protestant churches began to send missionaries to South Asia, the personnel were able to capitalize on the linguistic efforts of their Portuguese Catholic predecessors. Philippus Baldaeus (Baelde) (1632-1671), a native of Delft in the then Dutch Republic, and a pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church in Sri Lanka, in his Short introduction to the Malabar language (1703 [1672]: 664-665), for example, who noted that "the Malabar Language is very difficult to be learn'd; especially by reason of the vast number of words whereof it consists" and that "the Indians are not so unpolish'd as some Europeans represent them", 14 11 In Arte Tamul, there is evidence that Aguilar was aware of the terminology used in native Tamil grammars, as well as that of the Sanskrit tradition. 12 The 6th case, according to the Latin order, viz., ablative. In Sanskrit, the 6th case is the genitive. 13 In addition to Tolkāppiyam, the other major influential grammar of Tamil is Naṉṉūl (12th or 13th century ad). This grammar recognised changes which Tamil had undergone since Tolkāppiyam. The early missionary grammarians relied on native scholars for instruction, but which indigenous grammar was given prominence in individual cases is not known. Naṉṉūl was translated into English in the early nineteenth century (see e.g., Bower 1876, A Tamil graduate 1878), Tolkāppiyam not until the early twentieth. 14 Van Buitenen & Ganeshsundaram (1952: 177)  Baldaeus's quadripartite classification of the ablative reflected the analysis elaborated by Aguilar, whom he referenced as a source of his own work (Baldaeus 1672: 191). 15 Indeed, Baldaeus (1672)  [Die Malarabische Sprache] ist eine gantz eigene Sprache … und zwar eine recht gravitaetische und oratorische Sprache/die sehr angenehm zu ho͑ ren ist/wenn man sie langsam redet/und deutlich ausspricht. Sie ist dabey eine sehr nette und Wortreiche Sprache/eben als etwan die teutsche und Lateinische Sprache seyn mag. Ihre Wo͑ rter sind schwer zu behalten und auszusprechen; aber nach den grammaticalischen praeceptis ist sie gantz leichte. (Ziegenbalg 1713(Ziegenbalg [1709 [Tamil is] a peculiar Language … full of Gravity and pathos: It touches the Ear agreeably, particularly if a Man has a good knack of Delivery, and takes time to pronounce it with Deliberation. It is also very exact and copious, as the German or Latin are. Its Words are somewhat difficult to remember and to pronounce; yet very easily to be learned by the help of Grammar Rules. (Ziegenbalg 1717: 9) 17 We may note that peculiar (as a translation of eigen 'distinctive, particular') here has the sense of 'distinguished in nature or attributes; particular, special', and in no way connotes 'strange, odd'. Gone is the epithet barbar-, Tamil pronunciation now "touches the Ear agreeably"; no longer, moreover, is the language deficient in vocabulary (Cartilha 1554: "pobre de vocabolos"). For Ziegenbalg, Tamil was explicitly on a par with both his mother tongue, German, and the quintessential European classical language, Latin. And by grammaticalischen praecepta ("Grammar Rules"), he was no doubt alluding to the regularity of the declensional and conjugational paradigms in Tamil -in this, he echoed Henriques (Županov 2003: 124-125).
Evidently, then, he was aware of the formal usage of these suffixes. It was, however, the Italian Jesuit, Costanzo Beschi (1680Beschi ( -1742, who first made explicit in a printed work how Tamil grammarians traditionally analyzed their language, and adapted this knowledge to his own description of Tamil. In so doing, however, he faced a dilemma: Beschi était confronté à un double problème: il devait d'une part fournir une description du tamoul utilisable facilement par d'autres missionnaires européens, ce qui l'amenait à conserver un plan de grammaire latine. Il voulait aussi, semblet-il, donner directement accès à la tradition grammaticale tamoule elle-même, ce qui lui posait de difficiles problèmes terminologiques. ['Beschi was faced with a twofold problem: on the one hand, he had to provide a description of Tamil which other European missionaries could use easily, which led him to keep to a Latin grammatical schema. But it appears that he also wanted to offer direct access to the Tamil grammatical tradition itself, something which caused him difficult problems of terminology.'] (Chevillard 1992: 85) In his Grammatica Latino- Tamulica  ['In this language, there is in a proper sense just one declension: indeed all the cases of nouns are declined in a single way. They themselves count eight cases … which they name from the form of the ending, e.g., the accusative, which ends in ai, is called aiyeṉṉumvēṟṟumai, 'the ai case', and so on for the rest, except for the nominative, however, which they call peyar 'name', and the vocative, which they term viḷivēṟṟumai, that is, 'the calling case', from the verb viḷikkiṟatu 'to call'.'] He noted that two of the eight cases "ad ablativum reduci possunt" ['may be reduced to the ablative': Beschi, tr Beschi (1738: 32) analyzed as verbal suffixes three further terminations which other European missionaries had considered to be separate case-endings (e.g., Costa's "outros casos", or Ziegenbalg's subtypes): Addunt aliqui tres alios casus, quos ablativos vocant: scilicet malaikkāka, malaiyaikkuṟittu, malaiyaikkoṇṭu. Attamen omninò impropriè istae phrases adnumerantur ablativo, quod certè Tamulenses in suâ Grammaticâ non faciunt.
['Some add three further cases, which they call ablatives: thus, mountainablative kkāka , mountain-ablative aikkuṟittu , mountain-ablative aikkoṇṭu . However, it is altogether inappropriate that these phrases should be counted as ablatives, and certainly the Tamils do not do so in their Grammar.'] (His reference is to Naṉṉūl.) His analysis of these endings is: -kkāka dative (-kku) + infinitive āka <to become> -aikkuṟittu accusative (-ai) + gerund of kuṟi <to relate to> 24 -aikkoṇṭu accusative (-ai) + gerund of koḷ <to hold> 25 Beschi (1822: 11-13) had added what is effectively a ninth case, although he rejected this term as an analysis: In the declensions of nouns … both in the common and in the superior dialect … [b]eside the nominative form proper to each noun, and beside the terminations of cases in both numbers, common to all nouns, there is yet another termination of forms, which I shall denominate the oblique. This is not the uninflected noun, neither is it any case of it; for it differs from the nominative form, and is frequently used by itself, without any casual termination. The form of the oblique is not the same in all nouns, but varies … All nouns, except those in am, and some of those in u … form their oblique by adding iṉ to the nominative. … the termination iṉ is by no means a form of the genitive; for, in the higher dialect, this case ends in atu … [T]he oblique … is very frequently employed in this dialect, it's [sic] uses are: First, in declining nouns … Secondly. In forming adjectives from nouns … Thirdly. To denote possession … Fourthly. In expressing the qualities of the mind, or the members of the body … Fifthly. In expressing the time in which any person or thing exists or has existed, or in which any thing is or was done … Sixthly. In expressing the place of abode … Seventhly. The oblique in ttu is used for the ablative in il … It is used also in comparison … [T]he oblique has sometimes the same form as the nominative.
In his chapter on syntax, Beschi added that the stative in -il was also used to express comparison. 26 This was echoed by Dominique de Valence (1696-1778 3 e cet ablatif se prend dans la comparaison quand on dit qu'une chose est meilleure qu'une autre; car alors cequi est moindre, se met a l'ablatif en il ... atileyitu nallatu ceci est meilleur que cela.
['The 3rd ablative, oṭu is rightly our sociative ablative with, e.g., he-with comepast-1st pers. sing. I came with him etc. The cause is also expressed by this ablative, and it is used interchangeably with the ablative in āl, e.g., ... nail-with āl or with oṭu hit-past-3rd pers. sing. masc. he fastened with nails. Apart from that, this ablative expresses the profession ... wealth-with be-past-3rd pers. sing. masc. he was rich; or with riches ...'] Pierre de la Lane, on the other hand, seemingly rather strangely, noted in his attributed work, Grammaire pour apprendre la langue tamoul [Grammar for learning the Tamil language] (1728: 11), L'ablatif ne se distingue gueres que par une preposition, hors de la il nya gueres d'ablatif quj aît une inflexion particuliere et sans preposition.
['The ablative is hardly ever distinguished except by a preposition, otherwise there are hardly any ablatives with a specific inflection and no preposition Tous les noms de Royaume, de ville, village, et appellatifs quj appartiennent a la question -Ubi se mettent a l'ablatif avec la Preposition -ile. Ex. Il est a la maison, a la ville, dans le Païs vīṭaṭle. paṭṭaṇattile. cimaiyile. iṟukkirān. … Tous les mêmes noms encore quj répondent a la question -Unde se mettent a l'ablatif avec les 2 prepositions -yile -iruntu jointes ensemble. Ex. Il vient de la maison de la ville du Royaume de . . vīṭaṭleyiruntu, paṭṭaṇattile yiruntu . . cimaiyile yiruntu. vantāṉ. ['All the names of kingdoms, towns and villages, as well as appellatives, which answer the question Whither? are put into the ablative with the preposition -ile. E.g., He is at home, in town, in the country house-in, town-in, country-in be-pres. 3rd pers. sing. masc. … And all the same nouns which answer the question Whence? are put into the ablative with the two prepositions yile and iruntu joined together. E.g., He has come from the house, from the town, from the kingdom of -house-in-be-past part., town-in-be-past part., country-in-be-past part. comepast-3rd pers. sing. masc.'] De la Lane, then, identified the endings of the Tamil ablative not as inflections, but derivational postpositions (which he termed "prepositions").
In A grammar of the Tamil language (1836), Carl Rhenius (1790Rhenius ( -1838, from Graudenz (then in Prussia, now Grudziądz in Poland), who served as a Protestant pastor in Tirunelveli district, at first with the Church Missionary Society, and later with the German Evangelical Mission, continued the convention, from Naṉṉūl, of eight cases, including three ablatives, with the mention of iruntu (de la Lane's "preposition") as a particle: The third case is our ablative and is (1.) instrumental, by adding to the nominative āl ... and (2.) social, by adding oṭu or uṭanē ... The fifth case is an ablative of separation, or motion, and adds il or in ... very often the particle iruntu or niṉṟu is added to this case ... The seventh case is an ablative of place, and is expressed in poetry by 28 terminations; 28 but in common Tamil only il, iṭattil are in use ... (Rhenius, Abridgement, 1845: 16-17) This analysis of three ablatives was widespread, and is found in a range of non-linguistic sources of the period: e.g., Voyage dans l'Indostan [Journey in Hindustan] (1807: 299), by Jean-Charles Perrin (1754-1851) of the Société des Missions étrangères: Je connus aussi que les Tamouls … avoient trois ablatifs sans préposition: l'un de lieu, un autre de causalité, et un troisième de compagnie.
['The declensions contain eight cases, distinguished one from the other by endings (as in Latin); apart from the ablative in il, which is the locative ablative, Tamil has a second ablative in âl, which equates to the ablative of cause or instrument (Latin a or ab), and the ablative in ôdhou which equates to the sociative ablative (Latin cum), thus relieving the Tamil sentence of that infinity of particles which cramp and embrangle our style in French.'] And The Bible of every land (1848: 114), by the London publisher, Samuel Bagster (1772-1851): Tamil nouns have eight cases, three of which are ablatives, and are distinguished as local, causal, and social ablatives.
Following Beschi, Rhenius (1845: 20-21) added an oblique, which he referred to as a case: Besides the eight cases already mentioned there is a case, called the general oblique case. It is used either as the 6th [genitive] or the 7th [locative] case. It is variously formed. One form of it is made by adding, iṉ, as: pulliṉvaṇṇam, the colour of the grass 29 … The nominative is sometimes used for this oblique case, as: paṟkaṭal, the sea of milk.
['il; ... 2. ending of the locative and comparative ablative, e.g., town-in be-past-3rd pers. sing. masc. he was in the town; fire-as sparkle precious-stone -precious stone which sparkles like fire; snake-oblique-than greatly scorpion -the scorpion's sting is sharper than the serpent's tooth.'] Another lexicographer of the period, the Lutheran, Johann Peter Rottler (1749Rottler ( -1836, in Dictionary of the Tamil and English languages (1834: 184), also quoting -il as polysemous, gave precedence to the comparative and elative (5th case) over the locative (7th) case: il; sub. 1. the same as iṭam, a place ... 4. the fifth case in Nouns: aintaṉurupu; pāmpiṉiṟkaṭitutēḷ, the sting of a scorpion is more severe than the bite of a snake. malaiyilvīḻaruvi, the river falls from the hill ... 5. the seventh case in Nouns: ēḻaṉurupu: ūriliruntāṉ, he was in town Julien Vinson (1843Vinson ( -1926, born into a French family living in Puducherry, 30 author of Manuel de la langue tamoule [Manual of the Tamil language] (1903), the first Tamil grammar in French, with extensive examples from Tamil texts, identified -il and -iṉ as comparatives, with -il also as locative and -iṉ instrumental and oblique (1903: 76-77): Les grammairiens tamouls qui ont copié servilement ceux du nord ont attribué à leur langue un ablatif en … il ou … in´. Mais … il est proprement le locatif et … in´ l'oblique ou la forme adjective. L'ablatif « de, ex » se rend par une périphrase, à l'aide des gérondifs nin´d´u « s'étant tenu, se tenant » ou … iruntu « ayant été, s'étant placé, étant »: « je viens de la maison » se dira … vîṭṭil iruntu varugir´ên´ … Parmi les acceptions particulières que peuvent prendre certains suffixes, l'oblique en … in´ et le locatif en … il servent certainement pour l'ablatif: … taleiyin´ ijinta mayir « cheveu tombé de la tête » et nous ajouterons qu'ils s'emploient aussi pour remplacer le que comparatif: … adan´it´ périd' itu « ceci est grand par rapport à cela, est plus grand que cela »; que le … in´ joue aussi le rôle d'instrumental: … for Tamil -the "most vigorous" of the languages of India (Scudder 1861: 723) -provided the foundation for all subsequent European analyses and descriptions of the language and were still used until well into the twentieth century. From the initial applications of the Latin reference model, thinking evolved, with the missionary grammarians gradually disengaging themselves from the strictly Latin framework, to favour one which more accurately reflected the facts of Tamil, although still very 'European' in style, adapting it, as in the example of the 'ablatives', to match the morphosyntactic phenomena they encountered.