In the history of Tamil dictionaries, A Tamil-English Dictionary has a special place. Published in 1870 and reissued in 1888 by V. Visvanatha Pillai, it is probably the first dictionary compiled by a Tamil.
Despite the presence of innumerable dictionaries, it is constantly in print and now V.O.C. Noolagam is planning to bring it out with the objective of reaching out to wider audience.
“The author of the first Tamil and English Lexicon published in 1779 and reprinted in 1809 was Johann Philip Fabricius and Christian Breithaupt. In 1862, Miron Winslow published A comprehensive Tamil and English Dictionary and G.U. Pope published his own. Visvanatha Pillai’s is probably the first attempt by a Tamil,” said Prof. V. Arasu, former head of the Tamil department of the Madras University.
Initially, Christian missionaries dominated the field of printing and in publication of dictionaries. Winslow, in the introduction in his dictionary, reveals that he decided to publish a dictionary after coming across hundreds of new words and dialects while meeting people in connection with his missionary work.
Though since 1888, all the editions carried the name of Visvanatha Pillai as the author of the dictionary, S. Vaiyapuri Pillai’s introduction to Tamil Lexicon of the Madras University raised doubts about his authorship.
“In 1888, Visvanatha Pillai, the then translator of the government of Madras brought out a revised and enlarged version of the useful work,” Mr. Vaiyapuri Pillai had remarked referring to the dictionary first published under the authority of the Directorate of Public Instruction, Madras. The book was known as Classical Tamil English Dictionary.
“Today, we may have a lot of dictionaries. But among its contemporaries Visvanatha Pillai’s work stands out. The advantage of the dictionary is that it has listed more English equivalents and a person with limited knowledge in Tamil can also understand the meaning of a word quickly,” said A.K. Perumal, author of the Dictionary of the dialects of Nanjil Nadu.
Ilayabharathi of V.O.C. Noolagam said he could get a photocopy of the dictionary from the personal collection of Rukmini Arundale from the Kalakshetra Library.
The advantage of the dictionary is that it has listed more English equivalents
