JS T o. 5.— 1849.] 



NATURAL HISTORY (TAMIL). 



159 



AN OUTLINE OF THE TAMIL SYSTEM OF 

 NATURAL HISTORY. 



By Simon Oasie Chitty, Esq., c.m.r.a.s. 

 {Bead December I, 1849.) 



Long before Natural History as a science had engaged 

 attention in Europe, and Aristotle had written his Historia 

 Animalium, the Tamils appear to have cultivated it to a 

 certain extent and reduced it to a system, by naming and 

 classing all objects in the animal, vegetable, and mineral 

 kingdoms, as far as they were known, into different genera 

 or families, according to the mutual affinities which are 

 indicated by their external characters. There are, however, 

 no works now extant amongst the Tamils which professedly 

 treat of Natural History, but we are assured by traditions 

 that Akattiyar, who has not undeservedly been called the 

 Hippocrates of India, had composed numerous treaties upon 

 it, which by the lapse of ages have perished or been 

 forgotten. My materials for the present outline of their 

 system of Natural History have therefore been principally 

 drawn from the different Nikandu or dictionaries, as also 

 from the incidental notices which occur in other works. 

 The Tamil system of Natural History embraces a two-fold 

 classification of animated nature,— one mythological and 

 the other natural. 



According to the mythological classification, the "(rods" 

 form a part of the zoological circle. All organised bodies 

 being distinguished under the two heads of movable 

 (charam) and fixed (acharam) are again distributed into 

 seven different genera, the names of which, and the number 



